Camping Interior Inverter efficiency

During an 80-90 meet 1664 and I disagreed on inverter efficiency.

He went away and did some rudimentary research and testing....

with the results I was pm'd with this:-

Hiya Kev

Sorry it's taken so long but I went on the piss last weekend

Right then, these figures are based on the Ring 'PowerSource' 500W inverter, Model RINV500.

The data was obtained using an old analogue 'AVO' meter so are not precise like a digital meter would be. (They were cutting edge in their day). Please bare in mind that this inverter's fan only runs if it starts getting hot so figures exclude any load the internal fan may impose, albeit small.

The official quiescent (ie, no load) figure given in the literature is 0.4A but with the AVO mine consumed only 225mA ie, 0.225A. Efficiency is given as 90%.

The following power consumption figures were obtained by purely resistive load-household lamps to be precise.

25W @ 240v consumed 2.4A @ 12v = 28W = 89.3% efficiency

40W @ 240v consumed 3.8A @ 12v = 45.6W = 87.7% efficiency

60W @ 240v consumed 5.8A @ 12v = 69.6W = 86.2% efficiency

100W @ 240v consumed 9.2A @ 12v = 110.4W = 90.6% efficiency

The AVO's maximum d.c current limit is 15A so I can't really offer any higher figures without pushing my luck.

See you when I see you

Bren