Inverters

[Tomfoolery]

I have a 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter and a 2500 watt modified sine wave inverter. What sorts of things must I run on the pure sine wave inverter and what can I get away with running on the modified sine wave inverter without doing damage?run on t

 

[PlethoraOfGuns]

Pretty much anything with sensitive electronics should go on a pure sine wave inverter. Simple things with motors and heating elements can go on the cheap guy. But most everything now is processor controlled, so you might want to just use a pure sine wave inverter. Having 4500 watts of inverter is a lot of power. Do you really need all that?

 

[hugemoth]

Tool battery charger, electric blanket controller. Bread maker and microwave work but don't like it much. Those are the only things I've found that didn't work on modified sine wave in 30+ years of living off grid with modified sine wave inverters.

 

[PlethoraOfGuns]

Aside from the terrible noises the microwave will make running on a square wave inverter, it will actually draw half the wattage that it's supposed to, taking twice as long to do it's job. They call them modified sine wave inverters, but on an oscilloscope, they are square wave.

 

[frater secessus]

What sorts of things must I run on the pure sine wave inverter and what can I get away with running on the modified sine wave inverter without doing damage?

I have collected info from threads like this (and folks smarter than me) into an article on the RVwiki in case it is any help.

In my van I run purely-resistive loads off a 700w MSW (crockpot, analog heating pad, etc) and everything else (electric blanket, swamp cooler, etc) off a 300w PSW. I don't need a big PSW because 90% of my loads run on DC. Maybe I'm being too conservative but I don't have excess money to replace damaged electronics.

 

[bullfrog]

That is a lot of power! Just wondering what are you using to power the inverters? I imagine if you don't have a huge solar system with a large battery bank you might want to rethink your system.

 

[DannyB1954]

Motors and electronics like Pure Sine Wave.