How to Choose a Car Inverter?

Car inverter is a device that can convert 12V or 24V DC energy from car battery into 220V or 110V AC power, which is the same as the grid power for household appliances. With the car inverter, you can connect the cigarette lighter or car storage batteries to run the electronics, appliances or various tools, which can greatly broaden the range of entertainment and work in the car. How to choose a right inverter for your car? Then, let's move on.

1. Which power rating is the best choice for car inverter?

According to the required load range, almost all car electrical products are marked with the required power. For instance, the car refrigerator is marked with 150W, and the power of a suitable inverter should be more than 150W. If multiple electric loads are used simultaneously in the vehicle, we need to add all the power of the loads together, and then choose a car inverter with greater power than the total power.

2. Which type of car inverters is better, modified sine wave or pure sine wave?

Pure sine wave power inverter can provide high-quality AC power which is the same as grid power and drive any kind of loads, but it requires high technical requirements and costs. However, modified sine wave power inverter can meet most of our electricity demands with high efficiency, low noise and favorable price. Therefore, modified sine wave car inverters are the mainstream products in the market. By the way, modified sine wave power inverters should avoid inductive load. Generally speaking, the inductive load refers to high-power electrical products produced by the principle of electromagnetic induction, such as motors, compressors and so on, which require a much larger start-up current (about 5-7 times) than the current required to maintain normal operation. In short, if you need an electrical equipment with large current start-up, pure sine wave inverter is your best choice.

For more details,please contact sheena@mauten.com 

3. Conversion efficiency of car inverters

As a very important index of car inverters, the higher conversion efficiency, the longer battery life and the less heat generated by car inverters. Conversion efficiency is the ratio of output watt to input watt, the closer this number is to 1, the better its efficiency is. In general, the efficiency of inverters is more than 80%-90%, that is, input 100W and output 80W-90W, so the inverter itself consumes nearly 10W-20W of power. Conversion efficiency can be divided into no-load and full-load. Without load, the components in the inverter operate at the lowest power, which can generally be as high as 90%. However, it can be considered as a good inverter with the conversion efficiency as high as 85% at full load. Therefore, car owners can simply judge the conversion efficiency from the heat of inverters by high-power load. The greater heat, the greater energy loss and the lower conversion efficiency.