You guys have been soooo much help and I sincerely appreciate it. This area is clearly not one that I'm comfortable with or really understand. I have the hardest time getting my mind around, watts, amps, voltage -- even with the water hose illustration. Sorry guys!
For example, I was thinking about how an 1800 watt appliance (like say a microwave) would draw energy from a battery. So I thought, well, I'll divided 1800 by 60 minutes to figure out how many watts are drawn every minute. Obviously, I don't run a microwave for an hour -- more often for a minute or two. So, 1800/60 =30 watts per minute. Wow, not that much. But then I thought -- wait -- even if it's only on 1 minute it's still drawing 1800 watts!!! So, I just don't know how to figure out how long a battery would last. Could someone please explain this to me?
Maybe you could use my microwave example and a battery that's rated at 3600 watt house.