inverter

[periana]

want to get a inverter for the motor i have a 130w solar panel and will contect to the battery dont want to spend a lot of money but need a good one to run a few bits hair dryer stc any help would be most gratful

 

[funflair]

If you want it to run anything you plug in you need pure sine wave, they are more money than “modified” but you get what you pay for.

Ours has a remote panel inside the van and it controls the inverter which is and needs to be close to the batteries.

You most likely want a 2kw one but beware they use a lot of 12v amps so heavy cables and big fuse will be required as well as decent batteries of course.

Martin

 

[Nixdorfer]

Some stuff is fussy and won't work on a one that isn't sine wave. Hair dryer you may get away with but girlfriends straighteners didn't work on a modified sine wave one I tried.

They do use a lot of power as already pointed out, I used ours on a spare battery trying to run a travel iron and it was flat in minutes. Unless you have big battery setup I'd probably only use it with the engine running or if powering something very low power.

 

[periana]

Interesting what’s the point in having one if they are not efficient have new battery and solar recharging it will see

 

[funflair]

Interesting what’s the point in having one if they are not efficient have new battery and solar recharging it will see

How much battery capacity?

Used ours this morning, Mrs funflair dried her hair then 8 minutes of microwave use and the coffee machine, all fully charged now, 4x80ah Gel and 320w solar.

Martin

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[Nixdorfer]

Its not that they aren't efficient and are handy to have. Its just they use a lot of power when upscaling 12v to 240v

IF I've my maths right,
Running a 500w 240v hairdryer for example. 500w /240 = 2.08amps, x20 =41.5amps at 12v
before any losses. If dragging 40-50amps out of a battery its a fair drain so doesn't last that long.

Our batteries are probably getting old so your newer setup may do much better. Ours is only 100w solar and 2x 90ah so I'd probably try having the engine running next time to soften the blow a bit

 

[Nixdorfer]

Just tried an online calculator to work it out

40amps on a 100ah used lead acid battery it reckoned only about 20mins of runtime to 50% discharge

Sterling are a good make but not that cheap. Can't recall what mine is as got if used of ebay last year

 

[autorouter]

To convert battery amp-hours to watt-hours of energy, multiply by the battery voltage.
Example: 100 amp-hours at 12 volts is 12 x 100 = 1200 watt-hours. That's 1.2 kilowatt-hours.

To have a usable 500 amp-hours from a standard lead-acid battery, you need it to have a labelled capacity of 100 amp-hours, because you only want to discharge it to 50% if you want reasonable lifetime from it.

A 1000 watt hairdryer is going to use 1000/12 = 84 amps, so in 10 minutes (1/6 of an hour) it will use 84/6 = 14 amp-hours. That's a significant chunk of the 50 amp-hours you can use from a 100 amp-hour battery. Similarly if you run a coffee machine or microwave. So as long as you stick to a very few 10-minute bursts, you will be OK.

I reckon you need at least 200 amp-hours of battery for an inverter of 1500 or 2000 watts.

Also you need 150 to 200 watts of solar minimum to have any chance of refilling the battery in a day.

 

[periana]

 

[periana]

I have just had this installed it’s a Bosch would that be good enough

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[autorouter]

To have a usable 500 amp-hours from a standard lead-acid battery, you need it to have a labelled capacity of 100 amp-hours,

Oops, an extra zero crept in there. should have said 50 amp-hours not 500

 

[Nixdorfer]

A 90ah so one of the smaller ones. Bigger the better for batteries

Depends what you need to run

If using low power stuff under a few hundred watts it may cope for short bursts. But try and run a kettle off it for example and you'd probably flatten it by the time it boiled. If charging laptops etc should be ok.

 

[autorouter]

I have just had this installed it’s a Bosch would that be good enough

This Bosch L5 is similar to the popular LFD90. It is 'dual purpose' so will withstand the short bursts of high current, when using an inverter.

The 90Ah label will give you 45 Ah of usable capacity, which is definitely on the small side, but usable with care. I'd be looking at adding another one of the same, to give you a bit of headroom. Two batteries means the load is shared.