I feel there should be a 'That's what she said' joke in here somewhere...I booked a camping site that I thought had hookups, but when I got here: no hookups.I needed more juice than my house battery could comfortable provide, so I tried out the wise advice of folks on the forum, and connected my inverter to my van battery, with engine running.This worked fine for powering my 30amp charger (specs)plus a 75-watt light bulb, but when I added a power strip containing phone charger, laptop charger, and heated mattress pad the inverter made an alarm noise.It also made the alarm when I plugged in ONLY my freezer, which claims to use 67 watts (specs)The inverter has no markings whatsoever indicating its specs, but I think it may be this one. actually, I thought it was 1500 continuous, but there's not currently one on the HF site like that, that looks like mine. Mine does have little covers over the outlets, which the pictured one does not. My frozen food is melting.Oh, and it's not the cord connecting inverter to battery. I tried a different one, this time running only the 75 watt light, phone charger, laptop charger, and heated mattress pad. It did fine for about 15 minutes, then made the alarm. I unplugged the light and it was ok for another 20 mins or so, then alarm went off I shut everything off, restarted, no alarm yet... Note that the inverter has an internal cooling fan, which comes on occasionally but was never on when it made the alarm. Thanks for any suggestions on what to try next with this inverter, or how to preserve my melting food!

I think it is time to get 5-day ice chest and ice from local WALMART or LOWES...Hard to make comments without knowing mdl numbers... All INVERTERS are 12VDC power hungry... A 1500WATT INVERTER will draw around 120AMPS from your battery if fully loaded down. i.e. A typical single GP24 Trojan 24TMX deep cycle battery will only produce 12VDC @ 75AMPs for 36 minutes according to this google image spec sheet.Sounds like to me you will have a dead truck start battery soon. Then what.... Rule number ONE for me is never ever mess with the truck start battery system - This is the only way to get home on... We always test things out at home sitting in the driveway. A heavy load like this is would also be very hard on your truck ALTERNATOR system with the motor running. You sure don't want to blow that on the road. Maybe some other campers there can help you out...Good luck...Roy Ken

Low battery voltage to invertor, alternator can not keep up with engine idling. You may fry the alternator as well.

The three fault modes would be:1) Too low or too high input voltage2) Too much load on the output3) Faulty unitDo you have a voltmeter to measure the battery while in use? Maybe the van alternator is putting out too high of a voltage.#2 doesn't seem to be the problem if it is indeed a 750W inverter.The spec sheet for the freezer states "•Power: 67 W / 115 V / 1.1 A". This doesn't add up unless the 1.1A is surge, which seems low. My guess is the freezer is drawing ~120W while running.Maybe the freezer compressor doesn't play nice with the $45 MSW inverter.#3. That's where I'd bet my $$$. Your $45 HF MSW inverter comes with poor reviews. I understand wanting/needing to cut corners on a project such as yours BUT installing a bargain basement MSW inverter was not the place to do it. This is where you should have spent the extra $ on a reliable, top shelf PSW inverter. Rethink your inverter choice prior to your next outing.I'm sorry I can't be more help.

Thanks a lot. Your first sentence screwed up my opportunity. Oh the hell with it...It's because the first words out of your mouth weren't "Honey I don't know what I did wrong but I'm sure sorry about it"Now go kiss the thing and make up...

Why won't my inverter put out? | Good Sam Community

93 Replies

Naio
Explorer II
Mar 04, 2015
jrnymn7 wrote:
Yeah, you have to commit to the long haul, when it comes to lithium. Hope your health holds out long enough to do some memorable travels.

Aw, thank you :).

It has already! I travel whenever I can, I just never know about the future. Before this past 6 months it had been, gosh, 7 years?
jrnymn7
Explorer
Mar 03, 2015
Yeah, you have to commit to the long haul, when it comes to lithium. Hope your health holds out long enough to do some memorable travels.
Naio
Explorer II
Mar 03, 2015
Well, that does sound ideal :).

It's not exactly that I don't have money, although I don't have a lot. It's that I have health isdues, and I may only be able to travel for a short time. I may get worse and need the money for medical stuff, too. So I hesitate to invest a lot. Life is unpredictable.
jrnymn7
Explorer
Mar 03, 2015
The ideal solution for you would be solar, and lithium batteries, but that's a lot of money up front. It would solve all your problems, though, and likely outlive the van.

200Ah of LiFePo would give you about 140 useable Ah's, at about half the size and about a quarter to a third of the weight as those agm's. And no need to keep fully charged... in fact they prefer to stay in the 20-90% soc range. No top charging, no EQ'ing, a higher, flatter voltage curve (meaning way less voltage drop under load), and so on.

280 watts (2 x 140w) of pwm solar would keep them up nicely. That would require about 5' by 4.5' of roof space.

Pair all that with a decent psw inverter, and you can do pretty much anything you want.
Naio
Explorer II
Mar 03, 2015
Dang, I didn't even think the microwave was an option!

Sorry to hear about the drill charger :(. Clearly I should not have believed the hype about it being almost as good.
landyacht318
Explorer
Mar 03, 2015
On my old laptop, powering the original power brick with a msw inverter did allow it to charge, but the battery would run down much faster compared to grid powering it, and the laptop would slow down to a crawl after the battery indicated full charge and the MSW was still powering the original power brick.

MSW also ruined a sears craftsman cordless drill battery charger.

MSW might be fine for many things, but it hurts when it is not.
jrnymn7
Explorer
Mar 03, 2015
You still need to do a proper power audit to determine what size inverter you need. Figure out the max draw, at any given moment, where the freezer is firing up at the same time as other likely loads are present. (worse case scenario).

In my case, my biggest load is the microwave. It draws about 100a at start up, and remains close to that while running. My 1000w continuous inverter handles that o.k., but it's backed up by 4 gc2 6v's (430Ah). But I turn off everything I can before running it, though, just to be safe.
Naio
Explorer II
Mar 03, 2015
BTW, speaking of electronic items that do not like MSW, I think my CHARGER is one. It told me a couple batteries were charged when they weren't last night, and failed to indicate bad connections.

Unplugging and replugging worked, but I wonder if this inverter will mess up my $200 charger?

The laptip was also not a fan. It charged, but it crashed windows. I'll get a car charger for it.
Naio
Explorer II
Mar 03, 2015
BFL13 wrote:
Does that freezer work on the MSW inverter now? If so, then the next thing is to see if the van's alternator can support the inverter with that freezer as the load. It was unclear last time why the freezer tripped the inverter.

I haven't tried it again. The freezer was the only load when it tripped. I might try it again with a bigger cable, but my guess is I'd just need a bigger and/or better inverter.

Reccomendatuons are welcome :).

Jrnymn, I think my killawatt does a total, so I was thinking to use that when I mentioned the cooldown.
BFL13
Explorer II
Mar 03, 2015
Does that freezer work on the MSW inverter now? If so, then the next thing is to see if the van's alternator can support the inverter with that freezer as the load. It was unclear last time why the freezer tripped the inverter.

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Why won't my inverter put out?

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