The 4x4 industry does not have a power inverter designed specifically for 4x4 applications. However the applications and the limits within the 4x4 market and available space, do put certain restrictions on choice and guidelines to which power inverters to use and which power Inverters are best for the application.

4x4 power inverter for the great outdoors

 

Some of the limitations in the 4x4 industry are:

• Physical space available for installing the inverter
• Space to fit the power inverter in such away that it is protected from water and still have sufficient air flowing for cooling
• The availability of batteries – 4x4s do have a limit to the number of auxiliary batteries it can carry, as well as the recharge ability
• What the power inverters will be used for. The power limit or requirement is limited!

As a 4x4 user/traveler you will have space for one… or maybe 2 x 105A/h deep cycle batteries. To start with, a deep cycle battery if rated at 105 A/h, that is a 20 Hour rating, thus this battery is actually a 5A battery for 20 hours…the moment you draw more power then 5A, the time reduces at a faster rate. Thus 5A draw will give 20 hours, but a 10A draw will not give you 10 hours…it reduces faster down to 8 hours…and 20A, goes down to 3 hours!! Very important also, is to know that you never discharge your battery more then 60% of its rating (this is to ensure extended battery life time). Thus a 100A/h battery effectively becomes a 60A/h battery.

Deep cycle battery

Typical example:

Ok, so you want a power inverter to be able to operate a hairdryer for the wife while you are on a 4x4 trip. Look at the rating of her hairdryer, it would show…1500Watt (more or less). Let’s take the 1500Watt as an example. To operate this 1500W hairdryer you need a 1500Watt-sized inverter. Ok, so you setup with the power inverter and a battery (the same battery that needs to keep your meat and beer cold for a week). Wife needs to dry the long blond hair, it takes say 20minutes…If you run the 1500Watt hairdryer for 20minutes, that is 1500x 20/60 = 500Watt/hour. A 100A/h battery stores at best (when fully charged 1200 Watt/hours, of which only about 720Watt/hours is available). Thus within in 20 minutes, the wife has consumed 80% of all your available energy!! Wow!!!

Assuming you had a full battery with 1200Watt/hours stored and 720Watt/hours available to use. A typical 40 litre fridge which draws 3A (3x12= 36Watt/hour), the fridge could operate for 20 hours (720/36)…but instead the wife’s hairdryer reduced that to only 1 hour!!

The fridge could operate for 20 hours on a 1500w power inverter

 

One needs to also understand that if you have a 1500Watt power inverter running, but only connected to a laptop... that only the power drawn by the laptop will get drawn out of the battery, thus if you have a 70Watt laptop, but a 1500Watt power inverter, the power from the battery is 70watt (plus some losses).

To summarize, our range of suggested 4x4 power inverters start from 150Watt ( for the recharge of cell phone and GPS batteries), Up to 1500w power inverter. Any larger is not suitable to operate from 12V batteries. Please refer to our table below with the suggested combinations of these inverters and also the suggested battery power to be used as part of the installation in order to achieve optimum performance.

LIGHTWEIGHT- Modified Sine Power Inverter (AH Series)
Code	Rating	Picture	Batteries	Typical loads
PM-A-150AH	150W		Car battery	GPS, cellular phone, laptop
PM-A-350AH	350W		Car battery	Larger laptops ,camera equipment
PM-A-600AH	600W		Car battery	TV, lighting
PM-A-800A H	800W		Auxiliary leisure battery 50Ah	Drill /grinder ,fridge
PM-A-1000AH	1000W		Auxiliary battery 100Ah	Small microwave, large freezer
PM-A-1500AH	1500W		Auxiliary 100Ah, preferably x 2	Sensitive video equipment, hairdryers

 

For the more sensitive electronic power needs, the following true sine wave inverters can be used:

True Sine Wave Inverter Range
Number	Rating	Voltage	Size	Weight	Picture	Specsheet(PDF format download)
S150-XXX	150W	12/24V	200 x 132 x 72mm	2.7kgs		Cotek 150W specsheet
S300-XXX	300W	12/24V	237 x 155 x 72mm	3.5kgs		Cotek 300W specsheet
S1500-XXX	1500W	12/24/48V	415 x 191 x 88mm	4.0kgs		cotek 1500 w specsheet

If you need to run higher powered equipment, such as a microwave oven, a drill machine or hairdryer, it is very important to rate and buy this equipment intelligently. As an example, a Microwave oven will advertise as a 600Watt oven, but by closer inspection you will find it is 600W output, but 1200Watt input etc.

Please do not hesitate to contact us to assist you with making the right decisions on choosing your power inverter for your application.

Keywords for this page:

Inverter, Inverters, Power inverter, power inverters, 4x4 power inverters, power inverter for 4x4, DC AC Inverters, pure sine wave power inverter, modified sine wave power inverter