what is the current drain of an inverter?

Question

I would like to know how much a 12 v dc to 240 v ac inverter would drain a battery with a 500watt load on the out put terminals or is there a formula to work it out

Answer 1

Whats the load?

More info needed.

About 45 amps, big batt required.

Answer 2

Very very very simple math being you are only after rough numbers which are close enough for most things.

500 watts divided by 12 volts gives you 41.66 amp pull on the battery.

If the battery is a 100 AH battery you will kill it in about an hour. Really you will over drain it in about the first 15 minutes. you never want to discharge a battery under 80% of it's full charge. A deep cycle battery can handle it a lot better then a car battery and will hold the charge longer.

Answer 3

With a modern solid state inverter used on 12 volt batteries it is the watts output divided by 12 times 110% or if figures give volts and amps volts * amps / 12 * 1.1 there being about 10% losses in the inversion process. Using convenient numbers a 360 watt inverter would pull about 33 amps from the battery. [360/12 = 30 * 1.1 = 33

Answer 4

there is a formula,i wont confuse you with, if you are running a appliance on 240 volts with wattage of 500,the current drain on the batary will be 50 amp aprox,if you have a inverta wich has a full sine wave output it will drain more off the batary,to help you converting things .....divide the volts into the watts that will give you the amps .....1000 watts =1kw

Answer 5

What do you mean by inverter ?? If it's a power inverter -- lots. If it's an digital inverter circuit it depends on the technology and the frequency it runs at. Your question is sort of like asking how many watts does a lighting device use. Not enough specifics to answer it.
It could be an LED or a carbon arc lamp.