sizing power inverter - greater than 750watt becomes senseless in typical car

 Hello.

A couple years back I bought this huge 2000 watt continuous inverter
from coleman. As a test I connected to my trucks battery (2003 chevy
blazer with stock battery).

I then connected a 1000 watt grill to the unit and noticed the unit
could not get it red hot as it does on standard 120 plugs.

I then proceeded to connect various devices of various wattages.

What I discovered was that my car's battery and alternator (while
running), can only produce about 650 watts of continuous power. Enough
for small power tools and the smallest of macrowave ($24.00 samsung
600 watt micro from Target)

I returned the unit to the store and exchanged it for a much smaller
vector 750watt inverter. With It am able to power all the same things
as the 2000 watt monster.

What i don't know is how much more I can get out of the truck if I
upgrade the battery.

Anybody doing better than 650 watts on a single car battery? Anybody
upgrade car batteries for more inverted AC? What type of battery do
you recommend? What type of inverter do you recommend?

I just made popcorn on the microwave - came out good, but not all the
kernels poped.

Thanks for any help or information.

  jason@cyberpine.com wrote:

Yeah, that's probably a 50A or 60A alternator.  You can always get a
bigger alternator, the folks at
http://www.zena.net/htdocs/alternators/mar_alt.shtml  make them up to
800 amps, or something in the range of 10 kilowatts, though it'd put
something like a 50-80HP load on the engine, which may require some
engineering...  8*)

--
William Smith
ComputerSmiths Consulting, Inc.    www.compusmiths.com

 William P.N. Smith <> wrote in message

Holy smokes - that's awsome. The circuit I currently have on the 750
is 4 gauge wire running about 5 feet each way. It use to have a 60 amp
fuse, but it would blow every time, so now that's a galvinized nail.
The cables get a little warm when I push the inverter.

800 amps would kill the truck, but maybe whatever it would take to get
a true 1000 watts (100A?) out of the system might not. A true 1000
watts means you can run almost anything confrontably.

Gotta wonder though... would the battery be able to keep up with that
much juice being pushed and pulled? Or am I building a battery bomb.

Thanks for the info!

 jason@cyberpine.com wrote:

Well, car batteries are made for delivering large currents for very
short periods of time, but you'd run it flat in minutes, so you need
the Large Alternator to supply a balancing charge.

--
William Smith
ComputerSmiths Consulting, Inc.    www.compusmiths.com

 

     That should tell you something.

Vaughn