OK geeks: I need about 100 watts of CLEAN (sine wave) 120Vac power in my car. How?

[cvanc]

Need something that I can plug into a cigarette lighter outlet and power delicate electronics from. These electronics will greatly benefit from a clean, sine wave power source.

In an ideal world this will be small and cheap, too

I can probably get by with ~50 watts if that makes it easier. Anyone know of a solution? Thanks!

 

[MClark]

Buy a Chevy truck
It has a 110 VAC, 1.5 amp outlet
Since the world is not ideal it is about as far from cheap as possible

 

[Peartree]

Pure sine wave costs more, but Northern tool has some nice inverters for a lot less than the cost of a new truck...

https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/category_alternative-renewable-energy+power-inverters+pure-sinewave_0_0_P-Price?

If you only need a modified sine wave, it gets a LOT cheaper.

https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/category_alternative-renewable-energy+power-inverters+modified-sinewave_0_0_P-Price?

 

[les]

a clean, sine wave power source.

OK - I'll show my geekiness

How clean is clean? Ripple? Harmonic distortion? Spikes? Drop out? Frequency stability?

 

[XrayLizard]

Buy a Chevy truck
It has a 110 VAC, 1.5 amp outlet
Since the world is not ideal it is about as far from cheap as possible

Buy a Toyota FJ,
It has 120vac 100/400 Watt outlets.

 

[Fdog]

From the quality point of view, our mobile laboratory at work carries ~$260,000 worth of instrumentation, and it's hard wired with a Xantrex inverter. <shrugs> Certainly doesn't meet the small/inexpensive spec, though.

OTOH, we've had TrippLite inverters of a variety of sizes, and replaced them all for failures or poor performance.

I have a Go Power 150W that lives in our pickup truck, wasn't cheap, but no electrical appliance that's been connected to it has had issues. If I wasn't at work I'd go out and stick the Fluke on it to see how stable it is.

All the best, James

 

[cerving]

You'll probably have to pay at least $100 for a good inverter that outputs a true sine wave, the cheap ones put out a slightly rounded square wave. Depending on what you're plugging into it, it may or may not be an issue. Most computer power supplies are switching types, and can deal with the square wave input. Some of the inverter/UPS manufacturers actually consider this to be a "feature", because the square wave output has a higher average power than a sine wave output. If you have a mobile communications rig with a linear power supply, square wave inputs can fry the power transformer... buyer beware.

 

[Derek]

our new chrylser minivan has an ac outlet too. I doubt it is a "pure sine wave", though.