How to thrive on a non 240v site!

Thanks mate, I think you have my email!

We've finally made it! Only a weekend, but between fridge running on gas and SP recharging the battery we've at least done a couple of nights off EHU at a storytelling festival. And our granddaughter & I used a fair bit of motor mover energy in aligning the van on a soft-ish field, so was doubly delighted that the lights on our little 80W folding SP soon showed a full charge despite overcast skies!

At present I rely on these indicator lights to know if it's charged or not. It would be useful to have a meter. There are meters with many functions and bells and whistles, but our AWS engineer recommended just buying a cheap simple one at a fraction of their price. I'm truly not an electrically minded man, but knowing how much is in the battery, and checking a fuse now & then would be useful. Any recommendations of models worth having, please?

Thanks for the encouragement here to start on this path!

That's brilliant Hedge- well done- feeling of something for nothing I bet? It's like magic isn't it? If you buy say a 120 w Panel, the controller normally has a meter with it that tells you the battery is fully charged. That is if it's roof fixed but of course yours is a mobile but I'm sure it's the same-  How you can tell is that the ampage shows nil- which means the battery(s) can't accept any more charge. Put something on and you see the ampage start to rise as the panel replaces the used juice. Switch it off again whatever it is and the ampage drops back to nil again when the batteries are full. An MPPT controller is the best. That's the type, not the make. Look, why don't you give Photonic Universe a ring about this. They deal with this all the time and they are usually at the shows. They will spend time with you and let you know exactly what you need to go forward from here. I look forward to many more stories of non EHU caravanning from you and I'm sure the rest of the gang will be eager to know how you're doing. So pleased your first experience was a good one. 

Thanks Merve.
It is a Photonic Universe panel we have. The controller is on the back... somewhat hard to see as you have to lift the whole panel and squint quite a lot!... but the wee LED's there illuminate, in various combinations and sequences, and all it tells me, as far as I've worked out, is that it's either  fully charged, or accepting charge. This is, I know, the main thing, but looking at earlier discussions here it would seem useful to know more about how much is in there!
Photonic do sell a battery monitor at nearly £150 but I'm not even contemplating paying out that much!

Meanwhile we too look forward to many more trips off grid, it's pleasing indeed, both for long term money saving and the greater freedom over sites we can reach now. If we can just persuade the ancient water heater back into gas business too, rather than relying on the kettle, life will be even better!

Best wishes from deepest Northampton.

Inverter help.

Hi everyone, we bought an inverter from Halfords for about £35.  It was just to make it easy to charge our phones when we are using solar.  You plug it in to the 12v cigarette lighter sockett in the caravan.  It worked the first few times, however last time I plugged it in only to charge an ipod and it stopped working.

We managed to figure it had blown a fuse so we replaced the fuse from a local Halfords (was right impressed with myself as we no nothing about caravans/electric/diy).  We tried it again but the same thing happened (I had bought a spare fuse and will get a pack next time).

Wondered if anyone has any ideas why this is happening.  Is the inverter just broken or does the battery have to be absolutely full (It was probably showing 12ish on our panel).  It normally shows between 13.5 and 11.5 (at the end of a tv evenining) on the panel).  

We've only had it a few months but as it worked the first time we just binned the receipt.

Your inverter is drawing more current (amps) than the fuse supplying it can deliver.

Why didn't you just buy a charger suitable for use in a car? Clicky You're  going from 12v DC up to 240v AC  then down to 5v for the phone. You just need a car charger to reduce 12v down to 5v for the phone.

I agree with MollysMummy, car chargers are the way to go for, keeping phones and tablets charged. 

With inverters what you have to remember is that if an appliance is drawing 1amp at 240v to run that from an inverter it needs to be supplied with 20amps of 12v power (that's assuming a perfect efficiency). This means it is easy to not only blow fuses but overload wiring as well.  Also a lot of inverters will shut down if it senses too low a voltage from the battery to protect the battery from being flattened. 

Tracey- Good advice from MM and Boff. We had a very similar thing when we started out on the non EHU road and it wasn't that it was blowing fuses ( although thinking about it no we did replace one a couple of times), it just wouldn't stay in the 12v housing. We now have a single 12v socket plug leading to a multi charger unit with not only 2 further 12v sockets in it but 4 USB outlets as well . Phones tablets and toothbrush are all charged with no problems - and no more blown fuses! The panel copes easily when multi items are being charged. 

having a German van, our 12v sockets are DIN std, so we use this type of adaptor to charge Ipads/phones via USB.....

USB- more manna from heaven for the non EHUer BB. It really is a wonderful time to go to the dark side and be a non EHUer- it's never been so easy! How the hell do you get a picture of that size on here when I can't post a postage stamp size because it's too big?  Where are you at the moment?