1500 watts, yes - maybe 1800, briefly, but I'd avoid trying. As I said, a buffer battery for surge loads can work...
LeftieBiker said:1500 watts, yes - maybe 1800, briefly, but I'd avoid trying. As I said, a buffer battery for surge loads can work...
RustyShackleford said:LeftieBiker said:1500 watts, yes - maybe 1800, briefly, but I'd avoid trying. As I said, a buffer battery for surge loads can work...
Confused. So stick with my 1500watt/120v inverter, connected to the Leaf's 12vdc system, but put a battery in parallel with the 12vdc inputs to the inverter ? So saying the inverter can handle the surge, except maybe the 12vdc is sagging enough to make it trip. Perhaps a big capacitor instead of the extra battery ?
RustyShackleford said:Just so you know ... I was hoping that Leaf Spy would tell me how much current I was sucking from the 12v system; yet I'm only seeing less than an amp. Helpful respondent at the Leaf Spy support thread pointed out that it's because I connected the inverter's '-' input to a chassis bolt (as you're supposed to do), not the the battery's negative terminal.
ClarD said:RustyShackleford said:Just so you know ... I was hoping that Leaf Spy would tell me how much current I was sucking from the 12v system; yet I'm only seeing less than an amp. Helpful respondent at the Leaf Spy support thread pointed out that it's because I connected the inverter's '-' input to a chassis bolt (as you're supposed to do), not the the battery's negative terminal.
Leafspy does show the draw from my inverter just like drive motor draw, on the Energy Panel of the screen four display.
It's easy to miss because it is less than 1 kW on a 70 kW (or more?) display bar.
Here is an October 9, 2019 screenshot drawing 988 watts. The power bar barely appears. (I might have been brewing coffee.)
So how big an inverter IS considered safe (for this scheme of hooking it to the Leaf's 12v system) ? I went with a 1000watt Xantrex just to be safe. But apparently my fridge is killing it (it shuts off) with an auto-defrost cycle. I've been trying to figure out how to temporarily disable the auto-defrost, to no avail. I can't help feeling like the 1000watts isn't that far off from being able to handle it. So thinking of maybe a 1500watt one.knightmb said:If you draw over 2,000 watts of power on the 12V system, the Leaf will do a safety shutdown and you'll have to reboot the Leaf to get it back up by disconnecting the 12V battery and waiting about 5 minutes before powering it back up.
Well here's a random 1500watt pure-sine unit: https://invertersrus.com/product/cotek-sp-1500-112 Says it can draw 2650 VA surge (1 sec). How will the Lead react to that ? I've wondered if the problem of my 1000watt unit getting shut-down by the fridge could be the 12vdc sagging, and not the inverter itself. Thought of putting a honking big capacitor on the 12v leads.LeftieBiker said:You can draw 1500 watts safely, and I think that you can draw 1800 watts for short periods.
RustyShackleford said:Well here's a random 1500watt pure-sine unit: https://invertersrus.com/product/cotek-sp-1500-112 Says it can draw 2650 VA surge (1 sec). How will the Lead react to that ? I've wondered if the problem of my 1000watt unit getting shut-down by the fridge could be the 12vdc sagging, and not the inverter itself. Thought of putting a honking big capacitor on the 12v leads.LeftieBiker said:You can draw 1500 watts safely, and I think that you can draw 1800 watts for short periods.
RustyShackleford said:Well here's a random 1500watt pure-sine unit: https://invertersrus.com/product/cotek-sp-1500-112 Says it can draw 2650 VA surge (1 sec). How will the Lead react to that ? I've wondered if the problem of my 1000watt unit getting shut-down by the fridge could be the 12vdc sagging, and not the inverter itself. Thought of putting a honking big capacitor on the 12v leads.LeftieBiker said:You can draw 1500 watts safely, and I think that you can draw 1800 watts for short periods.
I calculated this wrong, I checked on my inverter specs, it's actually 90% efficient, so to output 1,228 watts of power, would need to draw 1,364 watts of power. I suspect the reason 2,000 watts was showing because it was trying to charge the 12V battery at the same time. :lol:knightmb said:So if you subtract about 200 watts of power that the Leaf just needs to be "on", you see my inverter was probably pulling about 1800 watts of power.
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