Hi,
I would like to purchase an inverter for our guard house (just to power some lights, gate/intercom and possibly electric fence). Do I need a pure sine wave inverter or can I get away with just a normal sine wave? Like this: Link
I saw a similar inverter above at Builders warehouse and it has a switch for 10A or 20A charging so I assume it can handle lithium batteries as well?
Other than if the gate motor runs directly of AC I don’t think any of the other consumers will have an issue with modified sine wave.
I have seen some online reports that the particular inverter (lobo) might have an increased risk to suffer damage with lithium batteries because the fan does not come on during charging if the load was fairly light while inverting.
This might be an option?
Dare I suggest that a DC option would win hands down??
Very good point. DC lights, gate, fence from 12V with a good lithium and charged from AC or small PV setup.
The motor is a Centurion D10 and I see the specs say its 24v DC… so I should be ok?
Can something like this Kapa unit be linked into a DB board?
All you need is to keep the battery charged. (you don’t need 220V actually)
should be yes
Those Centurion motors usually have a power supply that is insufficient to run the motor on its own, it needs the battery to handle the high current levels. So if you have a solution that keeps the battery charged, that’s going to be sufficient.
Electric fence typically has very small energy demands (maybe 30W-40W at most), and they typically have a small backup battery, so the same would apply here.
12V LED lamps from the local 4x4 or outdoor place to round it off.
Do include a 5V cell phone charger socket too. Your security guards probably have a phone that needs charging, it costs very little and makes their life easier.
With all that said, I would lean towards a small Lithium power pack, like the low end Ecoflow models or the one @_a_a_a linked. It has the option of running DC lights directly, and you have the small inverter which means you don’t have to hack into any of the rest of the equipment or install new wiring.
Thanks for all the advice - I will go for the Kapa unit and maybe add a solar panel later on.
@plonkster thanks for the tip on the cell charger - definitely will do that as well.
I assume I can get the Kapa unit connected to the DB board?
I mean once just needs to look to future-proofing. For my guard house, I put in a Multiplus 48/5000 with a UP5000 battery. Looking to add the panels shortly.
At one hell of a price!
Well, not going to be paying much for power from Eskom. Looking at it long term.
I guess it also depends on how big the complex is… ours is only 14 units so the budget is around R18k including installation.
Just want to confirm (if anyone knows)… can the Kapa be connected directly into the DB Board?
I seriously doubt you can connect it to a DB-board. But for the mentioned application… would you want to? How big is this guard house anyway… your standard 4 square meter room with a desk?
Yes it’s about that size though the reason I need something connected is that we have street lamps (the lights I mentioned) that we power from here which are on a lights circuit… and I think the gate motor/intercom is fed directly from the db board inside as well (not a 3 pin plug). I think only the energizer is a 3 pin plug.
In that case you probably want to first record how much power you actually need before buying something. Street lights can use much more power than you might anticipate.
There are 8 of them with 5w LED bulbs in (normal home bulbs) so I calculated it at 40w