Steve,

Blindly running a large inverter on a car for long durations is not a smart thing to do. In the worst case scenario, the battery and the alternator will get roasted. Basically, the alternator will get roasted if it runs a duty cycle that it wasn't designed for. If the inverter is drawing more power than the alternator can provide, the alternator is going to run 100% duty cycle. Car batteries aren't design for deep cycle draw...hence they can also get roasted.

Inverters are nice...until they blow up. IMHO, they are pretty finicky things, so try not to run them near their rating. Somewhere around 50% of the their rating should help things. If you have worked with VFDs, then these inverters are the cheap version of a VFD.

- Victor.

hmm so if you run you generator the inverter on that is going to blow up also? :lol:

yes you should never run a higher draw than your altanator can handle.. and if the car is running you will never have to worry about drawing down your car batery. Also Car/truck altanators are designed to run 100%, thats why we have voltage regulators to prevent them from frying your batteries.. but you did raise a valad point.. if you try run over your altanators rating you can suck down your battery as it will act as a reserve.. also you could overheat your voltage regulator and cause some problems but most likely.. you will blow a fuse long befor then. We used to run a welder off the truck battery.. now you want to see something that will suck a battery down LOL

*disclamer* sometimes stuff fails when it shoulden't, the world is a imperfect place.. so of course if you can aford to get a genarator and such, "the biger the better" applies here.. but if you can't use some comen sence.. don't obver size your draw for your power supply weather it be a car or a generator.

Read the sticker on the inverters you buy.. when it says 600 watts is that continuios or peek (don't worry Adam the one you got was continuios something like 1300 peek) so if it says 600 continious stay under that to be safe.

Steve

I'm using a MGE EX20 UPS, good for 2000VA and max 1400 watts. All I have connected are 2 Hagen 301 power heads on it, that when the tank level drops, they start aireating the water. They will run for a long time. I have not experienced any long outages yet, so I could relocate/hook up a heater if needed. I could run my whole system, but don't see the advantage.

My bigger problem was the entire dining room and my office were one the same breaker. 2 tanks, and 2 computers and all the lights. So I just finished putting in a 20A dedicated circuit for my 120g and I sleep much better. I have been thinking about this for a long time, but on Monday, it triped and no one was arround for nearly 24hrs. So my tank temp fell to 70 from 78-80 normaly. No loss of life this time!! But made me get my ass in gear at put in the circuit.

Lee

Check out this site.

www.ballard.com

Of course the cost is high today but in the future we should all have one.

I will try and bring the AirGen to our next meeting.

Cheers,
Patrick