MrRchitty wrote:
I agree, the Honda is very forgiving. 2000 watts for 30 minutes. That may be what you need for what you are doing.
I came home from camping on Monday, unhitched and unplugged at about 2pm. The fridge is still on propane. Water heater is off. Slide out was opened. Today, at about 10am, I went out and metered the two batteries which are in parallel and are BCI group size 29. The voltage was 12.6. I turned on 3 of the 12 volt camper light fixtures which illuminates 4 bulbs. Ran them for 6 hours. Repeat voltage was 12.37. I set up 1 of my Champion 2000 watt inverter generators and plugged it with all the circuit breakers off. My panel is at the door, so this is an easy task. Using a Kill-a-Watt to measure the volt-amps I obtained a reading of 1015va. This lasted for several seconds and then dropped to 815va and numbers continued to drop over time as the batteries charged. My WFCO is rated for 950 Watts. Using some simple math... 1600watts (I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the Champion inverter generator probably should say volt-amp as does the Honda in their manual). So, 1600va * 0.60 (power factor)= 960 watts. 10 more watts than the rating of the WFC0. I do not know the power factor or rating of your Progressive Dynamics converter. You do state that you run your batteries down. I think you are maxing your converter and thus maxing the Champion Inverter generator. The Honda, like I said will run at its max 2000va rating for 30 minutes. The Champion, 5 seconds. Of course, as time goes in terms of production or programming, I do not know if this has changed. Your issue appears to be charging your batteries. What condition are they in? Lead acid batteries are damaged by deep discharges. Are they real deep cycle batteries? Not combination or starting batteries.... If you take a deep cycle battery down to near death, you are damaging them. Anyhow, just throwing some stuff out. Good luck.
EDITED*******
The CPE will NEVER EVER NO WAY NO HOW, put out 2000VA. Not for 5 seconds, not for 1 second.
When I did my testing, (last spring) and I will need to double check these numbers, but as I recall the WFCO pulled around 1600VA at full output, and the Champ overloads at 1540VA (950 watts or so) continuous. The bigger problem is the Champ can't handle even a small surge over those amounts. The ceiling is 1300VA when PF is a factor. The engine never once revved to full RPM My batteries are fine. I recall that the Champ will put out around 1700 watts, which is okay, but never 2000 watts. 200 milliseconds does not justify putting a 2000 watt spec. Even with the upgraded modules, I never saw over 1700 watts, it just delayed the overload by an extra 200 milliseconds. It is quite simply a 1700 watt generator, or a 1300 VA generator.
My PD draws 1160VA from a house receptacle, or 900VA from my CHP 1200 watter. I never measured the PD from the 2000i, as it was an emergency loaner.
What bothered me the most was after I got the 2 group 24's on my Dads trailer charging, the 2000i was not even revving up, so I would try to re-connect the GRP 27, (which was approx 11.9-12v, and the CPE would just overload, requiring me to disconnect all batteries, and do it all over again. I know that this is no particularity to my Dads trailer, as mine behaved the same way, with both converters.
