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Anonymous Posted on Aug 04, 2010

Can I back feed through my inverter from a generator to charge my batteries?

  • Anonymous Aug 04, 2010

    No what it is is a customer (we do minor RV work) had a DC to AC power inverter from his battery source. Simply, but he thought he could hook up his generator to the AC side of Inverter and back feed into the system to charge the batteries and run the 120VAC. I told him it was a bad bad thing to back feed through an inverter but of course he insists its fine.

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Anonymous

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  • Master 1,340 Answers
  • Posted on Aug 04, 2010
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What does it invert?Higher voltage to lower or what?Either way,with 1200 watts being inverted,it is not a good idea to charge a battery with that kind of power.Batteries need to be charged low and slow.We are talking milliamps for hours.Fast charging a battery results in a very good chance of explosion,which is never good.Acid from the battery will go everywhere.

  • Anonymous Aug 04, 2010

    LOL.Tell him if he does it,have a neighbor or friend or spouse stand by,at least 100 feet away,with 911 on redial.

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3 Related Answers

nitrospawn

Ibe Chukwudi

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  • Posted on Mar 31, 2010

SOURCE: When my batteries run low on power the generator

please check the voltage your generator is supplying to the to the inverter because a high voltage and frequency can make the relays in the inverter to make clicking sounds,and also do not allow your inverter batteries to run completely low before you charge it

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Silverdragon

electronic & computer repair& servicre

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  • Posted on Aug 20, 2010

SOURCE: We are in Haiti, our

Hi, well you see this happened because the "Load" on the Inverter was more than it could handle. You see the Inverter senses the resistance of the batteries to determine how flat they are and how much current to put into the batteries, if anything else is connected to said batteries, that will simply muck up the sensing,and as has happened in your case destroyed the inverter.
I have serviced many inverters and the most likely failure that would emit sparks etc is failed output semiconductors.
One cannot really use an inverter to charge the batteries, like you did, UNLESS the batteries were completely isolated from the Generators wiring, and even then, your inverter, still may not have enough power to do this. As this is NOT what it was designed for.
Really an inverter is used to step up the Voltage from 12/24 Volts DC, batteries to 120/230 V AC.
Now again, one could use it, to then have a Battery Charger plugged into that, and use the output from the battery charger to charge some "Other" batteries, but that seems a bit roundabout.
Yes the Inverter will charge it's OWN batteries, BUT ONLY if that is the ONLY thing connected to the inverter.

Fred Yearian

  • 5603 Answers
  • Posted on Jul 18, 2011

SOURCE: I want to plug in

The laws of physics dictate that at each energy convertion loss will occur. In fact the loss trying to get wind to generate energy to charge is highly inefficient. To do resarch on this search google for "perpetual motion machines". You will see that the laws of physics will not crate free energy this way. You might get 1 amp at most from a generator while the inverter is drawing 20 amps from the battery.

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