I've spoken before about inverters and generators below a certain price point: they produce 60V + 60V instead of the expected 120V.
Before the recent inverter upgrade my home was operating from that ... View MoreI've spoken before about inverters and generators below a certain price point: they produce 60V + 60V instead of the expected 120V.
Before the recent inverter upgrade my home was operating from that first version. After the upgrade it's now the expected type. This had some strange side effects that I'll describe here.
1. I bought an automated breadmaker from the flea market. When I got it home it didn't work. Bringing it back to the vendor later we plugged it in and it actually worked there.
2. I have a propane-based small Amana oven. Sadly it doesn't have an old-school pilot light; it has an electronic ignition which uses electricity to heat up. Before the upgrade it would pull 1000W of power when it's about to burn propane. After the upgrade it only uses 500W of power.
3. I got a small microwave that was sitting next to the trashcans near the truckers at Walmart. Someone had thrown it out. Even though it suggested that it's 700W it was too much before the upgrade.
I finally deduced that the reason these appliances had difficulties is because there's a component inside called a rectifier that was to blame...
Standard electronics employ a "full-bridge rectifier" which uses four diodes. A "half-bridge rectifier" only uses one diode but it throws away half of the incoming power in doing so. The difference in price is something like $4.50 overall but the appliance wastes half the power you're providing to it.
And this turned out to be what's going on. Manufacturers are being so cheap that they create inefficient products. In each of the cases above there is also something which detects temperature and tries to increase the current until that temperature is reached. Combined with the input inefficiency the current side goes crazy trying to reach its goal.
Moral of the story: do not waste your money on a cheap inverter or generator.