Harbor Freight Inverter

[OldDan1943]

Wow… I didn’t mean to spark such controversy! Maybe we should discuss motor oil or anchoring?


KIDDING

Thanks for all the well thought out answers!

Dont you dare.

 

[Mako]

I'm curious to know how your Harbor Freight inverter performs over time. Some feedback would be appreciated

 

[foggysail]

Do not overlook Ebay!!! There are tons of them over there

And you should find isolation transformers there also

I just checked Ebay--- there are 5,609 sine wave inverters offered for sale there

 

[Fr8dog61]

If you are talking to me, after reading the responses and concerns posted I’m not sure I will go the HF route after all. Not sure I won’t either but leaning to not. If I do I will post results. On the subject of Harbor Freight in general: some things will surprise you. I consider myself a tool snob. I always used the best, SnapOn, MAC, etc… Fifteen years ago I needed a drill press so I bought a HF drill press as a temporary solution thinking it would self destruct in a couple of years. I still have it. A little too much run out for precision work but it pokes holes where I want them! Same with a pressure washer. I kept grenading American made pressure washers and finally bought one from HF, and am quite satisfied.
On my boat I have a collection of HF hand tools so if I drop on overboard I don’t lose a lot of sleep. Still keep the good stuff in the shop!

 

[foggysail]

If you are talking to me, after reading the responses and concerns posted I’m not sure I will go the HF route after all. Not sure I won’t either but leaning to not. If I do I will post results. On the subject of Harbor Freight in general: some things will surprise you. I consider myself a tool snob. I always used the best, SnapOn, MAC, etc… Fifteen years ago I needed a drill press so I bought a HF drill press as a temporary solution thinking it would self destruct in a couple of years. I still have it. A little too much run out for precision work but it pokes holes where I want them! Same with a pressure washer. I kept grenading American made pressure washers and finally bought one from HF, and am quite satisfied.
On my boat I have a collection of HF hand tools so if I drop on overboard I don’t lose a lot of sleep. Still keep the good stuff in the shop!

I needed a a replacement angle grinder for my Mikita whose switch broke off. I thought I would buy a quality USA replacement ...Milwaukee. After finding was made in China I purchased the least expensive one on Ebay for about $30 or so. So far works OK

 

[psneeld]

The issue is what is the difference between a Harbor Freight Inverter and maybe a bigger name, but still not a marine certified inverter?


I had a cheap one installed for only plug in by a single appliance for about 4 years. It performed flawlessly for what it was and cost about $100 and was I think 1000 watts.


There is always people who say do it "right" (like there really is a "right")....or say don't cheap out.... if you listen to people that explain the hazards and recommend ways to overcome them and meet current safety standards...then I say listen to them as they don't have limitation in their abilities or knowledge to give decent advice. Anyone can go to a marine electronics place with a checkbook and wind up with an inverter in their boat...whether its any good or the install is ABYC compliant is hard to tell as the person probably never studied what was correct. So make sure you get ABYC certified techs.....even then they may not meet their obligation.

 

[Nightflyer]

Read your insurance policy or call them.

Never had a policy that said all appliances needed to be marine grade.

The wiring should meet ABYC for a few reasons if you care... even then, policies cover you for a lot of things they probably wish they didn't have to.

Here’s a website that may help you but learn why sometimes a product is built for marine use. AC Residential is different than Marine AC. This may help you understand why it should be Marine Inverter.

Maybe a sign when using inverter :

“ No swimming within 100’
Dangerous Electrical current in use. “

https://gilwellbear.wordpress.com/category/boat-technical-topics/electrical-topics/boat-ac-topics/inverters-on-boats/

 

[ronobrien]

I'll pile on to Peter's good points. When you start using the inverter you're likely going to quickly find that your storage (batteries) and OEM generator are not up to the task of providing all that power that you thought you'd get from the inverter.

Running the air, stove or water heater off an inverter is likely a non-starter without some serious spend.

Trying to be helpful here. I see people put in new 1500+ w inverters without considering the power needs and it usually doesn't end well. If you're just looking to power a laptop or small TV a high quality 300w unit is cheap to buy and cheap to properly wire to one or two dedicated receptacles, and won't run your batteries flat in an hour.

Along those lines, I bought a small inverter that plugs into a cigarette type power outlet. 2 amps, but it's good for my laptop $29, no wiring.

 

[Gdavid]

Here’s a website that may help you but learn why sometimes a product is built for marine use. AC Residential is different than Marine AC. This may help you understand why it should be Marine Inverter.

