I need a bit of careful planning here, there are a lot of components and not a lot of room. I had to decide what items would fit and also look nice in a glass cabinet and what items should be hidden under the internal seats.
I tried a few configurations and made changes along the way as you will see later. I have the 12volt system at the top and the Mains Hook Up with 240 power at the bottom. I am using a CBE control system with LCD display which I will show later.
240 volts Mains to 240 volts inverter. I decided on a control switch (see below). Both the 240 Mains and 240 volt inverter will use the same 240 volts wall sockets. Its extremely important that the inverter and 240v Mains can never supply power at the same time to these sockets. If it ever did then there would be a large BANG and a cloud of smoke, ok if you want to send smoke signals or impress your neighbours with a firework display but not ok if its inside your camper-van.
Inverter – Mains Control Switch (silver switch box below): Below is a switch, one section is wired to the Inverter, another section is wired to the 240 volts Mains and a third section sends the current down a wire to a consumer unit. Turn the Switch to Number “1” and you get “only” 240 volts Mains Power when on Hook-Up, turn the switch to number “2” turns off number 1 and turns on number 2 which sends “only” inverter Power to the wall sockets after passing through the consumer unit. Thus its impossible to have both the 240 volts Mains and 240 Inverter sending power to the consumer unit at the same time.
Below: A prototype (test) panel is shown below. This is how the switch separates the 240v mains power for the 240v Mains Hook-Up Power and sends it to the consumer unit
Below: Position #1 is 240 volts Mains Power, position #2 is 240 volts Inverter Power (number 3 is spare). The grey switch below is a remote on off switch for the inverter.
Below: planning the layout (which changed several times)
Below is the Hook-Up area and the white electric box, this was later moved to another location, there isn’t a lot of space so what space there is has to be managed carefully.
Below: I am starting to get an idea of the layout. I have made a box for the 240 volts Main Switch-over to 240 volts inverter power.
