There may be times where you need to use your power inverter for extended periods of time or you need to draw a lot of power from the inverter. This may cause a common battery in your vehicle to drain relatively quick. This can be overcome by letting the car run, but then you are wasting fuel!
The easiest solution to this problem for most cases is to upgrade your vehicles battery from a traditional automotive battery to a deep cycle battery like used in the marine industry. These batteries are designed to go long periods of time without charging and can be drawn down to 50% or below in power and still come back to a full charge without damaging the battery. The cost of these may be greater than your standard battery at the parts store but it could be the difference between getting extended power with your power inverter and cutting your electronic use short or worse; your car not starting! We advise getting a battery that actually has a higher CCA than your original and has as much power as possible. Check with your local battery retailer for the best brand or style for your vehicle.
The second solution (especially if you’re using power inverter often) is to have multiple batteries wired in parallel for your inverter use only. The banks of batteries will generate twice as many amps or hours of use as a single battery and three batteries will generate three times as many as one and on and on. By wiring your extra car batteries in parallel you will lengthen the time before your batteries will need to be recharged, giving you a longer run time of electronics when using a power inverter. Wiring multiple batteries is very simple. We suggest getting battery cable and terminal clamps from the autoparts store for the connections first. You then daisy chain the positive terminals together and do the same with the negative terminals. A cable then comes off of the positive and negative terminals of the last battery and go to the inverter. For safety we suggest installing an inline fuse just before the inverter. You could make a hidden cabinet or box to keep all of the batteries in a camper or trailer and you can charge with a traditional battery charger in between uses. This will save your vehicle battery and give you extended hours of power!
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