Microwaves on inverters.

doughere wrote:
I have a unit with 1500 watt microwave and would like to be able to use it occasionally when dry camping (10 min or less at a time). I plan to use a 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter. Also plan using it on a 900 watt coffee maker (about 15 min a pot). Anyone have any experience with this setup?

Thanks,
Doug

run our microwave quite often on an inverter. you will need enough battery and big short cables from battery to inverter.

Now one thing to consider, which we did was to toss the original microwave in the donate pile and buy a panasonic true inverter microwave. It's operation is much different than traditional microwaves. when in partial power mode it doesn't cycle between 0% and 100%, it actually runs at the % set. So.... if you set it to 50% that's what it runs at continually. Ours is a 1500watt microwave and I run it easily on a 1000W inverter if power is set to 50% or less. At 50% power it does NOT take twice as long to heat something, more like 25% longer.

I also have a hotel type keurig that draws 900W and we run it off the 1000W inverter with no problems either.

for this type of draw I'd recomend either 4 GC2s or a bank of 12V. GC2's aren't great for large current draw and have high internal resistance compared to a 12V jar. So with only 2 GC2's your inverter may shut down when batteries are below 75%ish SOC. With 4 GC2's it should work down to 50%. I run 4GC2's, with only 2 it only worked with batteries charged above 75% or so. A few others have had similar experiences.