Inverter squeal?

My inverter has an alarm when overload or low power and it certainly sounds like a squeal, maybe your's is similar.

Cheers

You are pulling to many amps when the water pump is turned on. The "squeal" is the inverter telling you it is being over stretched. Have a look in the doco that came with the inverter it should mention warning beeps. You will get the same warning beeps if you run down the battery the inverter is plugged into.

Mine does it too ... it is a low voltage warning, I think, so when the pump is pulling down the power the inverter says I can't or I am getting close to not working.

If your laptop has a battery, you can power on, of course.

Could be a problem if you were running the bread maker (say).

Ciao for now
Andrew.

Ozdyssey,

It sounds completely normal. It is a very annoying beep i know :P

You say it only beeps when you run the water pump, im going to assume that your water pump is also running off the inverter? If it is then you are simply pushing your 150w limit on the inverter.

Your laptop will be drawing about 75w @240v because of efficiencys with the inverter its probably using about 90w (guess). So running the water pump would most likely just bump you over that 150w limit..

One thing you can try is, to remove your laptop battery from the laptop it should run then... Because its not using the charging current used to charge your laptop battery.

If the water pump is just hooked up to the 12v battery feeding the inverter it is possible that its dropping the voltage too low for the inverter to opperate. Since voltage will drop or lower when you are drawing a high current.. Have a fiddle around mate, but it sounds normal to me ;-)

Justin

Yeah mine does the same thing when there's not enough power to run it or it's been overloaded.

My inverter has also given the low voltage squeal.
One factor worth checking is the gauge of the wire used to power the inverter.
A 150w inverter is drawing around 12 amps, and this requires a fairly heavy wire, to avoid voltage loss. (3 way fridges draw around the same current).
The longer the distance to the battery, the greater the resistance and hence voltage drop. So - wire your inverter input with 13smm cable, and assuming the battery is of sufficient capacity, the problem may dissapear.

Have a look at Collyn RiversSite, in particular 'Electrics - Wiring woes'. This gives the formulea to calculate size of wire, for current draw.

regards.............Keith.

Hi Ozdyssey,

What size battery is fitted to the camper ?

Perhaps you should upgrade the amp hours and also the wire size between the inverter and the battery.

Regards Derek.