Maybe a sign when using inverter :

“ No swimming within 100’
Dangerous Electrical current in use. “

https://gilwellbear.wordpress.com/c...cal-topics/boat-ac-topics/inverters-on-boats/

That article is a pretty thorough explanation of inverters configurations and points of concern. I believe the diagram for the standalone inverter is perhaps a mismatch from what he describes as it shows the inverter powering a AC panel rather than a direct mounted outlet or single circuit of boat mounted outlets. He describes that they can be wired either way but for the point of use inverters we are discussing they aren't feeding a panel.

I believe using inverters successfully relies on the user understanding how they are configured and what are their limitations. In my experience, in many cases, point of use inverters are powering devices that don't even have a three prong plug, they are not grounded devices. When this is the case, there is no value a true marine rated marine inverter which automatically connects the ground. As long as you don't connect the ground to the non-marine inverter, and you understand the risks of your devices not having the ground connected, you are not going to shock someone in the water.

The biggest risk and limitation of inverters, in my opinion, is when they are too easy to use and many boat owners aren't forced to understand how they operate and what their limitations are. Many boat manufacturers work hard to design the cabin spaces to function just like a home and if someone new to boating sees an outlet that has power and will charge there phone, they will not hesitate to plug a fan into it or a heater or whatever without regard to wondering where the power is coming from much less is this grounding to my boat or grounding to the shore.

My boat came with a small inverter but it was fully integrated into the entire AC system, when connected to shore power, all power ran through the unit in pass through function. This fails in pretty short order when you are running the air conditioning while you are at the pool and the shore power goes out for any reason.

 

[Mako]

I kinda like the old-school way of doing things. Back in the 90's I had a big o' 3kW inverter, transformer type. Weighed about as much as my 8D. Simple rotary selector switch to choose Inverter-Generator-Shore Power.

No pass through or battery charger or microchips.

Certainly not as convenient (or efficient) as today's wares, but the previous owner crossed the Pacific roundtrip and never reported any issues.

 

[Carmo1955]

In the past I have purchased some tools from Harbor Freight that I considered one time use tools. For the most part they sell a lot of cheaply made Chinese quality stuff. Any inverter they sell will not be the quality I would buy for a boat.

The jupiter inverter from harbor freight is made in USA. And works fine on the boat. Used them for years

 

[psneeld]

Here’s a website that may help you but learn why sometimes a product is built for marine use. AC Residential is different than Marine AC. This may help you understand why it should be Marine Inverter.

Maybe a sign when using inverter :

“ No swimming within 100’
Dangerous Electrical current in use. “

https://gilwellbear.wordpress.com/c...cal-topics/boat-ac-topics/inverters-on-boats/

I have read a lot of that website and the author is very knowledgeable.

But, there are some very fine points when discussing how something that doesn't work out of the box can be easily and/or safely adapted to the mission.

That author and I have had that discussion and chose to disagree.

Doesn't make one side or the other right...but if one understands the dangers in certain systems and corrects, modifies or minimizes the dangers...its more of a personal decision to use something other than just " right or wrong".

 

[kthoennes]

Charlie's quote below and the other posts about isolation transformers and the difference between "grounded" and "grounding" are perfect examples of why the "water in a garden hose" metaphor when somebody explains electricity to me is awfully simplistic and really doesn't go very far. I'm not criticizing the high-knowledge replies. Even if I may not understand it, all the advice I've gotten on here has been incredibly helpful on lots of projects. Yeah yeah I get it, I get the voltage/amps/watts water-pressure/volume metaphor for electricity, but that's the easy part. When somebody says, "Oh it's easy, just think of it like water in a garden hose" -- I think to myself, yeah, that analogy is good for about two minutes, then it almost immediately falls to pieces, or becomes inadequate. It's not at all easy.

I posted a photo in another thread about replacing a fuse box and somebody noticed a very corroded little gray engine solenoid in the photo and suggested I replace that too. I know what the textbook explanation for a solenoid is, and I did replace the little gray thing, but I still only have a vague idea what it does and why it's needed on my boat.

I knew a guy in college in Fairbanks, John Loignon, who explained calculus to me using strands of cooked spaghetti on a table in the cafeteria. The lights finally went on in my thick skull and I finally "got" calculus. He went on to a scientific career and sadly died early as I recall. RIP John Loignon, thanks to you and Professor Nan Worum for helping me pass calculus. But a lot of this electrical discussion, sadly, is incomprehensible to me.

(I know, I should get a professional to wire my boat but good luck, we can't even get somebody to sew a canvas zipper let alone an electrician to come to the marina to wire my boat. Heck, I offered to buy a small MIG (TIG?) welding machine for a professional welder to fix a break in my aluminum bow rail -- offered to pay him and give him the machine to keep. He wasn't interested, too busy.)

