Thread: microwave ovens on 12V

Graeme.
Have you looked into a 3 in 1 controller for your van??? See this thread,the version DSwatts reccomended sounds very good.
Combined solar controller/inverter system
Andrew

Thanks Andrew. I was more looking for what uses people find it practical to use a microwave oven in a van but I obviously need to consider their solar capacity at the same time. Our 800W (RF o/p, 1200W i/p) microwave oven would cause an inverter to draw around 120A which would place quite a burden on the battery/batteries if used for other than a short time.

I've noticed a lot of later vans only have a hot-plate and grille, which might or might not be upgradeable to include a gas oven on a van at build time but not so easy if buying s/h. Hence I'm wondering if a micro-wave oven is at least partly a viable alternative.

How about a 12v oven like the travel buddy

Gas Oven and gas hotplates and 320Ah and just no.

depends on the size of the panels, batteries and what you're going to do with it.

lets say you have your 400w of panels on the top, in the sun, its lunch, the vehicles hooked up and you're going to stop for a couple of hours, and cook lunch in the microwave. clean up, pack up, go for a walk, play some cards, whatever then drive to that nights camp.

lets say same thing, but you're going to heat seal the leftovers and do something like a quick reheat of it to have it for dinner or for breakfast at say 0900 in the morning after your morning coffee and a quick realign of the panels to get max sun on them.

lets say you're using an 800w microwave and your cooking at the 70% power setting. lets say that your batteries by themselves fully charged can deliver your cooking time *800w

then yes, go nuts you can do that. but its pushing the limits, fine if you're immediately going to drive it and charge it or the panels can deliver enough to charge the batteries and run the fridge during the day.

but get sneaky, try to help it along as much as you can. if you know you want to microwave something wrap it in alfoil and preheat it in the car precook it a little in the engine bay hell put some wool blankets along side to make a heat trap under your solar array and heat it up under there for a while (careful of ants) if its a ground mount setup or if you know you'll be off treking bag it and stick it in the sun in the window of the car with everything closed up.

things with lots of moisture in them microwave up quicker and better, lets say this....

you have a damn good inverter, you have a setup that consists of 4x N70 batteries driving it.. best guess, you could oneshot use your setup for about 30 minutes at 70% without too much hassle and still have enough to run your fridge overnight. with that I reckon I could knock you up a soup, with a stirfry noodle style side, a lasanga , a couple of hot drinks, and a hot pastry dish with a melted chocolate sauce for deserts. for 2.

Originally Posted by AndyG

How about a 12v oven like the travel buddy

Had not heard of these before but all the reviews can't seem to praise them enough. I want one in the RR - don't worry about the van!

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

depends on the size of the panels, batteries and what you're going to do with it....

Thanks Dave. Without going through detailed scenarios I suspected that one could get away with using a microwave in quite a few instances and perhaps it would do all we might ever want to.

An oven is usually a option in just about every make of van if ordering a new one, they usually charge about a thousand dollars extra for a gas oven, bloody rip off as they used to come standard in most vans a few years ago.

We took our microwave out as its a waste of space as even with a reasonable amount of solar and batterys they just run everything flat in about 15 minutes. Re our gas oven, we have used it twice even though we thought we would use it a lot more, the most useful cooking apparatus in a caravan is a Webber Baby-Q BBQ, if you have one of those you use it nearly every day.

The other thing we use if we are doing a lot of driving in a day and don't want to cook when we arrive is a Ecopot. There are lots of different versions of these things, you cook what ever it is you want for about 15 - 20 minutes in the morning and then put it in the Ecopot and when you get to where ever your going between 4 and 7 hours later it's ready to serve up. Good ones come with a small element in them and have a cigarette lighter plug.