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hi everyone jeff cote here with

boatingtechtalk.com

so we have a question from a fellow

motor hugo has a glaston

gs259

jeff where is the best place to install

an inverter on a boat oh

good question

there's not an easy answer

not in the engine room

for sure but i don't have a lot of space

on my boat in an outside galley

compartment with a sink and a half cabin

where

okay

so

let's think about inverter charger

inverter charger is going to have

multiple inputs and outputs right what's

the purpose of an inverter charging well

the inverter creates ac so alternating

current from dc so it means that

inverter by definition gives you the

benefit of running house loads on your

boat but it needs a battery so that's

one thing

the charger does the opposite right so

the charger takes an ac input and it

creates a dc output to recharge the

batteries and that's going to be a

three-phase charging

and then you obviously are considering

that there's most likely going to be a

remote panel to control the inverter and

to turn it on turn it off to see the

status see errors and so you're going to

also want to consider where are you

going to mount the remote panel for your

inverter

most inverter chargers don't come with a

remote panel in the box but you're going

to want to consider having one and i

don't think i've ever sold an inverter

without a remote panel although

most of the inverter chargers don't have

it in the box you need to buy it as an

option but a big fan of remote panels

for inverter chargers

okay

so knowing the ac inputs and there's a

control panel and some of them also have

temperature sensors and other things but

generally there's three connections ac

in ac out

dc in dc out by the way those are it's

the same connection that goes both in

and out because it's an inverter charger

so it can pull or push in either

direction

the other thing to consider and that's

really important as well

is the distance between the inverter and

the batteries

so you got to remember the inverter

itself can be really far from the ac

panel because why because your ac panel

is going to be powered at 120 or 220

depending on the inverter you get for

your boat and the voltage drop on that

line is

irrelevant i mean it's there but you

know what you're starting at 120. so

voltage drop at 120 is only a problem

for a really really really really long

runs right but

on your boat that's not a case what you

do want to worry about is you want to

worry about the dc connection between

the battery and the inverter and the

further away you are from the battery

the bigger the cable gets and there's

tables for that so there's a factor of

both opacity right when sizing dc cables

and voltage drop

and you're going to want to make sure

that you follow the recommendations from

a manufacturer and there's going to be

tables but what that means is most of

the time we don't choose where we want

to put an inverter we get stuck by

having the inverter closest as possible

to the batteries

and so we'll have the batteries in one

place and then we're going to be looking

maybe the batteries are in the engine

bay but we're going to have the inverter

on the other side we're going to try to

really minimize the dc cabling runs now

of course you can

naturally have the inverter far away

from the batteries but that's going to

increase the cable size and eventually

i've seen boats where it's not enough to

have a cable that's the size of my thumb

right it's actually what they need to do

is they run two cables and i mean two on

the positive and two on the negative

they'll run double four

so that gets pretty complicated that's a

lot of cabling for your boat so when

you're looking at

make sure that you have the inverter as

close to the batteries as possible the

other thing too is you want to make sure

the inverter is definitely not in a

place on the boat that is not ignition

protected meaning it cannot be in a

gasoline engine room and that's what

google probably meant by not in my

engine room

the other thing too that you want to

make sure is that it won't get wet

inverter chargers are not ip rated not

the ones that we put on boats

so they're not meant to be in the

elements the other factor is you need

cooling so you're going to put that

inverter it cannot be in a completely

airtight

space where there's no airflow because

as the inverter or the charger is

functioning really hard it's going to

heat up and with that heat up you need

to be able to dissipate the heat

so to recap

sizing cables to the battery so you want

to be close to the house battery the

panel is not so much of an issue you

want to figure a way to how you're going

to route the cable from the inverter to

the remote panel that's another issue

and what i tell when same thing i tell

my text when we're installing an

inverter charger the first thing you

need to do when you're installing an

inverter charger is you need to figure

it all out

don't even bother running a cable until

you have a complete plan you know

exactly where the batteries are going to

go you know exactly where the inverter

is going to go you know exactly where

the cable between the inverter and the

ac panel is going to go because

sometimes when you're on one side of the

boat you're almost stuck you can't get

to the other side of the building so you

need to figure all that out ac is there

batteries are here the cabling is going

to go this way the ac is going to go

this way the control panel is going to

go this way the temperature probe is

going to go this way and also if you're

on a gasoline boat you need to make sure

that as you go through the vapor-proof

bulkhead between the engine room and the

cabin that you are actually making sure

that no gases under any circumstances

and i mean no circumstances will you

ever have gasoline vapors get into your

cabin space

so those are the reasons why doing an

inverter charger isn't easy but it's

worth doing because it gives us a lot of

benefits running ac loads on our boats

and also the other big advantage that we

get from that too is having high output

chargers to recharge your batteries

relatively quickly

so sometimes the pain is worth it and i

believe with an inverter charger it

certainly is if you've got further

questions on an inverter charger we have

a whole section on our website just on

inverters just on inverter chargers

tons of videos articles um

use a search bar it actually works

you'll get way more hits than you want

to have on our website on just inverter

chargers and if you've got further

questions and they weren't even answered

post them down below and in my free time

just before i go to bed or when i really

want i wake up i will take a dab on

youtube and answer the questions as they

come thanks for watching and be safe on

the water

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