inverter powered microwave?

[born2sail61]

hi all. What are the practicalities(or otherwise) of using an inverter to run a microwave oven? It would only used for short periods, tv dinners, tinned soups etc.i have a 255ah battery bank,charged by outboard/solar and mains(when available).

 

[Mistroma]

As as start:

1) Microwave will use more than it says on the front (i.e. the output). Mine is a 800W unit but uses about 1250W
2) Cooking time might be longer. I think mine is about 20% longer ex. Honda 20Eu (basically a very good inverter inside)
3) Inverter isn't 100% efficient.

So my setup probably actually uses around 1,330W for 120% of time I'd expect on mains power. That would make the current draw about 106A @12.5V. So wiring will need to be quite heavy and cable runs kept short on 12V side.

A 10 min. run would pull about 18Ah from the battery but would probably result in a larger loss of available capacity due to the 100A draw. So might guess it at 23Ah.

Your bank is 225Ah and if running between usual 80%-50% range you'd have ~67Ah to play with. On that basis you'd use about 1/3 of your available capacity for a 10 minute run. So you'd probably run the engine to try to compensate a bit.

 

[sailorman]

hi all. What are the practicalities(or otherwise) of using an inverter to run a microwave oven? It would only used for short periods, tv dinners, tinned soups etc.i have a 255ah battery bank,charged by outboard/solar and mains(when available).

Dont do it
1/ battery bank too small
2/ insufficient power to re charge said batteries

I have a 345Ah bank & when i do use the nuker @ anchor i run the diesel engine & have the nuker on a lower power say about 80% to give the batteries a breather