Fuse & cables for a 1KW inverter

my one has multiple blade fuse holders, 4 at 30amp iirc

Well, no. Not even close. 1kW at 12v is 85A.

This might sound a stupid question, but what capacity is/are your leisure battery/ies?

What, exactly, are you planning on running off this inverter?

Let's suppose he wants to run a desktop PC and a laser printer, so he can operate a mobile office in his campervan.

These might take 200W - but the laser printer has a fuser to stick the toner onto the paper - and this uses a flash heater, probably 1KW all on its own, for a few seconds.

So it would be fair to rate the battery capacity for 200W (nominally

At 2KW assuming your van engines running charging at 14 volts the draw own peak could be around 140 amps

The problem your likely to have are

2) Used with the engine off your going to flatten your battery quickjly,

you really need deep cycle batteries , standard car batteries once discharged by around 30% will not start the vehicle

A stereo system with a sub will flatten a battery within an hour if the engines not running.

If such a setup is being planned, I doubt an opportunistic used eBay inverter's going to be involved. However, a generator would almost certainly be involved.

The reason for asking was to gently nudge Tim's thoughts towards fitting the van out with 12v appliances instead of an inverter and mains. Unless there's really odd requirements, then there will almost certainly be options which are much more power- (and space-)efficient than a hoofing great big inverter and batteries-a-go-go...

That assumes the inverter is 100% efficient - something like 80% is more likely.

Where does that 30% figure come from?

That would depend on the power of the system and the size of the battery. I'd also be surprised if you could stand that level for an hour in a stationary car.

I think the 100A estimate is probably a good one, but share your unease(?). 100A is a lot of splash to mess with.

Having said that, I remember back in the 1960s using a 300v rotary convertor in the passenger footwell to produce the voltage for my amateur radio transmitter which rested on the passenger seat. The current drain was quite low, it was only a 10W transmitter.

Even in those days I used hands free operation, for "safety" reasons, though sharp braking might have resulted in a flying transmitter...

Only rotary converter I've ever seen was for a No19 set owned by a friend; they must be terribly inefficient things.

Chris

Not stupid at all. The van has two 110Ah leisure batteries so there's a fair store of available power. Most if the time I doubt that it'll get used for much more than charging laptops, phones etc. but my wife would like to use her travel hair dryer occasionally which is 1KW.

We may of course find more uses for mains power in the future (vacuum cleaning perhaps) but for the moment that is all that's envisaged.

Tim

Very likely, I bought mine in a radio junk sale I think, I also had a friend who had a 19 set, but I built my tx from scratch.

Seriously, you'd be far better using ciggy socket chargers.

Sorry - meant to say...

The Ah rating is the draw taken to get to 10.5v. But (even deep cycle) batteries are generally buggered up by coming down below ~11.8v

Well I don't suppose it'll get used that much. Just handy to have sometimes.

Tim

If only there was some way to store power......

I've no intention of drawing 2KW ever! 1KW for as long as my wife's hair takes to dry which is generally only a couple of minutes.

Do you assume everyone's a chav until proven otherwise? ;-)

Tim

No , you however didnt say in your original post that you had a couple of deep cycle units.

A lesson both my daughters learned , i still went out and rescued them they said that they will find me a nice nurseing home (cheap and out of the way )

Have you used one? I strongly suspect that most 12V hairdryers will be more than a bit crap. There's no mention of output or amperage on most of those dryers which isn't a good sign. One claims a whopping 180W.

Tim

(apologies to Adrian for replying to by email rather than group. Slip of the keyboard)

Seconded. You're taking 12v, converting it up with the inverter, than back down with the laptop/phone charger, so you'll see a loss of efficiency at each step.

each step.

But then I'd have to buy lots of different 12V adapters. We had a laptop adapter once but it was crap and broke very quickly.

Using an inverter certainly isn't the most electrically efficient way of doing things but it's by far the most convenient way for most appliances I'll want to use.

Tim

It would be madness to run a 1kW inverter just to charge a mobile phone.

Chris