Xantrex SW3000
Hi Folks, Well Xantrex has an inverter charger with temperature compensation on the battery. Worth considering I think. Unit weighs 73 pounds. sw inverter/charger 3000 watts Opinions?
Forum Discussion
pianotuna wrote:
Hi,
The output is va and the power factor is 0.95 for the MSH3012M. Does that mean that continuous "real" watts are 2850?
The 2800 is also va with power factor of 0.95 so that is now 2660 "real" watts?
power factor comes into play driving highly inductive loads (like the a/c, washing machine, etc) ... on the data sheet, the power factor is specified for the input to the battery charger feature
PF of 1.0 means 100% efficient... a light bulb has a PF of 1.0, 100% of the energy put into it gets converted to heat or light. An A/C compressor might have a PF of 0.5, so half the energy put into it gets reflected back toward the power station's generators, trying to turn the turbines backwards.
Same thing happens to small generators... a "cheap" battery charger or inverter charger with a big transformer might have a PF of 0.6 - 0.75, so it's reflecting a lot of energy back at the small generator, which means it has to work harder, and delivers less than its rated wattage to the load (generator output to charger input).
The Magnum's charger presents a PF of 0.95 to the generator, so your 1500 watt Honda 2000 can deliver 1500 * 0.95 = 1425 watts to the charger. (for example)
In layman's terms, the higher power factor of the charger, the better it will work with a small generator.
