Adding a Bigger Inverter to Umarang

Over the last few days, I worked on installing a Renogy 2000 Watt Pure Sign Wave Inverter in my motorhome: Umarang or Uma the VRRV.

What is a inverter you ask? Well, it basically takes 12 volt DC electric power from the house battery and converts it to 110 Volt AC electric power.  I stayed with a pure sine wave system in order to continue to provide clean electric power to Starlink and my electronic devices from my house battery while boondocking.

Previously, I had used a 500 watt inverter since I basically just used it to power the chargers for all our electronic devices, and lately, Starlink.  It worked fine.

Theoretically, if I had the battery capacity, this larger inverter could be used to power just about all the appliances in the RV.  For the foreseeable future though, I installed it to have a quieter working inverter since these smaller inverter's cooling fan ran all the time when the inverter was on.  A bit annoying.

I almost ended up not installing this inverter since it was so much larger than my existing 500 watt inverter. Finally figured out a location for it with Martha's help. I got the inverter from Chris and Lori of BlazeourWay.

I ended up using the lower pantry cabinet to the left of the stove where basically I have been storing consumables, bags, junk in a unorganized manner. 

Here's what the cabinet interior looked like after I removed the panel in the rear to expose the wiring runs and heating duct run by the manufacturer of the RV. The inverter would end up extending slightly past the panel.

Here is the new inverter extending slightly past the rear panel, clean air will be sucked in from the blue panel in the front and blown out into the wiring run compartment behind the panel.   The white short extension cord connects to a four foot extension cord that connects to the existing extension cord that goes to the power outlet in the front half of the RV.

Top down view of the inverter showing the battery cables, both of which go off through an access hole to the right and connect to the rear of the existing 500W inverter.

I placed a thin fiber board panel on top of the inverter leaving perhaps a half an inch of clearance or so. This way I can stack stuff on top as well for storage. 

Finally a shelf in the middle for better organization of items within the entire cabinet. 

I mentioned that the battery cables from the new inverter go to the power terminals on the 500 watt inverter.  From that location, the previously in use battery cables go directly to the house battery underneath the floor.

This shows the 500 watt inverter, the wall it's mounted on is the wall to the right of the new inverter.  The new inverter's cables aren't installed yet.  The red and black 4 gauge cables coming from the rear of the inverter and into the floor go to the house battery. 

The extension cord plugged into the front of the 500 watt inverter goes outside via the same hole as the battery cables, runs along the right side frame of the chassis and underneath and into the rear dinette seat bench where there's another dedicated for 110 via the inverter.   It now plugs into the four foot extension cord from from the new inverter.

I chose to do it this way to easily switch to the 500 Watt inverter should the new inverter fail for whatever reason.  Not to mention, I didn't have to cut any cables, or use the butt connectors I had purchased previously and so was able to return them for a refund.

Testing confirmed everything appeared to be hooked up right.  Starlink went online with no issues.  I'm a big fan of redundancy so two inverters give me peace of mind.