I continued to have trouble with my inverter even as I got into sunnier territory. It made no sense to have a fully charged battery and not be able to run my computer on the inverter!
Andy told me to measure the voltage at the battery in the middle of the day (12.6) and compare to what the inverter was putting out (12.1). Based on that big jump, he suggested I upgrade to bigger battery cables. The weather in St Louis on my last day kept me from doing that, but I did take the time to clean the battery posts and the inverter terminals, and then tighten all the wires at both ends. This resulted in my inverter reading jumping from 12.1 to 12.4! It has been holding steady and I am no longer having any trouble running my computer on my inverter.
I still want to beef up that wiring when I upgrade my battery bank, but it’s amazing what five minutes of elbow grease can do!
What size inverter do you have, how long is the wire and what size is the wire?
Are you able to move the inverter closer to the battery?
Croft, it’s a 400W inverter. It would be impossible to get it any closer to the battery as it is located in the living room directly above the battery compartment. There’s at most two feet of wire. The wire is really thin, maybe no. 14? It’s whatever came with the inverter. Andy suggested I beef it up to no. 10 or even 8. My only qualm about that is the size of hole I’ll need to make in my floor!
That may explain your problem Rae; it would appear that the size of your wire is too small even for the short distance separating your inverter and the battery bank. I am almost sure that if you increase the gauge of your wire, you will notice a significant difference.
I’m definitely going to be upgrading those wires.
But the error message I get occasionally points to trying to run something with more wattage than the inverter can handle, so I will be upgrading to a higher wattage inverter when I get to the wiring.