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I need to understand how to connect my wiring

Gythy

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Jul 15, 2021
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Ok so I recently bought a bus that was previously renovated but they had 12 volt appliances all connected to 2 12 volt 100 amp hour lead acid batteries. Now my conundrum is this, I removed the 2 batteries because they were taking up to much space and I already have a bluetti EB240 which I love and gives me much more battery life. But I don’t know how to connect the previous 12 volt appliances
to my generator.

These are only these things I desire to connect to the generator
-Shurflo water pump which is rated at 9,9 amps max
- Max air fan which runs at 5 amps but takes 10 amps to start from my limited research.
- 4 LED puck lights like 0.3 amps each.

I have all three wires of both neutral and positive wires in one place which was previously on a circuit breaker. What I have tried to do is I went to autozone and bought a cigarette lighter that has two 14 gauge wires going off it and connecting it to the cigarette lighter. But my EB240 only allows 9 amps of flow going through the cigarette lighter but the three appliances when running altogether take about maximum around 21 amps. Please oh please someone help me, I need to get it finished today and I will answer any questions I need. A water pump lights and the fan are so helpful to have on
 
Welcome to the limits of a Bluetti.

It provides 12V power via a regulated DC-DC converter. If you want to use true DC power, you need to open the unit and tap directly into the battery. If you go this route, you should install a regulator:


This unit will take whatever the battery voltage is and output 13.8V @ 30A MAX. Yes, 13.8V is higher than 12V, but any device connected to a battery without a regulator is going to see 13.8V at float or during charging, so if they worked when powered by the old lead-acid, they'll work with this regulator.

Alternatively, you can use an AC-DC converter and plug into the AC output of the Bluetti:


$26, attach a suitable 3 prong power cord like from an old computer power supply, and it will give you 30A of adjustable DC output (12V±10%). The downside to this solution is efficiency. You're converting DC to AC to DC, which may be as low as 75% efficient, which completely defeats the purpose of having 12V appliances.
 
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A single 12volt 100ah LiFePo4 would have almost the same usable capacity as the 2 lead batteries you removed.
 
Welcome to the limits of a Bluetti.

It provides 12V power via a regulated DC-DC converter. If you want to use true DC power, you need to open the unit and tap directly into the battery. If you go this route, you should install a regulator:


This unit will take whatever the battery voltage is and output 13.8V @ 30A. Yes, 13.8V is higher than 12V, but any device connected to a battery without a regulator is going to see 13.8V at float or during charging, so if they worked when powered by the old lead-acid, they'll work with this regulator.

Alternatively, you can use an AC-DC converter and plug into the AC output of the Bluetti:


$26, attach a suitable 3 prong power cord like from an old computer power supply, and it will give you 30A of adjustable DC output (12V±10%). The downside to this solution is efficiency. You're converting DC to AC to DC, which may be as low as 75% efficient, which completely defeats the purpose of having 12V appliances.
Thank you so much. Yes right now the whole situation is incredibly temporary and I have shore power so I may just get this. I am so frustrated at the fact I have to go this route and that bluetti could have easily added ONE more cigarette lighter but alas I am the one who bought the product and the bus. Thanks for the links and the genuinely helpful reply. I didn’t think there was some way around it and I don’t want to have to deal with opening up the generator. I will buy the inverter you linked and am incredibly frustrated that there is no inverter way where around Home Depot (just checked)
 
Converter is AC to DC, which is the device I linked. It's very rare for a typical consumer to need something like this, so it's not surprising that you can't find any locally.

Inverter is DC to AC. If you go around asking for an inverter, you get a completely different product.
 
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