Inverters are they any good?

[cliffdale]

The Doral Im looking at cooks electric. Although it comes with a generator and good inverter, can you boil a kettle of water using the inverter. Will it suck the life out of your batteries? Must you switch on the generator everytime you want a cup of tea?

I can not hook up to power where I am.

Cliff


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[andyball]

How much battery capacity has it got?, what size is the inverter,?, what size is the generator ? What power is the kettle?.

With even a modest battery bank + suitably sized inverter & kettle you won't have to start the genny each time tea is required.

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[tripleace]

Invertors great but.

500 watt inverter will consume a 100 amp / hour battery in one hour, so any more than that will need some very serious batteries.

Also probably need to go 24 volts in order to charge / discharge rates and get the right battery capacity.

cooking will need say 1000 watts per ring AT LEAST...

so 2.5kw or 500 amps per hour drain.

average good battery is say 100 amp/hr capacity and on top of this you cannot discharge fully without serious damage to batteries. IMHO you would need 10 x 100 amp/hr deep cycle batteries to cook for one hour.

plus charging equipment to replace 1000 amps ???

I am not an electrician but have looked at this subject with Mastervolt. The above is my memory on what they were recomending.



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[andyball]

Victron's website has a handy (though large download) book looking into this in depth.

2.5KW of 220V from an inverter running at 90% efficiency =2.78KW.....2780W / 12V = 231 Amps ......to boil a kettle takes say 5mins tops (with a 2.7KW kettle) so AH figure is under 20AH. so theoretically a 40AH battery would cope, assuming you could get 230Amps out of it for 5 mins !....you can't of course, but a good 110AH one should cope with a kettle ok & many boat kettles are 1KW which is easier .

If you want 2.5KW for 30 mins....you'll use a notional 115AH at 12V ; probably 500AH or more of battery capacity (at 20hr rating) wd be required...for an hour 1000AH sounds reasonable, + suitable charging equipment.

But...using 2.5KW for cooking for a whole hour is fairly kitchen at home style cooking & reducing the time makes it look quite feasible to have all electric galley (as some boats do, even with no huge genny) though the inital outlayplanning gets involved


The pdf mentioned is <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.victronenergy.com/index.htm>here</A> under technical info then "Electricity on Board and other off grid applications" it's very thorough & (imo) interesting, even if rather aimed at flogging you a whispergen (£7k+) & pointing out how big & horrible generators are.


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[cliffdale]

I think it has a 2kW inverter and the generator is 4kW rated.

Sounds like it will zap my batteries if I have 4 cups of coffee. Its a bit off putting.

thanks
Cliff

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[theguvnor]

this may seem a bit technical after the previous posts, but buy a cartridge type gas ring then you can have a bacon sarnie with your tea.

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[wakeup]

and they are only £30.....

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[Renegade_Master]

Just start the engines when you wanna make a cuppa. I used to use my 1500w inverter to boil the kettle on the move, but of course used shore power when moored

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[andyball]

well... depends on the battery bank : our home kettle(3.1KW) does 2 cups in under a minute, so reduce my earlier AH figures(just the kettle part) by say 4 times & even with a single 110AH cell it looks feasible for kettle use +/or a microwave. Add a reasonably sized (40A+) charger run off the generator/shorepower when available + hopefully the builder used a decent alternator/regulator set up.

It can work perfectly well. there are boats out there that use a system like that.

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[mainshiptom]

We use our inverter all the time (1.5kw) with 6x12v 150ah batts,

The secret is to use low wattage stuff ! it might take longer to boil/cook but you are not putting pressure on the electrics !

We use the inverter mostly when going along so batts are getting a charge !

Kettle 650 W
Sandwich maker 800 w
Coffee machine 900 w

Tom

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[cliffdale]

6 batteries, wow. Sounds like a submarine! I think the Doral comes with 2 service batteries.

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[PhilF]

sod the kettle
Power went off in the marina in the middle of pop idol
put on a 150watt inverter that ran the TV and the digi box then used the Honda genny thingy to top up the batteries
I'd use gas for cooking and boiling IMHO
Phil

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