Converter and Inverter Testing
Lots of odds and ends this weekend. I now have my battery charger and inverter, but no batteries. I don’t want to buy the batteries until I am within a year of using them as they have a limited life. Meanwhile I was able to power up the Converter/Power Supply/Battery Charger (110V AC to approx 13.5V DC at 90A), and plug it into the Inverter (2,500W). Without the batteries to help out, the charger can’t keep up with the full input requirements of the inverter but it was enough for a partial test.
http://www.theinverterstore.co...hp?model=chg-dls-90#
http://www.theinverterstore.co...t.php?model=chg-iq-4
http://www.topsalesdepot.com/bwapusiwapoi.html
My paint stripper heat gun draws about 800W on low which translates to about 6.6A AC from the inverter or 60A from the DC Power Supply. It all worked as expected. The paint stripper on high tried to pull double that and the DC Power supply managed 100A for a second before the voltage sagged, and then the inverter cut out complaining of low voltage. All this is as it should be and everything protected itself and came back to normal when reset with a reduced load. Once I have batteries they will make up the current that the Power supply can’t handle, and I will be able to get the full 2,500W from the inverter. For now, I am limited to a little over 1,000W.
Some other side benefits I hadn’t expected, or at least counted on. The inverter will go into sleep mode and draw minimal current if it see’s little or no load for a while. The sleep mode current looks to be less than 1/2A so I can leave it connected to the batteries all the time with little concern. The inverter also came with a little key fob remote on/off which works nicely. That will save me having to install a constant duty solenoid in line with the batteries. For those not living in their vehicle, I would still recommend at least a manual battery disconnect switch though. That’s on top of a fuse or circuit breaker of course.
I ran things for a while just to get them warmed up, but mostly the only thing that got hot was the paint stripper. The fans on the charger and the inverter did begin to ramp up after a while, all normal and expected. I checked the sine wave output on a scope and it’s a sine wave alright. Not perfect, but close enough. It actually gets better looking under load.
At one point I thought I might have a problem as I noticed the AC output of the inverter was flickering. I traced the problem back to the battery charger module that converts the converter/power supply into a 3 stage battery charger. It seems that under heavy load the battery charger was confused about what battery charging stage it should be in, so the DC voltage was fluctuating. For now the problem was cured by disconnecting the battery charger module and operating in simple power supply mode. Once I have the batteries in the circuit I should be able to put the battery charger module back in as the batteries themselves will prevent the voltage from fluctuating.
To be continued…