Can a 12v Power inverter run a 10amp or bigger Air Compressor, at 100% duty cycle?
Friday, September 9th, 2011 at
4:52 am
I want to run an air Compressor out of my truck but i dont want to have to buy the expensive gas powered ones. and the standard 12v air Compressor dont have the output i need for the job, being pneumatic tools and what not…
Tagged with: 12v air compressor • job • pneumatic tools
Filed under: buy air compressor
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If it is a 120 volt compressor @ 10 amps that is 1200 watts so, it is going to draw roughly 1200 watts/12 volts or about 100 amps from the battery. it won’t be exactly this amount, depending on the effeciency of the inverter and other factors, but it will be a sizable load and you might find you need to get a jump start when you want to go home! If you only need the gas-powered compressor short term, maybe you can borrow or rent one.
You would have to get a fairly powerful inverter, and I’ve never seen one. However, with that much load, it would drain the battery in your truck quickly, you’d have to set up an auxiliary battery system in your truck. My guess would be that by the time you got the inverter, and the auxiliary battery set up, you would probably be better off buying the gas powered compressor.
You are looking to power an air compressor that runs on 120 volts and uses 10 amps. The 12 volt inverter would require over 100 amps from the truck’s electrical system. I’ve never seen an inverter that big. It would kill your truck’s battery rather quickly if the truck wasn’t running and even if your truck was running, the alternator is probably not rated for 100 amps. For these two reasons inverters are not made that big. You might consider a portable generator rated at 1,500 watts to power the air compressor.