Big draw for 12v inverter.

For any car campers or those who have used 12v inverters a while; I’d like to be able to run a heavy load that draws 20 amps at startup on an inverter in my car.  It dims the lights in my garage when I tried it at home.

1. Is this possible?

2. Can a 5000w unit with 15 amp rated outlets be modified to work?

3. Do I need to suck it up and spend a lot for a better solution?

What do you think? Thanks

20 amps at how many volts? 120? 240?

20 amps at 120 volts is only 2400 Watts, so you should be fine with some welding cable and a big inverter. You may need a higher idle to keep the input voltage decent, but other than that go for it! 

120v yep. I’ve got a line on a cheap Aims branded inverter.  Maybe it will work out

The inverter will only draw as much current from the battery as you load onto theo inverter utput so, 500w of lights and 100w of drills will only demand 600w which is 50A at 12v plus the inverter losses, which will be quite low.

Can you give us more detail on the "heavy load?"  Your biggest concern is probably voltage drop on startup.  If your load is an electric motor, that could cause problems for your motor.

Thanks but I ended up not going down this road.  Ghost thread from 10 months ago.

So you're talking about a 2.5KW load on startup?  Do you have a 3KW inverter?  2.5KW at 12V is going to be around 200 amps.  Assuming your cabling and inverter can handle the load, that would be the minimum you could get by with.  I don't know why a 5KW system would limit you to 15 amps at the outlet, but if that is how it is limited, your 20 amp startup is going to cause problems, if it is actually 20 amps and if your outlets are limited to 15.

Yacoub said:

The inverter will only draw as much current from the battery as you load onto the inverter output so, 500w of lights and 100w of drills will only demand 600w which is 50A at 12v plus the inverter losses, which will be quite low.

Zombie canoe at that.

Yeah, my bad on missing the date and the link.  Slefain, if you could edit your post and remove the link, that would screw Mr. Yacoub in his google-fu.