Inverter question

[Ivory55]

is there any disadvantage to having a bigger inverter then you need for the appliance that you want to run on it. Ie does it use more power. Cheers

 

[Carolyn and Kev]

The larger inverter gives you the chance to connect more load to your system. You'd also spend more money on a larger size inverter and that's the only disadvantage.

Having a 3000W inverter doesn't necessarily mean that you have to run 3000W constant load on your system. You can run 1W LED lights, or just your laptop. The energy conservation rules apply.

There might be a slight efficiency loss in the operation of the inverter, because the inverter is designed that way. But I do not believe that an off-grid inverter's efficiency of 93% would reduce to less than 90% just because you don't have enough load.

Kev

 

[EssexBoy]

is there any disadvantage to having a bigger inverter then you need for the appliance that you want to run on it. Ie does it use more power. Cheers

Hiya
You should technically make sure the invertors is sized for the load, as it will use more battery power.
I have a 1500W constant, 3000W peak inverter and it uses 2 amp/hours just being switched on with no load, but the boss has a Tassimo so that's all we really use it for, so we make sure it's switched on/used/switched off
Hope this helps
Steve

 

[autorouter]

There might be a slight efficiency loss in the operation of the inverter, because the inverter is designed that way. But I do not believe that an off-grid inverter's efficiency of 93% would reduce to less than 90% just because you don't have enough load.

https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/Datasheet-Phoenix-Inverter-1200VA-5000VA-EN.pdf
Sadly, it's a lot worse than that. To give an example for Victron inverters which are high quality so others are unlikely to be much better: No load power for 1200W inverter is 8 watts, for 3000 watt it's 20 watts.

To take a ridiculous example, a 5 watt phone charger in a 3000 watt inverter would use 25 watts, which is an efficiency of 5/25 = 20%.

I have a 2000watt one for big appliances and a 150 watt one for small items like toothbrush chargers.

 

[Ivory55]

Do you not plug your toothbrush in the 12v plug it would save you switching on an inverter.

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[Richard n Ann]

Our Studer 200w pure sine wave inverter uses 0.2a on standby buy as small as possible.

 

[two]

Bigger inverter =
more weight
thicker wires
lower efficiency
greater chance of damaging the batteries