Inverters
Overview
Overview
Inverters Overview
About Inverters
About Inverters
An inverter is the one thing in a 12V system that lets you plug in something that was never meant to be there.
The coffee machine. The laptop charger. The drill battery. The blender, the hair dryer, the CPAP machine. All of them want 240 volts, and none of them care that the vehicle only has twelve. The inverter sits between the battery and the power point and does the conversion, and for most people it is the difference between a setup that runs a fridge and one that runs a life.
The number to buy on is the continuous rating, decided by what you will run at the same time rather than by one appliance alone. Then check the surge rating, because a motor or a compressor draws several times its running current for the first moment. A kettle or a hair dryer wants two thousand watts for a few minutes. A laptop wants a hundred for hours. Run them together and the inverter has to cover both.
Pure sine wave is the only kind worth buying for anything with a motor, a compressor or a microchip in it, which is nearly everything now. Modified sine wave is cheaper and it runs a bare light bulb, and it is the reason your mate's battery charger buzzes.
The trade is the draw. An inverter pulling two thousand watts from a 12V battery is pulling well over a hundred and fifty amps through the cable, which means the cable, the fuse and the battery bank all have to be built for it. Inverter chargers add a mains input and switch between the two automatically, which suits a caravan that alternates between powered sites and free camps.
Add up what will run together, allow for startup surge, then size the battery and the cable to the inverter. In that order.




