[Julie Rehmeyer]

The other night, it was really cold here. We have an electric blanket in the van that we've used only when we're on shore power, but I thought, man, it'd be nice to take the chill out of the bed, so I'll turn it on for just a few minutes and run it off the solar system. Well, very shortly I smelled an electrical burning smell. Is there some reason that wouldn't work? I have the less fancy type of inverter (modified sine wave, I think). Are there other appliances I could destroy by trying to run them off the solar system?

 

[keeponvaning]

I don’t think it’s the solar. The solar only charges your batteries which your inverter then converts to 110 vac. Perhaps your inverter is malfunctioning? Resistance heat requires a lot of battery &inverter power to work well. I run my 700 w microwave off of my cheapy 2000 w HF inverter with no problem tho.

 

[Wowbagger]

Does the blanket have a knob to set the temperature, or a 4 way switch (off/low/med/hi)?

If the former, it could be the way those knobs work: as the voltage cycles from 0V to 170V (peak voltage on a sinusoidal 120VRMS source), at some voltage Vthres they turn on, and then they turn off when the voltage crosses back through zero. (some work by turning on some time T after zero crossing, where 0 < T < 8.3ms). The problem is that your inverter doesn't make a sine wave, it makes a three step wave - off, 150V, off, -150V, etc. The problem is that the knob style controller doesn't have a steadily increasing voltage to work with, so it will either be full off or full on. (the time based ones will sort of work, but they use a phase shift network that assumes a sine wave, and a square-ish wave will cause them to misbehave a bit).

If it is a 4 way switch, those usually work by having 2 sets of heating elements and switching on one, the other, or both. If that's the case then ignore the previous paragraph as it shouldn't matter.

 

[RDinNHandAZ]

There are 12 volt blankets. Use the shore power to charge your batteries on the nights you have power and always use the 12 volt blanket. Avoiding that [email protected] inverter when you can is a better plan. The problem with them is they are singles. But I would rather not use one even if Ms. RD had hers on so it would work for me. The better choice might be a good double sleeping bag used as a comforter. Our Kelty is super warm and we have used it down to <20º with no heat and it is fine for that. Avoid electricity if you can?

[ame]https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dautomotive&field-keywords=12+volt+blanket[/ame]

 

[Julie Rehmeyer]

That's interesting, Wowbagger. It is a knob-type. But wouldn't that result in it just not working, rather than it burning out?

 

[KilWerBzz]

Could it be that the blanket just gave out and everything else is fine.

 

[Wowbagger]

It depends on how the actual control is set up, but I could see it staying on basically all the time, and overloading the blanket.

 

[Julie Rehmeyer]

Yes, it's possible that the solar had nothing to do with it -- though both sides blew out in exactly the same way, when they'd been working fine before.