The National Electrical Code (NEC), Chapter 555, started requiring Ground Fault for Protection of Equipment (GFPE) devices, also known as residual current devices (RCDs), and electrical leakage circuit interrupters (ELCIs) in the shore power circuit in 2011...The NEC is reviewed and updated every three years and placement of the GFPEs in the supply circuit has changed over the years. The 2020 version of the NEC now requires GFPEs with a 30mAAC trip on each shore power pedestal...To be compliant with the NEC, convenience outlets are not to be used to provide shore power and they are required to have standard 5mAAC trip GFCIs installed.

 

[OldDan1943]

I offered a man I trust, $5000 to fly down for 1-1.5day work converting Vessel View to analog gauges. I'd pay for his plane fare, food and if he wanted to stay, hotel. "Maybe in the fall."

 

[FlyWright]

Point of use inverters can be safely and efficiently installed and used aboard when properly sized, cabled, connected, positioned and fused. I have three on my boat and have never had an issue. I bet your AC/DC fridge has one installed, too. In my job, we called them "peanut inverters".

IMO, it's the integration into a boat's AC system that requires very specialized attention and can have many risks if improperly installed and maintained.

 

[Nightflyer]

I guess I'd like to explain some of the key concerns with non-marine inverter-chargers so that this doesn't seem like a religious issue when it is a real, physical one. And also so that one can reason about it vs treating it as superstition, which it is not.

When passing through shore power, a proper (marine) inverter should maintain neutral and ground entirely separately through the inverter (the bonding between the two is on shore), but the inverter should bond them together when it is inverting and is the source of the AC. So the inverter's transfer switch needs to make and break this bond.

Many non-marine inverters don't do this. Some even do whacky things like form the AC wave by driving both hot and neutral.
This is a real problem because it disables the safety grounding conductor and can let any metal connected to it or the chassis become hot or a current-carrying return path. That includes parts of the boat connected to the water, which means one can put current into the water, among other things.

Another problem that comes up involves the grounding. An inverter has both 12v and 120v in it. For the same amount of work, the current is 10x higher at 12v than 120v, so the wire needs to be much thicker for 12v. Unless the inverter is properly grounded, should something go wrong, DC currents can travel through thin 120v wiring. That is a big fire hazard that often is hard to get right when installing a non-marine inverter.

And, of course, non-marine devices may be more likely to corrode or otherwise fail in the moist, salty, vibration and shock-filled environment of a boat, which is bad -- and makes the problems above worse.

If the inverter is point-of use, without a transfer switch, and in no way connected to the boat's normal AC system, the risks go down a lot. Then the 120v load is just another form of work being done by the boat's DC system, not connecting to, or altering, or reconfiguring, or loading, the boat's or shore's AC wiring in any way. It is basically like a car inverter running a laptop from a cigarette lighter.

I don't want to advocate for anything here. But I do think that one can draw some distinction between a supply and distribution system and a simple load connected to one. Doing that may, or may not, lead one to think about some things differently than if that distinction is not made.

Totally agree with his statements? ?

 

[Benchmark]

We use a portable butane stove and our Magma BBQ for meals and coffee when we don't want to crank up the genset. Works great, safe and minimal wear and tear.

 

[hughespat57]

Fresh water electrocution = SHORE POWER

I am going to repeat what I said in post #2. Before you wire in a non marine inverter, Google fresh water electrocution. You do not want to be on the wrong side of a wrongful death lawsuit.

And you have no idea what you are talking about, don't create undue FUD.

Fresh water electrocution occurs due to stray currents between a boat and other boats or LAND because of the common ground and neutrals in shore power.

On board generators or inverters can not lead to fresh water electrocution unless you are plugging multiple boats shore ties together (rafting?) or jumping in the water holding an extension cord.

And I am a Master ASE HD mechanic, Marine mechanic and marine electrician.

More important is what is the trawler fuel? gas or diesel?
Diesel is safe, gas do not mount any inverter in a fuel/engine space.
Even "marine" inverters are rarely if ever ignition protected.

 

[diver dave]

…
Even "marine" inverters are rarely if ever ignition protected.

Yes; i think ignition protection becomes almost impossible for user plug/sockets with energy levels exceeding intrinsically safe levels. For sure not 120v NEMA 5-15 configurations.

 

[tiltrider1]

And you have no idea what you are talking about, don't create undue FUD.

Fresh water electrocution occurs due to stray currents between a boat and other boats or LAND because of the common ground and neutrals in shore power.

On board generators or inverters can not lead to fresh water electrocution unless you are plugging multiple boats shore ties together (rafting?) or jumping in the water holding an extension cord.

