Inverter.

Originally posted by furpod Nah.. thanks to off grid people and golfers, such transformers are easy to come by.. It's literally 4 wires you can't mess up unless you try.. LOL 48v to 12v transformer.

Are you actually using a 48V battery system? This means that when you hook up to your TV, that you would have to have a separate 12V battery, or do you run another converter to take the 12V from your TV to charge up the 48V in the TT?

Originally posted by furpod They use 24 or 48v native systems to reduce the amp draw. And they now use LiFePO4 batteries that can not only discharge to very near zero SOC without damage, can safely discharge at rates that would destroy a FLA battery in seconds, and recharge way faster then FLA batteries.

That's a whole different story. An inverter drawing from a 48V battery would only pull ~~ 62 amps. That's still some serious current, but the wires would be more real-world.

However, converting an R-pod to 48V is not something that I would want to take on. Even with a DC-DC converter it would be too many moving parts for my comfort level.

The batteries and wire needed to support a 3000 watt inverter would be truly massive. Attempting to run something that drew 3000 watts on an inverter would require ~~ 250 amps of current at 12 volts. That is a really large amount of current. Doing a little googling, it would require 4/0 (four ought) wire, which is almost 1/2" in diameter (.460 inches actually if copper). The batteries required to support that would be pretty massive too, unless you're talking about running your 3000 watt load for seconds, and not minutes.

Originally posted by rawest50 I keep a 400 W in my Jeep. Used it on trips when the kids were small for games and TV. I was looking at getting another for the Colorado if I happen to need it. No real reason. I do have another question. I saw converters 2,000-3,000 Watts. What and where would you use that large of a converter.

I assume you mean 2,000 to 3,000 watt inverters.  Best I can tell the names are arbitrary, but they are well established.  Converters covert AC to DC; usually 120v AC to 12v DC.  Inverters take 12 volt DC and invert it to 120 v AC.  If you are talking about inverters, a 2,000 watt inverter, if sourced with enough power, will run anything you can plug into a 15 amp circuit at home; almost a 20 amp circuit.  A washing machine, a small air conditioner, or more likely an air compressor or a table saw.  Hooked up directly to a running truck battery (going through the cigarette lighter thingy would blow that fuse in less than a second) it will run a big item briefly unless the truck has a beefed up electrical system.  Run time without an engine running an alternator to keep the battery up would be just a few minutes and might destroy the battery.

When people talk about getting generators for their Pods they say a 2000 watt generator might run your air conditioner.  2400 or 3000 watt generators are generally considered the base line for Pods.  Those generator watts are the same as your inverter watts. So you can run your whole pod with a 3000 watt inverter, including the air con if you can power the inverter.  The inverter doesn't make up 3000 watts out of nowhere.  Your vehicle almost certainly cannot produce that much power for any length of time.  If it could, it would be running so fast it would be obnoxiously loud in a campground, and use a lot more gasoline than a 3000 watt generator just because of the overhead of pushing 4 to 8 times the number of pistons as a generator.

To get back more directly to your question, a contractor who knows what he's doing might use a 2000 watt inverter for a table saw or an air compressor, for example.  Both of those are at least somewhat intermittent in their usage too, which would definitely help with regard to maintaining battery voltage.

TT

Little confused too. I know Rawest50 has a Colorado, so do I and I use the TV 12V charge circuit thru the TT plug to charge the TT battery. It works well. It can't take the place of a generator or shore power. Not possible. I also have a 400W onboard inverter in TT, I can use for small accessories. Tars is spot on the functions of TT converter. Not a lot one can do to take place of shore power.