How to thrive on a non 240v site!

Yes, they ain't cheap Kev. It would be interesting to know what the power consumption is on these other makes if anyone knows? 

Typically inverters are only 90 percent efficient so if you look at your 240v TV spec it should give you the power consumption and you should be able to work it out.  If a colour TV is rated at 100watts when on 240v then adding 10 percent to this will give you its probably consumption when using it via and inverter i.e 110 watts to which you must add the power the inverter itself is consuming which might be 25 watts so total would be 135watts.

There are three disadvantages to using a mains powered TV.

1. They are not made for the mobile market and are alegedly not so robust as a 12v one.

2. As pointed out they do consume more power via an inverter.

3. If they can be powered direct from 12v, they usually cannot accept a wider range of voltages as a 12 volt one.

Merve I have had no trouble with my BM1 and the van is in use year round.

peedee

Merve I have had no trouble with my BM1 and the van is in use year round.

peedee

Hi mate, that's interesting. I wonder if mine is faulty then? Checking both my controller and my BM1, ampage going into the battery can show as 1.4 for example on the BM1 and 0.4 on the controller! Quite a difference, and as I said, it shows all sorts of garbage when the van is cold- perhaps I just have a duff one? 

Yep, 135w is a lot for a tele. 30w is acceptable! 

I looked up this BM1 meter, as at present we're meterless. Over £100 ain't cheap. I've been told that a useful handheld portable meter can be bought for around £10. No doubt there are some cheap rubbishy ones at this price too. Any recommendations for a basic but useful one, please? I did ask a while ago but don't think anyone responded - apologies if you did & I missed it.
Other than the nuisance of having to open up the battery hatch to briefly touch the meter on, is there any huge disadvantage to such a one, rather than an installed version?

Thanks.

No hedge, I can't see any disadvantage other that what you point out but how many times will you do it before the novelty wears a bit thin. a multi meter from Amazon should do the business, but, just to open the locker and look at the display of the controller when it's pouring with rain is kinda nice?? 

Merve I do not have any other metering to tell me what is happening to my battery. My MTPL controller only has indicator lights on to reveal whether the battery is low, fully charged or charging. Half the time I cannot remember what the lights are telling me. With the BM1 it is obvious. Plus points for the BM is it tells you the battery state of charge and how many hours you have left at the rate you are using it and it is easy to read.

My installation on my control panel.

peedee

• Hi peedee. Well, if it's the only monitor you have then it's better than nothing. My BM, which is mounted by the door and if I knew how to get a photo below 500 meg or whatever it is , I would post a photo! - is saying the same  at the moment 12.6v but what I would give for 4.1amps! Been leaden skies here and its raining hard at the moment and it's showing .2A whilst the 'SunWorks' controller shows .1A  It shows 80% battery. But still shows 199hrs to discharge which can't be right. As that's the time shown when the batteries are 100% charged. I'll be going to the show on the Tuesday  and Saturday so I'll talk to someone about it. When non EHU , it's a very useful piece of equipment - if it's working right😂😂😂 just noticed yours is different to mine- mine only has the two buttons being the 'compact'

Merve, go online to sunworks website, choose your controller, take the image into your photo library then post on here. The photos from websites are all reduced in size to save bandwidth. The photo I've posted from sunworks website is only around 70kb's the photos can be up to 500kb's

Thanks Rocky- good of you. The one on the right is the one I have.

Merve. Not sure about the compact model but mine had to be calibrated to match battery capacity for it to give a reasonable estimate of capacity remaining. How to do this was all explained in the manual which came with it.

peedee