I just purchased some lights, and I'm planning on using a marine battery and inverter. However, I never see anything listed on Zapp midwest events related to if these batteries and inverters are allowed or not.
I'm going to assume if nothings mentioned - then there's no problem! Is this correct?
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Well I'm going to purchase River Portable Power Station and hope it gets me at least eight hours with my 8.7amp draw. I may consider getting there solar 50W chargers a later time. This unit seemed to be a bit more powerful than the Anker PowerHouse.
I'm very surprised to learn that a light dimmer won't work with a portable power station setup. I had all eight bulbs feeding into one dimmer controller.
Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions!!
I have done severel differnt setups. One of which I wrote about, on here a while ago, in some detail. It used two dimmers as I had the lights separated into two banks. No problems using the dimmers, at all.
Many different variants also ie rheostat, dimmer variac...
As long as inverters have a sine wave output or a multistep square wave, a dimmer will work. The inexpensive inverters, "modified sine wave", are typically a square waveform with a little delay between positive and negative excursions. Those won't work with a dimmer beyond on or off.
Hmm, so if I call their support number - what exactly should I ask them about their built in inverter in relation to if it works with my ProPanels dimmer?
Otis, I hope you were able to get your information. I didn't mean to cut you short. I had to listen to the Mistake of the Union address.
Larry,
Yeah, I'm GOOD! Again thanks for your insight.
The person speaking at SOTU is a complete joke IMO
Exactly what Robert wrote. He is correct about the sine wave. It may be listed on the spec.
Can't reply more now--- the liar in chief is about to speak SOTU
Agreed, buy quality and should not have aproblem. When it comes to electricity, quality is important. When talking the situations encountered in art show booths, efficiency is very imortant. Efficiency in weight, size, current loss etc. All those things are tied to quality. Unfortunately quality cost $$$$$$$
I have two set ups; two large boat batteries and a 300 watt inverter. I've found that wiring the batteries together in parallel improves the battery life before they run down. The heavier the drain, the less a/h capacity the batteries will deliver. Tying them together in parallel reduces the drain on each battery by half, and you get longer discharge time. The drawback is that they are heavy but they do make excellent tent weights, and they will run the entire weekend powering lights and fans.
The other battery pack is a lithium ion pack that weighs less than 10 pounds and is self contained with inverter, USB outputs for charging, and a 12V outlet. Pricey as hell, $500 although they occasionally are on sale for $400. It will run my lights and fans for about 6-8 hours before it runs down. It does have a digital % of charge left indicator and you can selectively turn off parts of your load to make it to the end of the day if need be. It recharges in a few hours and is easy to carry out of a show. It's called the Anker Power Station, available on Amazon.
Robert.
Nice setup. But how do you use the batteries as tent weights? Unless they are both used for the same corner post? You nsaid they are set in parallel. Otherwise you need some heavy guage, good conductors for your wiring from batery to battery, so as not to have too much line loss.
Or we could just get the shows to work on Tesla's ideas and send us all juice throught the earth :-)
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