My old faithful PowerBright 1500 watt pure sine wave inverter finally died on me. Someone sent us a new PowerBright 3,500 watt inverter which I installed today in place of the old one.

 

First I removed the positive cable leading from the battery bank to the power inverter. This prevents any accidents while I work. I laid this wire aside carefully so it would not touch anything.

 

Preparing to install the new power inverter

 

First I had to remove power from the off grid tiny house on wheels. Then I removed the screws and the power leads from the old, dead inverter and put them on the side out of the way.

 

 

 

I then removed the screws that held it to the wall of the tiny house and removed it. I am not giving up on this old inverter. I have hopes of one day looking inside to see what went wrong and if I can fix it.

 

I had to build a shelf for the new inverter because it wants to be installed in a horizontal position. The old inverter had screws to mount it to the wall but this one does not.

 

I used some scrap wood that I had left over from making my wood shop work benches. This was an old sales counter that is serving me well for multiple projects.

 

I built a shelf using a piece of 2x4 and a piece of plywood off the old sales counter. I screwed the plywood to the 2x4 and then fastened the shelf to the wall of my tiny house where the old inverter was.

There is a hole in the wall to the tiny house kitchen where my old wiring used to run through back when I had the solar panel charge controller and inverter inside. I plan to use this to run a power cord out to the big inverter so Melanie can run the induction stove top when the sun is shining bright.

 

So I moved the shelf over a little bit to open up the hole.

 

I put the inverter in place to see how it fit before finishing the shelf. I like it.

 

Trying out the new power inverter shelf

 

Next I put an angled piece of 2x4 under the shelf from the front to the wall of the tiny house for support. This will keep the shelf strong and prevent sagging with time. The power inverter weighs 20 pounds so I want the shelf to hold up over time.

 

New Power Inverter Shelf

 

I put the inverter in place and fastened it with screws to the shelf. Then I connected all the power cables.

 

This is really quite simple. One red cable comes from the positive side of the battery bank to the positive (red) side of the power inverter.

 

Then one black cable comes from the negative side of the battery bank to the negative (black) side of the power inverter.

 

The red (positive) line is fused at the battery bank to prevent fire in case of a short or a blow out.

 

Connecting the power inverter wires

 

In the photo above you can see the leads connecting the power inverter to the battery bank. The negative side is on the right and the positive side is on the left. The thinner white and black wires to off to my little Aims power inverter which we use for low power devices. Normally you would only have two wires leading from the battery to the power inverter.

 

You should connect the positive wire first and then the negative wire last. This is supposed to reduce the sparking when connecting the leads of the power inverter. There is often a very large spark when the capacitors inside the inverter charge up suddenly.

 

And that is all. I turned on the power inverter and we had power inside the off grid tiny house on wheels again.

 

New power inverter working

 

You can watch the video of this installation here: Installing New Power Inverter In Off Grid Tiny House

 

While you are over there please subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow our daily videos as we strive to become self sufficient and off the grid on a budget.

About the Author

Troy Reid

Your Response

Name

E-mail

Comment

Cancel