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Question: Inverter 12 v 42 ah for home lighting. what appliances on this capacity for 1 hour.?

(Posted by: superb240405 on 2010-02-19 08:48:55)

I purchased an inverter 12V 42 ah with connections for 3 lights. now i want to connect it to the mains(which was not done earlier, but 3 separate tubelights were fixed). , so that i can run maybe a single or 2 lights as well as watch the TV or run the fan for an hour. is this possible?

Posted by: wires on 2010-02-19, 12:42:12

12 volts at 42 amps is 504 watts. You can power abut 500 watts for 1 hour. There are losses in the inverter so you won't be able to actually do 500 watts for an hour but you can do somewhere less than that. A 100 watt lamp draws almost 1 amp at 120 volts. You could run one of these for 5 hours. You could run a 40 watt flourscent light for about 12 hours. Most appliances draw a lot of power. A standard mixer draws around 220 watts. A blender draws up to 500 watts. The bottom line is that this is a very small inverter. It's meant to be used for short power outages, not for any length of time or for very light loads.

Posted by: skv on 2010-02-19, 09:07:42

The rating of battery is for 10 hrs sustained load ie 4.2 amps for 10 hrs at voltage of 12 volts Hence the power is 12*4.2 = 50.4 watts. There fore you can draw 40 watts fluorescent lamp for 10 hr or 3 tube light = 3*40 watts= 120watts at 12 volt it draws 10amps so for 4.2 hrs you can connect 3 tube light.

Posted by: Dennis on 2010-02-19, 10:04:02

You need to know the load rating of the lights and tv your inverter is 12v and 42 amp/ hr so your current draw and not exceed 42 most things are rated in watts- so divide your watts by 12 this will give you your amps. what is you fan amp load? what is your tv amp load? what is you light amp load ( are they in parallel or series most likely Parallel if you unscrew one and the others are still lit it is parallel) current in parallel is added 3 bulbs 120 watt is 10 amp or 12 volt system.

Posted by: poolekiteman on 2010-02-19, 13:08:10

The clue is in the description - this baby is meant solely to power emergency lighting during a power outage (forget TV or any other appliance). For best performance, keep the load as light as possible - avoid regular filament lamps, as they just waste power in the form of heat. Fluorescent or LED is the way to go. There are loads of 12 volt lamps that fit that description. If you want a 12 volt fan, keep it as small as possible (a large PC casing fan is a good and cheap option)