I have a Statpower Prowatt 1500 Inverter that will fire up for about 2 seconds with enough power to light up all my lights (At least 300 Watts) Then it shuts down with the overload light on.
I have replaced this unit with a prowatt 1750, as Xantrex has no repair facility or repair info available. I had hoped I would be able to some comparison checking to determine what is wrong with the old one, but they are too physically different.
Has anyone any info, even a block diagram of how the inverter works ? Especially the shut down circuit. Even a generic schematic might help. I dont think there can be much wrong, as it fires up for 2 seconds..
If you reduce the load to 100 W or even 50 W, does the inverter stay on for longer? If it uses sealed lead-acid batteries (gel cells), and the batteries are over 5 years old, they are most likely junk. Between 3 and
5 years old, they might be junk. Fortunately these batteries come in a standard-ish range of sizes from several manufacturers; I have had good luck with Panasonic and Power-Sonic gel cells.
If you're unsure about the battery, the simplest test is to disconnect it and measure its voltage. Around 6.3 V (6 V nominal) or 12.6 V (12 V nominal) is probably pretty good. Down to maybe 6.0 V or 12.0 V might be salvageable. If it's way lower than these, like less than 4.0 V or 8.0 V, the battery is junk. If you think the battery might be salvageable, hook it back up and leave the inverter plugged into the wall but not powering anything for a day. Then disconnect the battery again and check the voltage. If it came up significantly, there is hope, but if not, get some new batteries. You might try measuring the battery voltage while the inverter is starting; if it drops too low the inverter will shut itself off. This may be difficult to do in the short time you have; another test is to take the battery out of the UPS and load it with something like a car tail light bulb to see what the voltage does. The on-load voltage will always be a little less than the no-load voltage, but if you use a typical tail light bulb (about 2 A) and get 12.6 V no-load and less than about 11.5 V on load, the battery is probably toast.
Be careful when fooling with inverters; they are designed to make line/mains voltage at a fair amount of current.
the inverter i have will shutdown for several reasons including:
1) low input voltage
2) ground fault at the output
the ground fault is a strange one, the inverters actually produce a voltage on both the hot and netral output and if there is any fault form either the hot or neautral to the ground pin, the inverter will shut down, it does this by using a small resistor in series with the ground lead and if it senses any small voltage across this resiostor it will shut down.
I wold check the low voltage and ground fault sensing circuits.. Mark
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