1000w AC Invertor - Peak or Continouos

Yea... There's a debate about that... Some will argue that a 3000w peak on an inverter is the most efficient if you never let peak loads get above 1000w except for brief starting moments of appliances. While others will argue that inverters run the same at 30% output vs 80% output.

And then there's the whole debate about is it worth spending way more on pure sine wave rather then the cheap version?

All this comes back to what type of use you have planned?

In general 1,000 watts seems to be what most agree is the limit for Prius 12v. Though I did read on here once about someone setting up an inverter that was connected to the high voltage system, but that requires some extreme DIY electrical engineering.

 

I was around in the days when it was way more, but these days you get decent sine inverters for only nominally more. I still have I think every non-sine inverter I bought back in the bad old days, sitting around because I'm not going to use them and I wouldn't feel right even giving them away to somebody who might.

These days even the simplest loads like power tools and such increasingly have electronic motor controls for features like constant torque or soft start, so pretty much anything you're likely to plug into an inverter is going to be happier on clean power.

Yeah, I would probably shoot for that on the nameplate, which will usually mean it can surge 1800 or 2000 briefly, and then I would not plan on drawing even 1000 from it continuously. Mine is from a product line that reaches from 600 (bit small, will run my bread machine but not an Instant Pot Mini) to 2000 (too expensive, too heavy, too big) and 1000 in the middle (ahhhhhhh...).

@Randy B used to have a company called ConVerdant that sold such kits, and stopped that for a while, and is now launching a company PlugOut Power that will again. ConVerdant offered a 3k and I think a 5k, the idea that you could run essentials of your house during an outage, but they were near dorm-fridge-sized and backbreakingly heavy.

 

Also worth knowing that the quality of more affordable non pure sine inverters are improving as well... The Bestek one I got last year has a much higher quality system than what they used in the past...

 

I don't think I ever had a problem with the quality of the MSW inverters per se (well, maybe one of 'em) ... they were decently put together, and did what they did reliably and well.

It's just that what they reliably did was make power that an oscilloscope would show was visibly bad, and maybe they're even better at doing that now, but they're still doing that.