Nerd Inverter Design Steriod Food (A Link)

Hi,

A wagan review

"Living off grid, I thought it would be a good idea to have a large inverter. This inverter seemed to work fine until summer came on. Any time the air temp got over 100F the inverter would overheat and shut down. Didn't seem to make any difference if it was under large load or practically no load. Cannot reccommend. Too much money for an inverter that only works only in cool weather.

Follow up 18 mos later: The original inverter went up in a shower of sparks and fire that could have easily burned down a house. Fortunately, the inverter was in a metal shipping container so no major damage done. Wagan sent me a new inverter as the original was still under warranty. The replacement sat in dry storage for 6 mos before I needed it. When I unpacked it and wired it into my system it too went up in a ball of fire when I turned it on. Since the replacement was not under warranty I took it apart. The electrical fire had started in a row of power transistors. Could clearly see where the arcs had jumped from the transistor leads to the heat sink bar then to the frame. Couldn't figure out why this would happen until I found water marks on the circuit board that showed the inverter had gotten very wet at some time. As the packing had been multi layers of plastic and the inverter was dry when I opened it, must have been exposed to water at the factory. As the arcing of both of these machines was intense, any surrounding combustible material would likely have been ignited. Poor inverter. Good fire bomb."

smkettner wrote:

pianotuna wrote:
I'm still after the holy grail of a 3000 or larger psw inverter.

Wagan 2207 Elite 5000W Pure Sine Wave Inverter

I've got a Wagan elite 2000 psw (2205) that I got on sale last year for a steal of $499 from DonRowe.com and it works great.
It's heavy though! 22 lbs

The pictures were nice....

PWM can be used to generate a lot of different waveforms, MSW being one of the simplest examples. MSW inverters use PWM to generate a regulated RMS voltage out of unregulated peaks.

Hi Mex,

Well I did learn that PWM is not MSW so that makes the Trace inverters a lot more interesting. I'm still after the holy grail of a (reliable) 3000 or larger psw inverter.

Not to worry Don!
The techies here will eat it up and if and when a problem arises with an inverter the "shot of vitamins" can help them troubleshoot and explain problems. In short, it will help more people than a person would expect. The nature of such open info is what makes the internet truly superb.

Hi Mex,

How I wish I could understand such documents. It was an interesting read all the same. Ty.

thanks !!!

That's a keeper- thanks!