Sinewave Inverter

[g3cwi]

I was intending to charge my ebike battery while on the move in the van so I bought an inverter. I decided to go for a true sinewave one for maximum flexibility. It arrived today and so I set up a test with the ebike charger and battery. I periodically checked the inverter temperature and the battery temperature. After a couple of hours, the battery was nearly charged so I declared the experiment a success. I them went to take everything downstairs to put in the van when I realised to my horror that the battery charger was too hot to touch. I'm amazed that it had not failed.

Okay so what's going wrong here? The inverter has a reasonable specification (or so I thought). THD >= 3%.

I'm an electronics engineer BTW.

 

[Jimbohorlicks]

You say, you went to take everything down stairs, how did you connect the battery charger to the inverter,?

When we charge our e bike batteries from mains or inverter the charger does get warm but not too hot to touch.

 

[g3cwi]

You say, you went to take everything down stairs, how did you connect the battery charger to the inverter,?

I have a 12VDC high current power supply. That was powering the inverter. The bike battery charger normally runs slightly warm but nothing like it was today. I couldn’t pick it up!

 

[Lenny HB]

Pure sinewave inverters are not always what they claim. Buy a good quality on like Victron and it will be a true sinewave output but at many times the cost of a cheap one.

I have cheapish one and it works fine with our bosch bike chargers but put a laptop on it and the mouse pad goes haywire so obviously not a true sine or a lot of spikes on the waveform. Keep meaning to put a scope on it but not got around to it.