How sure are you that the battery is good? The invertor will put a load on the battery but it should not flatten it like that. Only thing I can assume is bad battery or bad invertor.
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Hi Sparky, what is plugged in to the inverter? What is the rating of the battery? How many Watts is the inverter? Answers to these will help us to work out what, if anything, is going wrong.
Quote: Originally posted by Bridlington on 02/6/2022
Would leaving one light on overnight flatten battery?
Cheers
If it was a 240 volt mains light running off an inverter, quite possibly, but if it was just a 12 volt LED light and the battery was ok, definitely not.
I have a clamp meter I use for my work that can also do DC. If you don't know how they work, you literally put the clamp around the positive cable, select DC metering and it will tell you how much current is running through that cable. In this case i'd clamp the positive on the battery cable. These aren't that cheap though so if you know someone that has one then borrow it though it's unlikely they have one that does both AC and DC. Most of them are just AC. It's a super quick way to see what is draining a battery by checking out much current is being drawn.
The other thing people don't realise about inverters is that, most people go for a large inverter like 1000watts though I have seen people go for 3000watt inverters and then try and run them off of their leisure batteries without a care in the world. 3000watts, for anyone that doesn't know. running off of a 100ah battery will take it past 50% DOD (depth of discharge) in just over 10 minutes, if you're lucky, and I personally wouldn't want to be standing within 50m of a basic lead acid battery whilst that is happening!
The more salient point though is, running say a load of 100watts (somewhere around a decent laptop charger) is about 8 amps but if you're using a 3000watt inverter to pull 100watts, then it's grossly inefficient due to its high wattage abilities whilst providing a small current relative to itself. I believe this is more obvious in cheaper made inverters.
So, the smaller the inverter (and better the inverter) then the more inefficient it will be with smaller loads. I'd always recommend that people buy the smallest one they can envisage ever needing to use and live with it. Kind of off the point now though, sorry I can get carried away.. !!
I'd go the clamp meter route personally and see where the power is going though it could simply be a poor battery. There is no reason to leave an inverter on when you are not using the van so make sure they turn it off when not in use as they are current vampires
Quote: Originally posted by georget64 on 29/7/2006
Is it worth getting an inverter for a laptop computer, or would this be too much of a drain on the battery ?
I don't think so. Check what output your laptop charger is. It'll be a DC voltage less than 24v normally. You can get adapters with various laptop plugs that will boost 12v DC up to the required voltage. That's less demanding on the battery if you have a suitable socket linked to it.
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I've one similar to this - linked item for example, I'm not recommending it necessarily.
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Topic: Inverter Running down battery
via mobile 02/6/2022 at 6:38pm
