Wildtrak 230v socket power consumption

[Elfrider]

Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone has any experience of roughly what impact the 230v internal inverter powered socket has on battery life when the engine isn't running. How long are we talking before it becomes a problem. Bit annoying that the ignition needs to be in accessory mode for it to work as it means turning on a load of other electrical items unnecessarily. 

Specifically talking about charging a laptop with a 130w charger, so quite close to the output limit. I know it has a low battery voltage cutoff but I'd rather avoid ever hitting this and then creating potential issues with starting the truck. 

Thanks.

 

[TomsFocus]

130w seems a lot for a laptop charger. That's more than a pair of halogen headlights.  Will be using around 10-15 amps per hour charging that with the ignition on if my maths is correct.

Modern laptops are more like 50w, so might be better off changing the laptop if that's an option.

[unofix]

Something seems a bit wrong. 🤔

[TomsFocus]

12 hours ago, unofix said:

Something seems a bit wrong. 🤔

Would you like to elaborate on that?  130w/12v = 11a. 

I was assuming the 230v inverter doesn't change the fact that it's a 12v battery and a 130w load but guessing that's where I've gone wrong?

[unofix]

Morning Tom, it's not you that I think is wrong 😀. I think something is  wrong with the 130W charger info.

Working on the assumption that we are talking about the actual laptop charger (let's just forget about the car inverter for just now) Then I'll work with the following:

Charger input is 230V AC and the charger output is 19.0V DC. If we take the OP's figure of the charger being rated at 130W, (which seems very high, I've just checked both my Sony and Dell chargers and they are 55W and 65W) Then we can come up with the following.

Laptop charger input current drawn = 130W/230V = approx 0.6 Amp

Laptop charger output current = 130W/19V = approx 6.9 Amp

If the concern that the OP has is that a 130W laptop charger is going to max out the vehicles inverter then working backwards:

Vehicles inverter input 12V DC and with an output load of (130W) 0.6A @ 230V AC that would be = 130/12= 10.8A

Of course it is very important to realise that no allowance has been taken in to account any losses and that numbers have been  approximately rounded to make things simpler. The figure of 130W is the maximum that charger can handle and it is likely that most of the time it would be running a lot less. The vehicles inverter will take almost no current when there is no load.

A more energy efficient way to charge the laptop would be using a DC to DC converter and connecting it to the vehicles 12V supply. For example input 12V DC and output 19.0V DC in the case of my laptop.