so I'm sure theres an electrical theory on why this won't work but I can't seem to find a good explanation on why. <BR>what would happen if you had a power inverter hooked up to your batteries and battery chargers hooked up to them in turn charging your batteries. assuming your chargers don't pull more amps then they're returning it should charge? or would your wires spontaneously melt do to some formula beyond my understanding? haha just a brain teaser I've been kicking around for my lazy friday so lets hear your response

It would work (No Sparks or melting) <BR> <BR>Inverters are not very efficient (converting DC >AC > DC) so it will drain the batteries faster than it will charge them. <BR> <BR>(Message edited by showtz on June 06, 2008)

Just do away with the gasoline engine in your boat and replace it with an electric motor. That way with your theory you'd never need to buy fuel again.

It will work. Just need a large battery charger 10A for small inverters and 20-40A for large inverters. But if you have 110v to run a charger in the first place than what are you doing converting AC-DC-AC. Uses like 2 times as much power as just plugging into AC.

Mike, sure why not? This is very common happens all the time, they call it perpetual motion. <BR> <BR>it's actually been proven...look up the 1st Law of Thermodynamics...

It would discharge the battery because of component voltage drops in the inverter and charger and wire resistance....

Yep, you have to somehow introduce new / more energy into the circuit to charge a battery. The inverter and charger are only drawing the available energy from the battery, not generating any new energy. It would work with the motor running and alternator charging, but then you could just let the alt charge the battery and ditch the Rube Goldberg gadgetry.

why not just connect a wire from the positive to negative terminals of the battery? <BR>either way you are accomplishing nothing except draining your batteries