Hey mate I’m new to all this and have the same inverter and similar battery solar set up I’m going to put into my van
I’m trying to figure out what components I need to go from inverter to my mains power GPO instead of just running a power lead from the inverter to the 15a inlet which I don’t want to do as I want it all internal
do I need a junction or something to convert over so I can use all my power points that I would use if plugged into mains ?
I’m missing something from your mud map it’s just not sinking in and wondering if you could help so I can direct my electrician
Hello Daniel,
It has been a few years since I fitted and rewired the inverter in my van, From memory it was a difficult fiddly job with a lot of tracing of the factory 240V wiring to figure out what connected to what.. My Basestation is fitted with the CMS quick connect power cables as I think most Jaycos are. So I purchased 2 of the cables and cut 2 off the ends off and hard wired them to the inverter and then basically connected the inverter in between the incoming 15 amp wiring and the rest of the van. This is a very basic explanation of what i did to get the inverter to power the complete van and it worked but since then I have rewired a bit more of the van so the inverter does not power the A/C, hot water service and battery charger.
Updated wiring layout
CMS cables and adaptors
Please have a look at the below extracts from My Basestaion thread and it is all explained in more detail.
wired up the inverter last night,
Started of with 2 CMS 240v Interconnecting cables and cut 1 in half striped the lead and prepared it to wire up to the inverter.
I then connected the DC cables that came with the inverter and the cable glands on the 240v cables.
I then fed the cable into the cupboard and passed around under the club lounge to where the battery is located.
The inverter is attached to the wall of the cupboard with 4 screws ( not easy to squeeze my arm in to put the screws in)
I then had to rewire the power point the the Setec battery charger plugs in to.
This is going to be hard to explain but I will give it a go.
First I disconnected the main power inlet cable from the rear of the 240volt Van power inlet socket
and connected this cable to the 240v outlet cable of the inverter
I then ran a new CMS 240v Interconnecting cable from the rear of the Van power inlet socket to the power point for the battery charger and also connect the 240v inverter power inlet cable to the same power point
Last to connect were the 12v DC cables to the battery.
I have just connected directly to the battery at the moment but I have on order a 250amp ANL fuse and holder for the positive connection and have also ordered a 200amp shunt from Setec for the negative connection so the drifter control panel can see what is being drawn through the inverter.
Setec have advised me that the drifter control panel is only calibrated to read up to 100amp load so when my inverter is drawing more than that I will not know about it but at least the bigger shunt will handle the load.
So when mains power is connected to the van, The batter charger will power up and start charging the battery and the inverter will pass mains power straight through it
When mains power is unplugged the charger will power off and the inverter will automatically switch across to inverter power
While we were away up in Uluru and Kings canyon we had a few power outages in the parks and because I have wired my inverter to power the complete van it caused a few problems. We were using the A/C during the times the power went out and the inverter would just kick in and we would not even know the power had gone out until about 10 minutes later when the van battery was flat and alarms would sound. This also was a problem with the hot water heating and using inverter power.
So I am rewiring the van so that the A/C and hot water service and not connected to the inverter.
To do that I have had to pull apart the pantry cupboard to get to the 240v wiring and add a few extra cables.
This is how it was wired
This is how it will be
This is the mess
Picked up 3 CMS cables and some double adaptors so I could rewired the van last night. Now the hot water and A/C only work when connected to mains power.
Basically I split the power in to 2 circuits after the factory circuit breaker, One run feeds HWS, A/C and battery charger and the other feeds goes through the inverter to supply all other power points.
Hot water service and setec battery charger power points had to be rewired on a separate run with the A/C
Had to pull a lot apart to change what power point was feed with what power but now I should have no problems when free camping or during power outages.
Cheers Brad