deep cycle battery and inverter...

Depending on the size battery (cca), you can probably get a few hours out of a good battery.

You can absolutely do this, but...
You will need to know :
1) What are the specs on the stove (electrical specs like max current draw/wattage)
2) The size of your inverter
3) The amp hour rating of your battery

My guess is that you are going to need to parallel a couple of batteries together to get a decent run time.

It all depends on the size of the battery (cca), the condition/charge of the battery, inverter, and load on the system. Inverters are inefficient and the battery is an unknown. Assuming it's an average deep cycle battery (charged), feeding a pellet stove that doesn't suck a lot of power (such as your P38), I'd guess you could go 12 hours or so, maybe more if you keep the blower low. There's a lot of variables and unknowns here.

I have customers who have done this. I know the Europa we sell (only a 12 volt system) Can run 15-20 hours on a deep cycle battery. If the math works out (the Europa uses about 75% less electricity than a typical pellet stove. 25 watts per hour on low) I'm guessing 4-6 hours for a typical stove?

that's what I have as a back-up. my battery is a group 27 deep cycle and my inverter is a 1000 watt with a battery charger built into the inverter. I ran the stove for a while on the battery but didn't run it until it didn't run any more. it does work. the only thing I would worry about is running a stove like a Harman which need to run on pure sine what I read that stove wouldn't work.

Like rcbss said, the concern with a lot of the inverters is that they aren't a "pure" sine wave. My understanding, and I have talked to a number of electrical/ instrument/ electronic people about this, is that the electronics are fine with the "modified" sine wave. What will bite ya about this, is that your regular old electric motors, (auger, fans) will get killed in short order on a modified sine. Most inverters out there put out a modified sine.

take the $$ your going to spend on the Battery and inverter and buy you a 2k-3k watt generator for a couple hundred bucks and be done with it.

Clay H said:

take the $$ your going to spend on the Battery and inverter and buy you a 2k-3k watt generator for a couple hundred bucks and be done with it.

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I agree. By the time you buy the deep cycle battery (or 2), plus the SINE WAVE inverter (I would NOT take a chance burning out motors/electronics), you can buy a nice little 1000w genny.

And the genny can be used for other things besides the stove (camping, working outside w/ electrical tools far from house, etc, etc).

Ghettontheball said:

hossthehermit said:

Like rcbss said, the concern with a lot of the inverters is that they aren't a "pure" sine wave. My understanding, and I have talked to a number of electrical/ instrument/ electronic people about this, is that the electronics are fine with the "modified" sine wave. What will bite ya about this, is that your regular old electric motors, (auger, fans) will get killed in short order on a modified sine. Most inverters out there put out a modified sine.

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its only needed for emergency,duh

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It's Maine, pook, emergencies last more than 10 MINUTES

THis is a very easy question to answer.

Power=Current multiplied by Voltage and is expressed as P=IV

So you take the average power your stove consumes and divide it by the output voltage from the inverter you get current. This calculation is for a True Sinewave inverter, not modified Sinewave.

So if your stove uses 500 watts of power on average, you divide by 120 and get 4.16 amps.

Todays inverters are about 90 percent efficient so you add 10 percent to the current an get about 4.4 amps.

When you run 12 volts ac through a 1:10 transformer you get the voltage at one end 12 volts multiplied by 10 to get 120 volts, and the current is divided by 10

So if you go the other way to look at power consumption you have to step up the current by a factor of 10 so you get 40.4 amps

you take the AH(amp hour) rating of the battery. NOT CCA(cold cranking amps), which have nothing to do with long time power numbers but only how much current the battery can produce in seconds.

So if your battery is 80AH or 80 Amp Hours your battery should last you around 2 hours.

My stove only uses 250 watts on average so the numbers are different.

Good luck

I use 6V golf cart batteries to power mine... They are designed to be drained and then recharged... Our houseboat has 8 of them for a 3000W inverter and will run lights, TV's, two refrigerators and 1 ice maker for 6 hours before needing to be recharged... My home inverter is the Harman Surefire 512V and I rewire my golf cart to 12V and use the 6 batteries on it and it ran my stove 10 hours and if I needed could probably go another 2 hours before recharging...
I'm lucky, my golf cart sits in the basement directly under my stove, all I did was drill a hole in the floor next to the stove and run a cord down to it...

i have a power inverter in my Jeep and if I lose power (has only happened a couple times in years) I'll use it as a mini generator. I'll hook up a long extension cord to run my sump pump and to keep my fridge cold. I could probably also keep the pellet stove going with it.

Ghettontheball said:

mjbrown65 said:

my dad was asking me this a couple hrs ago, so i said i would come here and ask. he has an inverter...why , i dont know, still new in the box, and boat battery...thats all i know

thanx

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i bet the boat battery is not a pure deep cycle battery but a combo battery which would have a shorter life & i could be way off on my guess. seems the critical factor is the AMP HOURS of the battery

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DING...DING..DING...DING.....give that man a prize

check #6

Hi, there. New to this forum and to pellet stoves. (Don't actually even have the stove yet, eagerly waiting for delivery.) But I wondered about what I would do if my power failed and was wondering what others do. If you don't do battery back-up, where do you put a generator so you can hook up to it? Out back of the house and run an extension cord through a window?

If you want to use a generator, your best best is to buy one the appropriate size to run your whole house and have a transfer switch installed by an electrician. This separates the power the generator provides from the line so that as they are working on the line, they can't get electrocuted. Also, it uses your existing home wiring with no need for extension cords.

http://www.amazon.com/Reliance-Cont...ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1255264094&sr=8-1

If you want to go the silent route for a few hours of run with batteries, your best bet is a true sine wave inverter and a large sealed lead acid battery similiar to the ones below.

http://www.amazon.com/Sunforce-1124...ef=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1255264201&sr=8-2-fkmr0

and

http://www.batterywholesale.com/battery-store/viewcat.html?thecatID=9

I'm not that sure of the amperage demands of pellet stoves-- but I will observe that it seems like you can sometimes find computer-grade "uninterruptible power supplies" (U.P.S.-es) that are being discarded from office situations either because some larger server was installed, requiring a larger UPS, or at times because the internal batteries lost gusto with age. I've gotten several simply for being willing to take them away. If the battery is tired, pop in a new battery (which you can get over the 'net without paying the premium that you would for the "official" part) and you not only have an inverter, but a charger- and automatic switching circuitry to change from utility power to backup mode.

pybyr said:

I'm not that sure of the amperage demands of pellet stoves-- but I will observe that it seems like you can sometimes find computer-grade "uninterruptible power supplies" (U.P.S.-es) that are being discarded from office situations either because some larger server was installed, requiring a larger UPS, or at times because the internal batteries lost gusto with age. I've gotten several simply for being willing to take them away. If the battery is tired, pop in a new battery (which you can get over the 'net without paying the premium that you would for the "official" part) and you not only have an inverter, but a charger- and automatic switching circuitry to change from utility power to backup mode.

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How does this setup work for you? I have a few decent sized ups and when I tried to use them to run the stove, they just beeped at me.

Mark