Powering a dehydrator?

[Guest]

I want to take my dehydrator with me.&nbsp; It's 550 watts, although by what I've read online, it seems to only use that much power when it's running at max temperature.<br>It has to run for 6 hours or more in order to dry something.<br><br>I'm really not sure what I'm doing when it comes to the van.&nbsp; We haven't figured out all the bells &amp; whistles yet.<br>it's got 2 batteries though, one that powers the electrical in the back which I think is a deep cycle (at least, I assume it does; like I said, we really haven't figured out how things work yet)<br><br>Can anyone give me any information that might help me figure out how all this stuff works &amp; if I'd be able to run my dehydrator?

 

[user 423]

Do you have an inverter? The dehydrator runs on AC, so you would need an inverter to run it off the battery. Some appliances don't work well or are ruined when running them off one of the cheaper inverters. 550 watts x 6 hours will use about 30 amp hours (plus other elect. usage), so depending on the capacity of your battery, it would be quite a drain.<br><br>You would probably want to use it only when you're plugged into shore power.

 

[wrcsixeight]

550 watts is almost 43 amps at 12.8 volts<br><br>43 amps x 6 hours is ~257 amp hours.<br><br>If it draws 550 watts continuously for 6 hours, you would need a battery bank of 550 hours to keep it from getting depleted below 50%. &nbsp;That's is over 4 GC-2 6v golf cart batteries weighing 62 lbs each, or 5 group 27 12 volters<br><br>This does not take into account peukert effect which basically say the larger the load, the less capacity the battery has to deliver, nor inverter inefficiency which adds another 15% to the drain on the batteries.<br><br>A Kill-a-watt meter would go a long way in determining how much the dehydrator actually consumes. &nbsp;They are about 25$<br><br>It would take a lot of recharging to replenish 257 amp hours.<br><br>My 200 watts of solar does about 65 amp hours on a good summer day.

 

[user 423]

Wouldn't 550 watts AC be calculated with 110 volts instead of 12.8? That would only be 5 amps.

 

[wrcsixeight]

Watts are watts, ac or dc<br><br>Volts x amps = watts<br><br>5 amps at 120 volts is 50 amps at 12 volts