That could be an issue. If that is a 20 foot jumper cable, thats a 40 foot run of 4 gauge wire. My online calculator estimate puts your voltage drop over 2v.
Oh, i only used 20foot in my estimate⊠your right itâs double. but i still came out 1v. my estimate is still probably off. i used 0.2485mΩ/ft * 40 * 1000 * 100A = 0.99v hmm.
regardless I think this will just improve the wattage i can get no? which i alraedy got 1000w through it. and the lonestar charger is tripping at 550w. ⊠maybe if thereâs. a micro burst of 1200w, and I have better cabling i could survive it. ⊠worth a test. that was on my todo, but better connection is a bunch more work.
Yeah thatâs tough to explain. Have you used a watt meter to check how much the lonestar charger is actually drawing?
no. i have no watt/ammeter type equipment. might be worth getting something? or is anything good super expensive?
Iâm just using the wattage display on the inverter. i donât see it spike when watching it and the event happens. but who knows what kind time resolution it has. you can see it visibly step up over like maybe 1s intervals or slightly less but that could also be the behavior of the load.
I have a neat clamp meter i use for that type of stuff, or you can get super cheap watt meters, but youâd need to put it inline.
Watt meters are great, and cheap, you should definitely invest if you like science.
I got a small 238wh 600w battery+inverter. BLUETTI EB3A
ran the lonestar charger off it. it pulled ~375 watts off it for a bit under an hour and never tripped it.
the 357w was reported by the bluetti.
note quite the ~500 watts was reported on the ampeak 1200w inverter.
presumably because battery is charged more. so iâll have to repeat the experiment when itâs drained more again.
but it might mean that the bluetti inverter can handles somethign that that the ampeak canât. or something to do with the power sources.
oh this is wrong. this was a trick. I accidentally had the EB3Aâs âpower liftingâ mode on. whoâs documentation is very sparse. âincreased power for resistive loadsâ
with âpower liftingâ disabled the lonestar charger jumped to 630watts before overloading the EB3A which promptly shut off itâs AC circuit.
turns out i had a âkill-a-wattâ meter lying around.
the EB3A in âpower liftingâ mode was outputting 75v⊠oh⊠so âpower lifting modeâ gives more heat for resistive loads like heaters/kettels. interesting the lonestar charger took that power and actually charged at a lower wattage.
this kill-a-watt also displays a power factor.
iâve yet to fully understand what this means. I think itâs something like how much the AC loadâs peak current is out of phase with itâs peak voltage. power factor of 1 being in phase. not sure what this means to inverters. maybe it means it has a peak current thatâs being hit at a lower voltage and so lower wattage but still hitting a current limit.
so. using the kill-a-watt measurements with wall power:
lonestar charger at 550w PF 0.69
lipo charger and power supply at 850w PF 0.99 (lipo charger said input wattage was less. )
prototipo charger (some generic 12s 5a) at 330w PF of 0.69
will try these same things again on the inverter when i get a chance.