I would not run them at near full rated for extensive periods of time. The ones I have have been used up to 2/3rds for several hours while heating water (2000w HW element on a 3kW AIO) with other small loads like refrigerator and freezer operating. I have on 3 occasions exceeded max and forced overload conditions with out unit damage. My previous EAsun units (SRNE) had 1 year and 1-1/2 years on them before change out and they were still operating good. My present PowMr's (SRNE) are at 9mos and 4mos.
Thank you, this is an interesting data point.
My advice for what its worth is to operate at less than 1/2 rating as a normal load.
That is the plan, but I have few loads that might get to 90% of rares power. One is an induction hob if all 4 burners are on at max (unlikely), another two are a tankless water heater(severely limited) and a backup house heater (a wood pellet stove is the primary heat source).
If you need a unit that is going to be routinely abused buy Tier 1 type equipment.
I wonder, can running at close to rated power be considered abuse? I guess in these days it probably is.
Reliability is inversely related to operating temperature, so even with inverters that have been designed and tested for reliability by big name vendors, I would be uncomfortable running at 100% for very long.
Most of the year my inverters will be quite cold, (few degrees C), but during summer the temp might get to 30C.
Sorry, I have no idea what ‘very long’ is. An hour once a month I wouldn’t worry about, an hour a day I would.
Difficult to say, I'd say there may be a few (let's say up to 4)weeks in a year when it will be an hour a day.
But that’s just a gut feeling from someone who used to work in reliability. At the end of the day “you pay your money and you take your chances”, so it’s whatever you’re comfortable with.
It also depends how long your supply chains are, and your tolerance for failure modes. My stuff showed up over 10 weeks after I ordered it, so I can’t just order something off Amazon and install it tomorrow.
EASUN has pretty well equipped warehouse here in the EU. Of course disruption is always possible, but that's why I have two inverters.
Yes, I too think you get what you pay for, but up to a point. Let's say I knew this cheap inverter will fail in 1 year time with very high probability. It makes no sense to buy it. But if the time of failure extends to 2.5/3 years. Suddenly it makes sense. Even if you need to buy a new one every ~3 years. It costs a fifth of "tier 1".
So, the goal of this thread in a way is to find out where in the reliability spectrum these are.
