Inverter: Good News/Bad News

Okay so recently, our inverter started kicking its breaker any time we ran a couple things together (at first, then whenever we ran one thing for longer than a minute or so) even when we were plugged into shore power. We had AM Solar check it out and they eventually came to the concusion (bad news) that it was the whole inverter that was bad, and not just the breaker switch they were setting out to replace. Luckily (good news) we were still 10 days away from the end of the two-year warranty that we didn't even realize we had.

The fix was to just swap the old inverter for a brand new one. BUT. There's another, bigger, better version that we decided to upgrade to while they were in there. (Our old inverter was 1000W, the new one is 2000W!!). We'd always felt like the old one was just a little too small for our needs and we'd been regularly bumping into its limitations or having to work around it. ("Okay, done with coffee so I can use the microwave?")

We also had them take the fridge off the inverter system so it's either LP or electricity when we're on shore power, and never runs through the inverter (when we forget to change it when we're on solar). We had them change the outlet near the television (over the sofa) to be shore-power-only so we can plug in our little electric heater there, and we had them install a shore-power-only outlet inside the back of the closet so we can plug in and mount the new Dyson in there and it can charge when we're on shore power. Streamlining things as we go is fun!

This morning here behind AM Solar we did some tests: we unplugged, and while using only the solar system/inverter we made three rounds of espresso, microwaved some stuff, I dried my hair (all of it!) with my new 1000W hair dryer, both our computers were charging…maybe some more stuff I forgot…and we only got the batteries down to 97%. Pretty great!

We love AM Solar. Thanks Greg and Deb!

(Posted by Laura)