ian515

I need a power inverter in the rig. something to run my latop, and several battery chargers all at the same time. the battery chargers both say input is 100-240 volts. so should I be looking at something like a 1000 volt inverter? do they make those for our trucks?

any ideas?

tool

Do you mean Watts?


Your regular inverter takes 12V DC power supplied by the automotive system and converts it to 110V AC power, similar to household current.

Perhaps your charger requires 240 watts depending on the amperage that it is providing to the battery it is charging?

mikmaze

what you need to do is add up all the wattages of the items you want to run off the inverter, then shop for one that has that as a constant output, not peak. if your total is say 800 watts, go for a 1000 watt continuous, knowing you will most likely add more stuff later on that you never thought about. mounting location under drivers or pass seat is out of the way and out of the weather. shoot, from there you could run a gfi to the bed of the truck or any other spot ya might like to be able to access power. if your stuff you are trying to run only lists amp draw, multiply that by 120 to get watts. hope this helps.

ian515

man, I like that idea. thanks!


yeah, sorry. I am tired today apparently.

ian515

for the amp draw....this is what I read on one of the chargers:

"input ac-100-240V/
1.4~0.7A 50/60hz
max. 140VA"

I am stupid with volts, amps and watts, so which one am I multiplying by 120?

John Faughn

Lots of details missing , what kind of batteries ? / chargers , how many batteries at the same time .
Most laptops use about 80 watt power sources , most small appliances use batteries that charge with miliamps , so a 200 watt inverter should do , unless your doing some thing unusual .
Do a Google search for Ohms Law , once you read it , its simple .
As volts go up amps go down & the other way around also , amp up volts down .
Watts are a factor of the volts , amps , watts never change , but volts & amp do .

mikmaze

1.4 * 120 should be the watts for that charger, not a lot afterall.

2500Ram

I'll tell you what I power my trailer with using my 150w 300 surge Belkin inverter at the same time, cig plug I adapted to use alligator clips on the battery post.

13" tube tv/dvd combo
sat receiver
external computer speakers
24" florescent bulb
2 cell phone chargers
bi pap (sp) breathing machine, heat not on.
Maybe an Ipod charger.

I have 2 200 amp hour batteries (solar cell) I keep in the back of the truck acting like a generator if you will with my inverter. I have load tested this setup and got tired after 5 days of 24/7 use of the tv and light. The batteries were charged for 2 day's prior but haven't been touched for about 1.5 years before that. So I'm expecting more life from the gel cell batteries. I got it down to 10.8/9v dc on day 5 and my inverter works down to 10.5 but that .5v takes about a day and I was done playing.

With the same batteries I have a 1200w 2400w surge Colman inverter using 2g cable to the batteries I could only run the inverter powering a coffee pot for about 15 minutes until they were down to 10v. (huge load I think 1200w?) Once I shut the inverter off they bounced back to 12.7+vdc and then I started my test with the small inverter.
Your talking about a 1000w inverter that is HUGE to power laptops and chargers, it will work, but eat up LOTS of battery power converting dc to ac. It's nice to have the available power but I would start small and buy bigger or buy both. If your running your truck while the inverter is working or on not as big of a deal.

Fronty Owner

each charger will list its voltage rating and current rating.
in the above example, the 140 VA (VA means Volt-Amps which is for these purposes the same as watts).
My laptop pulls about 90 Watts, an external HDD about 55 watts, I dont have a phone charger handy, but its probably well under a 100 watts.

Overkill would to be call it a 100 Watts for each device. granted, your not going to pull 100 watts from every device all the time.

ETA: http://www.duracelldirect.com/laptop_accessories.aspx
I carry one of these Duracell 12 volt power supplies with me to solve the dead laptop problem

ian515

great, that has cleared it up for me. I am looking for an overkill inverter, because there will be some instances when I use one or two of my smaller lights out of my light kit and want to plug them into the inverter. the larger of the two would be a 500 watt light, and the smaller a 250, not for very long periods of time though, probably about 5-10 minute stretches. thats where running that GFI into the bed of the truck would be ideal. thanks for all the input guys. I am thinking a 2500 would cover all my bases.

Fronty Owner

bear in mind however, the larger the capacity, the larger the overhead on the inverter. The inverter requires power to do its job regardless of how much power is output. Your going to be draining your battery to generate heat. Even with the truck running, thats more power your engine has to supply.

tbarbee1

I run two laptops and two phone chargers off of my 750 watt inverter. I have never had any trouble I even ran a mag yoke off of it once when the NDT hand forgot his generator. I'm sure there are better brands out there but I just run in walmart and pickup a Black and Decker for less than 100 bucks and I'm off I have went through 3 of them in the last 4 years. I ran 4ga amp wire directly from the battery instead of fooling with all the cigarette lighter stuff. I just have a 6 plug power strip plugged into mine for easy access and you dont have to take something out to make room all the time.You will be surprised at how little it takes to run your stuff.

Haulin_in_Dixie

A little more info, you get pretty much what you pay for in an inverter. The larger inverter does not take more amps to run a given load. The cheap inverters are modified sine wave, a choppy power. They will work ok but eat small transformers. Some stuff will not run on them and they do cause more heat in a transformer which means more power used. A pure sine wave inverter has many benefits but is also much more expensive. Most include a three stage charger to properly charge the batteries when a plug in is available.

One thing that you will learn. Don't go below about 11 or 11.5 volts or you will eat your batteries. Starting batteries are not made to use for steady power loss, a quick load to start the vehicle and then recharge. Draining them will kill them. The other probem in a vehicle is that a vehicle charging system is a very poor charging system. If you are familiar with three stage or four stage charging, a vehicle system is only a float charge and is generally set way too high for good battery service. Mine floats at 13.4 or 13.5 in the summer and up to 13.8 in the winter and is controlled by a temperature sensor on the batteries. My big truck system likes to charge at 14.5 which really shortens the life of the batteries. It also does not charge them well at all. A day on the three stage charger at 13.5 really brings them up with much more power. Many mariine systems use a vehicle alternator with a three stage regulator to solve this problem.

You want a battery that will really work get the group 31 Odyssey batteries.