Thor Forums

[Chance]

Originally Posted by leshunter

Will this power Inverter work in an Axis 24.1 to power the TV by running an extension cord to the front cigarette lighter when not connected to power or using the generator and if so how long before could I use a TV without damaging the battery? Thanks-See description below.

"Your RadioShack 140 Watt DC to AC Power Inverter converts 12-volt
vehicle battery power into 115 volts of AC power. You can use your inverter
in your vehicle to operate a TV, VCR, portable computer, lights
for emergency or campsite use, power tools, and many other devices.
The power inverter works with the vehicle engine turned on or off. It
provides a continuous output of up to 140 watts, and sustains a temporary
output of 180 watts for about 5 minutes. It can “cold start” a load
up to 240 watts, and provides the 300 watts (1 cycle @ 60 Hz) of surge
start-up power required by most personal computer monitors and TVs"

You don't mention specifics, so I will only mention a few concerns to investigate.

Most new TVs use little power, so yours may fall within the 140 watt rating. You can either check the TVs' actual power draw, look it up in specs, or look on back where most TVs list the power requirement.

If your front cigarette lighter is powered from chassis battery (i.e. -- engine starting battery), I would not connect TV to that battery unless engine was running.

If a TV was using 100 watts, as an example, the inverter would likely require at least 10 Amps at 12 Volts from battery. Therefore, if you start out with a typical 80 to 100 Amp-hour fully-charged battery, you'll only get 3 to 4 hours of TV watching before it approaches 50% of available charge. That assumes nothing else is running.

Bottom line is that there are a lot of variables. TV rating, inverter efficiency, battery capacity, what else may be running, etc... If you can post some of these it may be possible to give you a better answer.

In my opinion, for the typical RV the TV will run a few hours before it runs the "one" house battery down to around 50%. If you are expecting 10 to 20 hours I don't think that's likely.