300 watt Giandel Pure Sine Wave Inverter Review

[Inq720]

I know this isn't really a common Inverter size for most people on this forum. Someone might find it useful.

Got the 300 watt Giandel pure sine wave inverter in and wanted to test it. The premise was that if it really got 95% efficiency running low wattage items (< 100w) I could justify having this for small loads and a 1500 watt Inverter for the short duration/high wattage items.


The test uses...

• a deep-cycle battery
• running through the capacity tester Will recommends to measure DC watt hours drawn from the battery
• through the Giandel Inverter
• through a Wemo Insight Smart Plug to measure AC watt hours used.
• To a load using several light bulbs

The Wemo Insight is a marginally accurate device which fluctuates quite a bit. Instead of trying to get an instantaneous reading I ran the tests over many hours so that those numbers can be averaged using the watt-hours tallied over the runtime of the test. Makes for a far more accurate test. Also... the Wemo draws some power to report and Bluetooth that information to the Android app. In a separate test, I determined its usage rate at 1.78 watts.

Results

1. At 71 watts load, I measure 85.2% efficiency. IOW, it uses 83.3 watts from the battery.
2. 144 watts, 85.9%
3. 279 watts, 90.5%

Summary

• The lowest wattage efficiency was disappointing... in that marketing literature says "up to" 95% efficient. I was counting on a relative high efficiency at sub 100w rates to justify having two inverters. I will know better once I test these numbers against the 1500 watt Inverter.
• The good aspect, the Inverter was dead quite below 100 watt usage. The fan does not come on till over 100watts. It uses passive cooling. The case leveled out at 95°F.
• Above, 100 watts, the fan comes on and eats into the Inverter's efficiency. The fan is not loud, but I really don't have another Inverter to compare. I'd say its about as quiet as a desktop power supply fan. The case temperature drops to 78°F once the fan is going.

 

[snoobler]

That's really good.

If it makes you feel any better, my $2000 Victron 48/5kW is about 65% efficient at 71W.

 

[HaldorEE]

I know this isn't really a common Inverter size for most people on this forum. Someone might find it useful.

Got the 300 watt Giandel pure sine wave inverter in and wanted to test it. The premise was that if it really got 95% efficiency running low wattage items (< 100w) I could justify having this for small loads and a 1500 watt Inverter for the short duration/high wattage items.

View attachment 31870
The test uses...

• a deep-cycle battery
• running through the capacity tester Will recommends to measure DC watt hours drawn from the battery
• through the Giandel Inverter
• through a Wemo Insight Smart Plug to measure AC watt hours used.
• To a load using several light bulbs

The Wemo Insight is a marginally accurate device which fluctuates quite a bit. Instead of trying to get an instantaneous reading I ran the tests over many hours so that those numbers can be averaged using the watt-hours tallied over the runtime of the test. Makes for a far more accurate test. Also... the Wemo draws some power to report and Bluetooth that information to the Android app. In a separate test, I determined its usage rate at 1.78 watts.

Results

1. At 71 watts load, I measure 85.2% efficiency. IOW, it uses 83.3 watts from the battery.
2. 144 watts, 85.9%
3. 279 watts, 90.5%

Summary

• The lowest wattage efficiency was disappointing... in that marketing literature says "up to" 95% efficient. I was counting on a relative high efficiency at sub 100w rates to justify having two inverters. I will know better once I test these numbers against the 1500 watt Inverter.
• The good aspect, the Inverter was dead quite below 100 watt usage. The fan does not come on till over 100watts. It uses passive cooling. The case leveled out at 95°F.
• Above, 100 watts, the fan comes on and eats into the Inverter's efficiency. The fan is not loud, but I really don't have another Inverter to compare. I'd say its about as quiet as a desktop power supply fan. The case temperature drops to 78°F once the fan is going.

Up to means the very best condition. Kinda like when you see a sale in a store and they say "Up to 70% off". Except the only thing that is 70% off is the Orange Tuxedo in size XXS or XXXL.

All DC-DC or DC-AC converter efficiency ratings suffer when lightly loaded.

For DC-DC the delta between voltages makes a difference. Another thing to watch out for is increased noise when input voltage is the same as the output voltage. The converter goes into a discontinuous mode (basically starts stuttering) when this happens and that creates additional electrical noise.