Electrical Help pls
Hi! I bought a 250 Watt Electric Heater to stave off the chill at night (the tag says it uses 2.1A). We have solar panels to charge our 200A battery (I don't think that matters, but just in case). ...
Forum Discussion
pianotuna wrote:maria_bettina wrote:
Yes, I am bummed.
How many amp hours is the battery bank?
The rule of thumb is multiply amps by 10 to get the draw at 12 volts. This is due to inverters being at best about 88% efficient.
If the voltage on the battery is low, the inverter may well draw even more amps, causing the fuse to die.
Generally the inverter may be sized to do 125% of the load. 250 x 1.25 = 312.5 watts (so the inverter is busting its heart out trying to run that heater).
There are a couple of solutions.
1. connect the inverter directly to the battery posts. That will eliminate the fuse and amperage issues.
2. Use a 50 heating pad instead. You could run two.
3. There are 12 volt heaters available.
In any event the batteries are not going love running the heater for long periods of time.
My first battery bank was 875 amp-hours. Heaters were not an issue.
875 Ah? I thought ours was large - 200 Ah...
Yea, those DC heaters don't get good reviews. I looked at a couple. I will keep looking, but the Amps they use have me looking elsewhere. It's the cold air that doesn't allow me to sleep. Maybe I just need to get electrical sites when it's cold. *Sigh*
We will definitely connect the inverter to the battery directly. Now that another post said using over 150 watts needs a direct connection to the battery.
