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One of the less obvious effects of rising gasoline prices is on the cost of remote power generation for field crews. Gasoline-powered electric generators have been a popular solution in the past, but the fuel crunch has many fleets considering a competing technology. The benefits of lower fuel use, lower emissions and no noise has made power inverters a growth area as fleet manager’s search for smarter and more efficient mobile power sources.
For fleet purposes, power inverters represent any technology that draws on the DC electrical current of a vehicle’s battery and converts it to AC current to operate electronics and other equipment. Anyone who has ever recharged his or her phone or laptop by plugging it into the cigarette lighter of a car or truck has used this technology.
But power inverters can be taken further to operate even more power-hungry equipment such as power tools, lighting, refrigeration units and even electrofusion welding equipment. As the power demand (measured in watts) increases, the solution requires more complex equipment and more substantial alterations to the vehicle, but the principle is the same.
To give a sense of scale, the cigarette lighter in your average car or truck is rated to provide up to 300 watts, said Alex Hsu, director of sales for power inverter manufacturer Wagan Corp., Hayward, Calif. That’s sufficient to operate most consumer electronics, such as laptop computers, televisions, camcorders, etc.
Richard Gaudet, director of marketing and product development for Xantrex Technology, Burnaby, B.
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C., Canada, another inverter supplier, points out that there also is a very high demand for the ability to recharge cordless power tools and operate cord-connected power tools remotely.
Anything drawing more than 300 watts requires a more direct connection to the vehicle battery. Typically, a power cable connects the vehicle’s battery to an outlet that can be mounted somewhere on the vehicle (under one of the seats or in a truck bed are popular locations).
The next tier of inverter equipment comes into play around 1,000 watts, Hsu said.
At that size, Wagan recommends upgrading the alternator in the vehicle to handle the increased power output level. The company also recommends one or more separate batteries dedicated to AC power output, often called isolator auxiliary batteries.
Wagan produces products that can provide up to 8,000 watts, which would be required for applications such as freezers and refrigeration units (for a fleet of ice cream trucks, for example), or water filtration units for live seafood delivery.
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