waiter Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Boiling Water in a Microwave isn't exactly a big deal, unless your doing it using a 12 volt battery. Got the Inverter hooked up tonight 1500 watt, Power Drive. The microwave is a 600 watt unit I've owned for years. It took about 2 minutes to bring a large cup of water from ice cold to boiling. Voltage dropped from 12.6 to 12.2, and was drawing around 750 watts. Inverter didn't get warm,(the fan didn't even kick on) :ThumbUp: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gulfstream Greg Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 12.2 volts is considered 50% charged. So yo discharged your battery 50% (actually a bit more) to boil a cup of water. The question is how much energy does it take to recharge the battery as opposed to heating water in a tea kettle? Reference http://en.wikipedia....omotive_battery Follow the link for more specific info. The following is common for a six-cell automotive lead-acid battery at room temperature: Quiescent (open-circuit) voltage at full charge: 12.6 V Fully discharged: 11.8 V Charge with 13.214.4 V Gassing voltage: 14.4 V Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bajadulce Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 holly crap! what if your wife needs a hot cup too? Do you really need a microwave? What's the hurry? TV dinners? Leftovers? I mentioned this in your other thread, but you should really list what you plan to use the microwave for and decide if it's really worth hauling all the way to Alaska. Seems like it's taking up a lot of room on that counter in that picture AND what if you want to do a little off highway sight seeing on your trip. Pretty bumpy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waiter Posted February 18, 2011 Author Share Posted February 18, 2011 Don't know all the answers to these questions. I (we) do a lot of our cooking with a microwave rather than a stove. As for Heating water, thats a nice universal test of power vs time. It was also a nice test of the Inverter to see if it would provide high current for short periods of time. The Microwave is held down with a bungee cord, so it shouldn't go anywhere. If you see a little white microwave along side the Alcon, you can safely figure it didn't work out. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RVdaytrader Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 John...is your battery new or the old one that came with the RV??...by my calculations, you should have used about 2.2 amp hours for the 2 minutes of use....a good 80 amp hour battery should give about 40 amp hours going from full to half charge...so unless I'm totally wrong, your battery does not seem good. Boiling Water in a Microwave isn't exactly a big deal, unless your doing it using a 12 volt battery. Got the Inverter hooked up tonight 1500 watt, Power Drive. The microwave is a 600 watt unit I've owned for years. It took about 2 minutes to bring a large cup of water from ice cold to boiling. Voltage dropped from 12.6 to 12.2, and was drawing around 750 watts. Inverter didn't get warm,(the fan didn't even kick on) :ThumbUp: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waiter Posted February 19, 2011 Author Share Posted February 19, 2011 Battery is fairly new (three months old). The voltage and power readings were taken off the inverter, I don't know how accurate they are. 750 watts is about 60-65 amps. could be loosing 0.25volts or so in the wire. (each leg is about 3 ft of #4, with a 150 amp fuse) If I get some time this weekend, I'll run it again with my good voltmeter looking at things. I'll also put the ammeter on and see what the current draw is. One test I'm curious about is how well the battery/inverter system performs under similar loads if the engine is running. My plan is to run the engine anytime I do high current runs with the inverter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gulfstream Greg Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 750 watts is about 60-65 amps. could be loosing 0.25volts or so in the wire. (each leg is about 3 ft of #4, with a 150 amp fuse) My plan is to run the engine anytime I do high current runs with the inverter. That should max out your alternator. Might even smoke the wire to the isolator and then to the alternator as they are not #4. Basically your going to be using your engine and alternator as a generator then? I'll bet it still won't balance out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
futar Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 I've used a 1,000 watt with 600 watt micro for years and never run down the battery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waiter Posted February 20, 2011 Author Share Posted February 20, 2011 Alternator won't keep up (especially at Idle), but it'll help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oldiesel Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 My experience with my boat is using the microwave knocks the battery voltage down pretty good, but recovers most of the voltage in a few minutes without a charger being turned on,however that was also taking the readings on the inverter display as being factual ,not actually testing with a good meter. Don Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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