Anybody hooked an inverter to the gen prep wiring on a Solitude? Any thoughts?

[KWyer]

I have the gen prep but no generator and now have 400ah of lithium batteries in the front bay and I am adding a 3000 watt inverter to power the camper. Seems like it would work well to mount the inverter next to the batteries and the existing gen prep wiring box and wire in a 50 amp plug, then add a 50 to thirty adapter and make a pigtail from the inverter to 30 amp plug connector. Thoughts? Anyone have pictures of already doing this?

KW

[howson]

KWyer -- wouldn't a Multiplus II work perfectly in this situation since it is had two 120vAC outputs? Assuming the output of the generator was intended to power the entire unit, the Multiplus' wiring should also easily be connected and perform just like a generator. Of course you'd have to manually limit the power drawn from the Multiplus to no more than 25A (with 400aH of batteries it doesn't take long to drain them if running full tilt).

ncitro -- am I missing anything?

[ncitro]

I'd think that should work, I've never seen the generator prep wiring, but I think it even includes a transfer switch, so a Multiplus might even be overkill. I think you should be able to hard wire the output of the inverter into the generator prep, you shouldn't need the dog bone you describe either right? That would just be something that could come loose or fail.

[howson]

I'd think that should work, I've never seen the generator prep wiring, but I think it even includes a transfer switch, so a Multiplus might even be overkill. I think you should be able to hard wire the output of the inverter into the generator prep, you shouldn't need the dog bone you describe either right? That would just be something that could come loose or fail.

Hmmm...thinking about it more any inverter that has a passthru of shore power (switches to inverted power automatically with a loss of shore power), it might be easier just to bypass the generator's transfer switch. Having two transfer devices would make it more complicated than necessary.

[ncitro]

Hmmm...thinking about it more any inverter that has a passthru of shore power (switches to inverted power automatically with a loss of shore power), it might be easier just to bypass the generator's transfer switch. Having two transfer devices would make it more complicated than necessary.

Right that's the point I was trying to make but got a little lost along the way lol.

[Jlawles2]

A couple of important things have been said above.

When using the generator prep input, the factory converter will still be powered. Unless you disable this system and use say the multi plus then the batteries are using themselves to charge themselves. This creates an infinite loop of power use / regeneration with losses killing the batteries.

I'd look at the inverters offered by Victron, along with the help of several others here and pick one that will be all inclusive of your needs. More than likely will will be replacing the generator transfer switch with the proper Victron device which will eliminate or minimize the complexity.