Uninterruptable farmhouse lighting

[FRITZHID]

N8N, Ty for the offer however I require a hall effect ammeter for both AC & DC measurement.

Semi, I do have a shunt ammeter setup however I've found them to be far Less accurate then I prefer. It's ok for a rough idea, but I like accuracy of .1A and I've seen shut setups as far off as 2A.
I have no problem with AC load since I have a very good 120/240v dummy load for the inverter output, my meter only goes to 10A inline. I guess I could use the shunt on the DC side but will only be a rough estimate of inverter efficiency. I'll poke around with it a little later today.

 

[SemiMan]

I have 0.25% shunts for work purposes. With my 0.02% volt meter that makes for highly accurate current measurements. Those shunts were I think 25 dollars.

 

[Illum]

I've seen shunt setups as far off as 2A.

0_o oo: :wow: two amps?
Made in China shunts with whopping temperature coefficients?

 

[SemiMan]

I lean more towards a shunt amp designed by someone who does not understand input offset error and other errors in high gain high common mode applications

 

[FRITZHID]

0_o oo: :wow: two amps?
Made in China shunts with whopping temperature coefficients?

Well, it's more the whole setup then the actual shunt itself, but yes, usually Chinese. Lol

Ok ok ok, I'll isolate my PS and set up the shunt and give you guys some load readings in the next day or so, ok? Lol

 

[FRITZHID]

Ok, 5.6A @ 24v with a 100w load on my UPS... So... 134Watts in to get 100Watts with 34Watts used in the inverter itself.

 

[N8N]

That doesn't sound horrible, that's about what I'm getting out of my Tripp-Lite 1000VA UPS (according to my Kill-A-Watt, reading the line cord, and reading output current from Tripp-Lite software on my PC.)

Sadly, inefficiency is a fact of life...

 

[Steve K]

Efficiency in a power converter can be improved to a very high number, but you do pay a price in size, weight, and actual dollars. The commercial products are aimed more towards optimizing cost than efficiency.

 

[FRITZHID]

Mine are repurposed medical UPSs, all they needed was a good cleaning and new batteries.
One of them even has a external jack to supply additional battery power if needed, of course its the odd man out being the only one that uses 36v. My others use 24/12. was happy to see I had less then a volt in voltage drop from my current battery setup under a full 1000w load after 5 full mins.