First ever post using new inverter

[arc]

This is a first for me, you will have to excuse my enthusiam.

Just got my new 1250/ 3100 Watt Aims inverter.

It's powering my computer right now and doing a fine job.

I can see that my weak link is going to be my battery bank, it dropped in voltage from 12.8 V down to a hair over 11 V in a pretty short while.

Anyway, just wanted to share my excitement!

Take care all,

Dave

[Tom in NH]

Way to go, Dave!

My battery voltage drops too, mainly because I get so many cloudy days. What have you got for batteries? What's powering that new AIMS inverter?

--Tom

[arc]

Hey Tom,

I've got 3ea- Group 27's (Walmart Deep Cycle Marine Batteries).

Wish I'd known more about batteries when I purchased them last year, I would have gotten T-105's instead. Oh well, live and learn.

Since my last post, I tried the inverter with our refrigerator, just to see how it works. So far, so good, the voltage on my batts. has actually leveled off at around 12.4V when not under heavy load and drops to around 12.2V when the refer. kick in.

Conclusion:

I think that the near 11.0V that I was seeing earlier was due to my computer monitor, I had my 'puter, printer, dsl modem, wireless modem, usb port hub, 19" monitor, scanner and speakers all plugged in, draws more than I thought, no wonder the elec. bill was a bit higher when I left it on 24/7.

Anyway, the refer. is a 21.5 cu ft Kenmore and is around 5.4 amp max and seems to be doing just great after an hour or two. This is good, cause that's why I got this inverter, as a backup for the refer. and maybe to power a small TV or radio during a power outage. I think it's going to work out. I'm thinking of leaving the refer. on the inverter overnight to see how the batteries hold up.

Tomorrow, I'm going to hardwire 2 circuits from a 2-breaker load center which will place an auxilary receptical near the referigerator, one in the living room and on the other circuit I have 2 more recept. in the bed rooms. The load center just plugs into the inverter.

Later,

Dave

[picmacmillan]

way to go arc...it is real good reading when you here someone putting this stuff to work....you may think "who would want to read my post"? but the fact of the matter is, we get excited for you and really enjoy your enthusiasm...pickster

[ghurd]

We seem a happy bunch of people!

About the batteries. I wonder if they were really full or had some surface charge reading, form being charged in the last day or 2.

Nothing on charts or anything, but I believe from experience if the V drops like a rock in a short time, then stabilizes, it usually was not really full charged.

I am a big believer the batteries have to be at the float voltage for a long time before they are truely full.

Meaning the performance could get considerably better when the wind, solar, whatever, has the batteries actually full.

So keep smiling.

G-

[iFred]

I have tested about a dozen computers with different scanners, printers and monitors. I used a pro watt meter. What I found was that a typical computer by itself with a monitor with drain 160-180 watts per hour. In standy/sleep mode computers will drop to 30-40 watts normally. Most common fridges drain from 560-680 watts for about 30-45 mins. P.S. checl your computer clock to see if the inverter effects it. good luck!

[arc]

Sorce of charge is a single-phase w/ starter windings conversion, an amorphous 35W panel & a mono-crystaline 5W panel.

Not much wind the last few days, but the amorphous panel does quite well here in the, often cloudy, Pacific Northwest.

You're probably correct about not being at full charge (come-on-wind).

Dave

[ghurd]

Yea, thats not much charging for 300ah's of battery.

But hey! It works!

G-

[arc]

I'm still keeping my eyes open for a nice 3 phase to convert, but my budget is shot for at least the next 6 months. I dream of getting some bigger neo's one of these days to make it all worth while. Surprisingly the conversion that I've got right now (has 4 clusters of 7ea-1/2"x1/2" cylindrical neos epoxied together)does a pretty good job at anywhere from 4 mph winds up, but the wind here is not very constant (trees around), we get daily surface winds up to around 17-20 mph max but they are often short lived (on and off for maybe 6-7 hours out of 24). A taller tower is not an option here either. So far, what I've found is that the combo of amorphorus & mono-crystal panels and the wind turbine makes for something at least trickle charging at least a good bit of the time. More would definately be better (all in time, I hope).

But hey, you're right! At least it works and it's really fun & rewarding stuff. I sure do love it, the reading, the scrounging for parts, the building, the sharing of failures and sucesses and the thrill of actually seeing it all in action is great! AND, no matter how much any of us do, there's always room for improvement, so we'll never get bored, never (life is good)!

I'm pumped, think I'll go run some 14-2 NM-B and some #6AWG solid copper for ground.

Later,

Dave

[arc]

Thanks Pick!

The least I can do is share some of the highlights, I've learned an aweful lot from this website, it't truely the best out there with a grand knowledge base. Thanks to posters such as yourself who devote a good deal of time here and are willing to share your personal experiences with those of us a bit more AE challenged.

I'll keep ya'all posted on my "Off-grid, home wiring progress.

arc

[arc]

Hey Fred,

Funny you should mention the pro watt meter, I was just looking at one of those yesterday in my RV catalog, I think they were around $39 but look like a really good tool to get a handle on what uses how much power. It's nice knowing what is actually going on within a system.

arc

[srnoth]

I have found that the best thing to do if you want to save power but have your computer on all the time is to use laptops instead. While a desktop computer uses atleast 150 watts even when it's just on, not doing anything, where as a laptop only uses about 40 watts.

The reason I leave my computer on all the time is because I use it to host my website and ftp server, over my dsl. Now, when grid power fails, I would like to be able to power the computer off my inverter, but 150 watts is a lot for a small power system lke mine, so I usually end up turning the computer off when power goes. So, to solve this, I am in the process of buying an old PII 366 mhz Toshiba laptop off of ebay, which has a dead lcd. I got it for aroud $65 us including shipping. Anyway, what I plan to do with it is transfer all the server software to that, use a normal 17"CRT monitor to set it up, and then just let it run by itself without a monitor, hopefully using less that 40 watts.

The other thing I plan to do to increase the efficiency in my computer room is to get rid of those 'wall-warts' on the network stuff. I have noticed that all my network stuff like switches, wireless routers and dsl modems run at 12v, as well as that toshiba laptop I was talking about (actually it's 15v, but I have found that they run off 12v fine. Check out this thread about that http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2005/2/24/225230/527 ). So, instead of using an inverter to change to 120AC and a wallwart to change back to 12v, I will run all that equiptment directly off my battery bank. I may have to use one of those 12v regulators to protect them from over-voltage when the battery bank goes up to 14v and stuff during charging though. Anyway, those are my ideas to solve the computer problem. Laptops seem to be the best option.

Cheers,

Stephen.