Brilliant John many thanks...
Would a 550 Ah battery bank power a 5000 Watt interter?
Steve
Are you asking if it will power the inverter, or if it will power a 5wk load?
How much constant load will you have (how much current will you be drawing at any one time). What about surge current (like starting a power tool)?
Also, larger inverters tend to have larger constant (phantom) loads, even when they're just sitting there waiting for work to do.
You can power a pretty large workload for a SHORT TIME on a farly small battery array. The problem is that you'll drain the batteries quickly.
Out of curiosity, what kind of inverter do you have? If it has two (+) and two (-) connections, it is important to know if they are in series or in parallel. My guess is that they're parallel, and done so you can use a reasonable size wire x2 instead of twice the wire size x1. Are those connectors holes with set screws made for 2/0 cable?
Travis Thanks mate. It appears you guys are not only making me think, but posing more questions than answers!
To answer your questions:
Are you asking if it will power the inverter, or if it will power a 5wk load?
Both really, the problem is this: so the testing I've done is to run the tumble dryer (motor ans 2Kw heater) from the inverter. This works find with nothing else initially. However, the 'anti-tangle' system causes the drum to turn for several seconds in one direction then change and so on...
Fine when the heater is not on, but while heating the audible warning on the inverter sounds and the LED that shows the watts drawn and battery volts (switchable) flickers and is unreadable.
This is with the inverter starting from cold, so it is unlikely to be the overheat warning.
The Watt display shows around 2200 while readable. (remember this is, or at least supposed to be a 5K-10K inverter) so 2.2K should not stress it at all.
My question stems from wheather or not there is a requirement for a certain size of battery bank to be big/powerful enough to supply the inverter the power it needs to reach the output level.
The Inverter is a 'Power Jack'. The 2 sets of battery cables are wired to the same battery bank, 1 set to each end. (never remember serial/parallel).
This did help a little, against just one set to batt 1 +/batt 5 -.
The cables are those supplied and are pretty thick...
looking forward to your comments...
Thanks again
Steve