3500w power inverter

blaczero wrote:
Have not received the unit yet, but I'll read the manual. I usually forget to RTFM

This is all self-taught, youtube, forum ideas that I'm building.

Thanks for the responses, I am building a system slowly and figured I'd buy a large inverter instead of 2 or 3 inverters as I grow.

I have 2 100Ah batteries right now and 200w of solar. Just trying it out to see how it works for us before I spend 10k+. The inverter was reviewed well and only $500

*edit*
Just noticed the inverter ships with 2awg wires, hah

2awg wire for 12V side?

Yeah, that rings of a cheaply made inverter.

Good quality expensive inverters typically do not ship with wire for the 12V side, the good quality inverter manufacturers typically let you select the wire size for your project.

2awg longer than a couple of feet will have too much resistance which translates into too much voltage loss.

I am running 1/0 just under 6ft total (neg and positive combined) feeding a Tripplite PV1250 inverter which has the surge capability of 2500W for up to 10 minutes..

The downside of running such a large inverter is the larger you go the higher the no load idle current tends to be which eats into your efficiency and battery capacity.. You can be easily looking at upwards of 2A or 24W of idle current 24/7 (basically 48 Ahr of your battery capacity per day) with no 120V load.

Conventional wisdom is to use a couple of lower wattage inverters for low wattage demands. You don't need a 3Kw inverter to run a TV, PC or phone charger..

For TVs, typically a 300W inverter will be fine and that inverter will use 100Ma (.1A)- 200Ma (.2A) at 12V (2.4Ahr-4.8Ahr per 24 hrs) with no 120V load..