Compact Florescent light bulb question

[force9BOAT]

This question is a little bit similar to the one from cookgm.

I have two 15 watt (60 watt equivalent) CF light bulbs powered by a 400W inverter from 24V batteries.  I find they work fine when I flip the light switch on if the bulbs were cold.  But if the lights have been on for more than about ten minutes, time to warm up, then if I turn them off and then back on again they take down my inverter.  The inverter fan stops and everything goes dead.  As soon as I turn the light switch off the inverter starts up again.

The only thing I can think is happening is that the CF light bulbs must have a big startup load when they are hot.  If I give them time to cool down then when I turn them on everything works fine.  

Can anyone confirm this is the cause?  If so, how big is the startup load when the CF bulbs are hot?

Thank you,

Rob

[DanG]

Not a high current inrush problem w/ CFL's. The two CFL's are competing w/ each other trying to charge their capacitors with their cold-start ramp up circuitry bypassed.

A MSW inverter has problems with pure capacitance devices distorting the MSW controller waveform feedback loop... Try a little 7.5 to 15 watt incandescent night-light bulb added to circuit leg the CFL's are on - that extra resistance load gives waveform something "to push against" that capacitors are better able to charge off of...

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[force9BOAT]

Thanks for the information.  Now I understand what's going on.  I'll try your suggestion.

Rob

[SparWeb]

I've actually gone around my house with an ammeter and tested dozens of things starting up, running, hot, shutting down, etc.  The CFL's that I checked ran at exactly their rated power all the time.  I couldn't read fluctuations greater than 0.1Amp with the meter I used, but that satisfied me.

[ghurd]

What brand of inverter?

G-

[scottsAI]

I had the same problem, wanted to run the inverter during a power failure.

Loads were two 23 w CF and a laptop 42w.

Inverter shutdown on any load I tried. Broke? :-(

So plugged in a 100 w incandescent lamp, worked fine!

Then turned on the other loads, all work fine.

Turned off the 100w lamp. Still work...

Have fun,

Scott.

[DEM syndrome]

it is a familar problem with any capacitance devices  

i resolved the problem with a current regulator (ref LM317 as current regulator configuration) however it is limited to 1 amp but sure resolved the overload inrush current problem

My aplication was charging up a 600,000 uf cap. to a 6 volt temp storage(and sure saved fuses on my regulated supply)

DEM sufferer