Inverter.

400 watts is probably about the most you can sustainably get out of an inverter on your TV, and that only while it's running.  People hook up bigger inverters, and they may work for a while, but they'll suck a battery down quickly, especially if the engine/alternator isn't running.

I have a 12,000 lb winch on my truck and it sucks the juice.  It can use up to about 4000 watts.  To do that for more than about 10 or 20 seconds the engine has to be on.  To do it for 30 to 60 seconds you have to have your foot on the gas.  (My old Bronco had a manual throttle you could pull out and set!)  With all that, after a couple of minutes of winching something substantial you can watch the battery level going down.  Like most stock vehicles, I only have a 100 amp alternator.  You can buy 130 amp or even 200 amp alternators, but at that point, for camping purposes, you're probably better off with a generator.

TT

It might help if you'd tell us what you're really trying to do.  There may be alternative solutions.  Most phones and laptops can charge from 12v DC, or a little 200w inverter is plenty for them.  It will also power the television.  Coffee makers and hair dryers are generally beyond the limits of battery powered inverters.

VOISJ is right -- the pod doesn't have an inverter.  It's converter takes 120v AC shore power and converts it to 12v DC to run 12v things in the pod and to charge the battery.  And of course, if you have shore power you have all the AC and DC power you should need.

I suspect you meant watts when you asked about increasing the volts.  More watts would be nice, but, no they can't be increased.  As for volts, the only things you want are nominal 120v AC or nominal 12v DC.

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.

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

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.