Pure sine wave inverter quality (from automobile) for lithium ion charging

[harrymanimus]

I have 2 products. An inverter for my car, and an EcoFlow Delta Portable Power Station. My goal here is to charge my EcoFlow Delta (also have a Pro version on order) from the car inverter in a non detrimental way to the life of the EcoFlow product or battery.

Inverter Product:

Handy Power X HPX1530INVCBLBG Power Source 1500W/3000W

Description Specifications WHY BUY A GAS INVERTER or GENERATOR WHEN 3/4 OF ONE IS SITTING INYOUR DRIVEWAY RIGHT NOW - YOUR VEHICLE.Add the weather resistant HPX to the vehicle you already own, and together, they will give you 1500watts running (3000watts starting) of pure, AC power without the...

handypowerx.com

PSW, THD listed as 3% or less
This inverter is a 60-0-60 split phase.

I bought a Liumy Waveform Wultimeter so I could inspect the wave and ensure it is not a modified sine wave.

Pics below of inverter wave. Thoughts on what the sine wave is showing? Does this look like < 3% THD? Is this bad to use for any types of products?

I have another related post to this here, where I was trying to figure out how to run my central heat with my EcoFlow box with some related posts for the inverter. I have whole home (120v only) working now off my EcoFlow, I'll add that to the old post.

Inverters - bonded/floating ground and reversed hot/neutral

I have two products with inverters that failed to run my home furnace during the Feb winter storm. I had to run a small space heater which was just passable to keep our bedrooms in the 50s. I was super close to being ‘hero level prepared’, but no cigar. After some research, I determined that...

diysolarforum.com

Inverter Powering Nothing:


Inverter Powering Space Heater:



Inverter Powering EcoFlow 1.1kw draw:


Inverter Powering EcoFlow 767w draw:

 

[dweick]

Why waste money on an inverter and waste power converting to 120VAC from 12VDC and then back to DC in the EcoFlow, just charge the EcoFlow directly from your car's 12VDC. Slower but don't know what you are trying to accomplish.

Not sure of your use case, generally using a car and its big motor to generate electricity from the inverter is very inefficient. Go buy a gas generator and skip the $399 inverter

 

[harrymanimus]

I want to use my EcoFlow at home for emergencies, and at a remote cabin. I'm not going to lug a gas generator and gas cans around for that and deal with maintenance of it. I do have solar at my cabin, but it still needs charging from time to time.

I'd like to run my auto as little as possible for the charging application. Don't want to have it running 18 hours (car charging adapter takes this long) a day. Likely 24 hours in an emergency situation. My EcoFlow will charge off AC in around 1hr.

The inverter was $179 when I bought it, but I'd gladly pay more if needed to get around the need for a gas generator.

 

[HRTKD]

I can't speak to your funky sine wave output. But it sure doesn't look very clean to me.

Regarding the suggestion to go with direct DC charging, the EcoFlow is optimized for 120 Vac charging.

Charge from 0%-80% within 1 hour: EcoFlow patent X-Stream Technology empowers EcoFlow DELTA to recharge at 10 times the speed of most battery powered stations in the market.

Fast charge via solar and car: EcoFlow DELTA can be fully recharged by solar panels in about 4 hours, and fully charged through a 12/24V car port < 10 hours.

Amps are amps. It's going to take more amps to charge through the inverter due to inverter inefficiencies. Direct DC charging would require fewer overall amps, but like you said, the vehicle would have to run for many hours.

 

[harrymanimus]

Perhaps I should buy an inverter known to be good quality like Xantrex or some other brand and do some testing with that?

The solar inputs will take 65v and 10amps. I've read about step up converters to 64v. Not sure about that solution. If I maxed out the solar port it would still take 4 hours.

 

[HRTKD]

The specs say the Delta will use 1300 watts for the 120 Vac charging method. 1300 watts / 12 volts * 1.15 (inverter inefficiency) = 124 amps on the DC side. Can your vehicle's alternator handle that many amps? Will your cabling handle that many amps?

 

[harrymanimus]

The specs say the Delta will use 1300 watts for the 120 Vac charging method. 1300 watts / 12 volts * 1.15 (inverter inefficiency) = 124 amps on the DC side. Can your vehicle's alternator handle that many amps? Will your cabling handle that many amps?

So the Delta appears to monitor the input and back off when tolerances are getting close to what it can't take. It starts low, upping the watts and then stops upping the watts. It appears it will stop based on a voltage drop, maybe. Toward the end of the charge it ramps down, assuming to keep battery cool.

From a wall outlet it will pull 1300w. I've tested it on 2 vehicles a Chevy Traverse, and a Ford Fusion. With the Traverse seems to max out at 1.1kw. With the Fusion, close to 1kw. Both were successful at charging the Delta.

With the Delta Pro (on order), there is an app you set the max watts to charge at.

The inverter has very thick cables.

Not sure what to make of the cleaner looking sine wave at 1.1kw than at 700w.