12v lighting for my house powered by my van

[12vshocker]

Ok so the plan is: to power the the lighting circuit using a car battery via a pcu, that connected the the a/c via timer circuit, fit a diode to the battery pos, so not to waste electricity recharging the battery with a/c power supply.

Is there a better way to click over to the ac power? I.e. Monitoring the battery status and some sort of automatic switch over once the voltage drops?

Also how do you calculate how long the battery would last, I know I'd need to find out the consumption of that circuit per day, and battery ratings etc but what would the formula look like?

And if I connected the neg post of the battery to the met bar would it tap into the unused neutral current (probably not the right word). Also I suspect something terrible would happens under fault conditions.

 

[12vshocker]

Sorry I meant UPS not PCU, stupid TLA's

 

[davesparks]

But why do you assume the battery would be further away? He can't energise a circuit using a 12v battery that then feeds PSU's that have 240v on the primary.

Because there is only one battery which he wants to feed the whole circuit from directly and he wants to install a diode to prevent the 240AC getting to the battery, he clearly hasn't got much of a clue.

From what I can understand of the OP this is exactly what he is intending to do, feed a whole lighting circuit at 12V directly from a battery.

 

[Deuce]

Because there is only one battery which he wants to feed the whole circuit from directly and he wants to install a diode to prevent the 240AC getting to the battery, he clearly hasn't got much of a clue.

From what I can understand of the OP this is exactly what he is intending to do, feed a whole lighting circuit at 12V directly from a battery.

I just... Can't believe that. He must surely mean the elv circuit on the secondary side of the PSU. not the entire lighting circuit the PSU is on..

 

[davesparks]

I just... Can't believe that. He must surely mean the elv circuit on the secondary side of the PSU. not the entire lighting circuit the PSU is on..

I may have misunderstood completely but what I got from the first post is that he wants a 12V lighting circuit, doesn't want to use an inverter, wants to keep the existing transformers/drivers in place and use a diode to prevent the 240V AC getting to the battery.

 

[Richard Williams]

I got a headache reading that lot

 

[DPG]

I bet the novelty of swapping batteries between house and van every day soon wears off.

 

[PJElectricalSW]

Just use a 12vDC to 230vAC inverter, no worries about any DC volt drop, LED gubbins and secondary lighting circuits. Use existing cabling with a switch over rotary switch to go from 'mains supply' or from the invertor supplied juice.

Economy 7 users do not know what they are sitting on...

 

[Deuce]

Just use a 12vDC to 230vAC inverter, no worries about any DC volt drop, LED gubbins and secondary lighting circuits. Use existing cabling with a switch over rotary switch to go from 'mains supply' or from the invertor supplied juice.

Economy 7 users do not know what they are sitting on...

So this is where we're at.. the op is gonna drive his 12v DC van to power an inverter to charge a 230ac battery to then power 230ac psu's to power 12v DC lights?

This has reached insanity level. I invite the op to post again and let us all know what the hell their motivation is! I can only assume it's stealing power... Which is fine, I don't care - on the basis that in this case stealing the power seems to be at least as much effort as earning it legitimately

 

[12vshocker]

To carify I will be using an inverter of some sort, but how do I get it to switch over automatically to mains supply if the voltage drops?