And I am a Master ASE HD mechanic, Marine mechanic and marine electrician.

More important is what is the trawler fuel? gas or diesel?
Diesel is safe, gas do not mount any inverter in a fuel/engine space.
Even "marine" inverters are rarely if ever ignition protected.

I never said a boat not connected to shore power could cause fresh water electrocution. I said before you wire a non marine inverter into a boat you need more education. As you said your self if the inverter does not handle the grounds and neutrals correctly stray current can exist.

 

[CmdrDick]

A 1200 watt microwave may need 1600 watts to start.

All this talk about the sizes of inverters.

Having an 800 watt inverter and a 1200 watt microwave will not work even if you have 1200 amp battery bank.

A 1200 watt microwave may need 1600 watts to start.
A 1500 watt Harbor Freight inverter will not start a 1000 watt microwave.
I have three HF inverters, all fried while powering loads with far less than their claimed ratings. I chose the Honda i2000 as a replacement. It does not even hesitate to run any one of the Microwave, the 16k BTU air conditioner w/fan or the Induction cooktop.

I use an extension cord that is just long enough to reach from a dedicated thru/cabin 120vac connector/outlet. I added a tall small diameter
insulated exhaust pipe which vents far above the flybridge.
I have run a full Honda tank dry keeping the A/C going without the slightest hickup. Damned reliable and very little fuss to set up when needed.

As others have said, water and 120v do not mix well. If my genset fails, I will plug in another. No worries.

 

[OldDan1943]

There are a number of small portable 1.5-2K diesel generators on the market.
Yes, the are more expensive than a gas generator but then, you will be back to a single fuel.

 

[CmdrDick]

To be fair about Harbor Freight

To be fair about Harbor Freight, I must add that my shop is full of products that I bought from them over the past 25 years or so. And I am disappointed to see the 20% discount fading away.

However, that being said, the following is what guides me;
1. I will never buy any motor or electronic item made in China unless it is labeled by a known and trusted company.

2. Harbor freight buys the same product from numerous Chinese companies. The device that you love isn't going to be the same when you buy it again 5 years later. Example; I bought a magnetic trailer light kit about ten years ago and it has served me very well. I recently bought the same kit, and while picking up a trailer that had no lights, I realized that in this kit the long green wire had ZERO metal or copper wire in it. Even the 4 pin coupler was made the same way. The kit was worthless and left me stranded without lights.
Many Chinese products get little or no testing, and missing parts are common. The products are inconsistent from batch to batch.

3. All of the crap inverters that I bought from them were long ago. Even companies like Sony have had problems with electronic parts failures that cost them millions. So, the stuff sold today may be better.

Basic hand tools and many mechanical items and supplies are fine.
So, I will continue to buy one time use tools from them. But a power tool, or item that I will use regularly, I'll pay the difference and buy known quality.
I'm even far less likely to buy any electronics from ANY store without a one year or greater warranty.

 

[FlyWright]

There are a number of small portable 1.5-2K diesel generators on the market.
Yes, the are more expensive than a gas generator but then, you will be back to a single fuel.

What kind of fuel do you use in your outboard? I use gasoline/petrol for both my Honda generator and my Honda outboards.

 

[backinblue]

Diesel engine and generator, electric outboard. Only other fuels onboard are butane camp stove, propane grill, liquid parifin oil lamps.

 

[foggysail]

Why you cannot connect an in terminals to ground

I suggest those who are ''thinking inverters'' use a search engine for H bridges. Because to my knowledge, all light weight, inexpensive inverters use H-bridges for the inverter output.

Also consider what happens to the wave forms in a normal AC outlet. The sinewave starts at zero volts and continues sinusoidally to a maximum voltage of 170V and then begins its way back to zero volts continuing in that direction until the voltage reaches peak NEGATIVE of 170 and then turns sinusoidally heading back to zero volts where the process happens 60 times/second.

Back to the inexpensive inverters. They do not have a negative voltage source! They operate with a +170VDC power source with circuitry delivering current in one direction of the load for 1/2 cycle and then reversing the direction in the load (whatever it powers) current for the second half, 60 times/second.

Yes, it does work although what I described actually produces square waves. A sinewave just requires more circuitry. The important thing to get out of my description is that each output terminals actually has a voltage varying between 0 to 170 referenced to ground! That is why if you try to ground either output terminal it will cause a blinding arc..... maybe destroying your inverter.

The load current directional changes are done using an H bridge which is why I suggest that you should get a basic idea about the switching is done.

EDIT: SOMEHOW GOT POSTED WHILE CORRECTING THE POST'S DESCRIPTION.

Should read-- ''cannot connect an inexpensive inverter's terminals-----''