What Should I look for when buying an off grid inverter?

No.1 Waveform of the off grid inverter

There are mainly two types of inverters on the market---modified sine wave and pure sine wave. Modified sine and pure sine wave refers the waveform at AC output of the inverter. A pure sine wave inverter has a very low THD, it is designed to match the grid.The pure sine wave inverter has a cleaner output, lower THD than the grid. On the contrary, the modified sine wave inverter is a little bit noisy, has choppy waveform and it may negatively effect how your appliances work for long round. If you want to power your inductive load and expensive appliances, pure sine wave inverter is always the best choice. If you are in an extreme budget, the modified sine wave inverter is cheaper to make half of the cost than the pure sine.

No.2 Rated power and surge power
Each inverter is rated by output watt. There are a continuous wattage rating and surge wattage rating. For example, if you have a 1000W continuous power inverter. If you connect the continuous duty load, such as laptop chargers and lights, you cannot exceed the continuous wattage rating 1000W. This unit is also rated 3000W surge power, so if you are using this to power electric fan, motors or inductive loads or water pumps, you need that initial surge capacity to make sure that your appliances can be started. This is what you would look for when sizing you inverter. If you are not running large electric motors or water pumps, the power surge capacity is not that useful for you, you should probably  stick to the continuous power rating for your appliances.

No.3 Idle consumption
The standby consumption(Idle consumption) of inverters can be quite high when they are just left ‘ON’ with no loads attached for a long time, it will discharge you battery. It is better to choose a inverter with low standby consumption. The more money you spend on the high quality inverter, the lower the Idle consumption is. For users in Vans or RVs, we would recommend you to buy an inverter with remote ON/OFF switch,you only have to do is plug to the inverter and wire this up to your living area and you can turn your inverter ON/OFF. It is crucial to save your battery power.

No.4 DC input terminal and DC battery cable

The quality inverter has large terminal that you can connect to large gauge wire. Because the connection cable from the battery to the inverter are going to be the large conductor in your system, so it is needed to be large and strong. Use pure copper cable and choose the proper size for the input terminal. Most of the problem people have with the off grid inverter is because they were not use the pure copper cable or they were not use the proper size lug. If you power large continuous loads all day long, you need to oversize these cables, ensure these are very large, high quality, always use the proper size of the lug.