Troy Jollimore
New Member
It's been so long since I've dabbled in electronics...
A friend of mine is looking to power some fly zappers that are scattered throughout his LARGE property. They take 12VAC with a 2A draw. Right now he's powering each one with a car battery (recharged by a good-sized solar panel), inverting to 110VAC, then stepping down to 12VAC. This seems to be a bit inefficient, and he wants something that would do it more directly. Of all the searching I've done, I just can't seem to find a 12VDC-12VAC inverter, or even a transformer that would do (equal windings) in the schematics of normal 110VAC inverters that are readily available.
I've no idea about wave forms or isolation, but I doubt that it's an issue for this application.
Is what he doing now (inverting and stepping down) as inefficient as it seems? Would it be more efficient and cost-effective to build the new inverters? Also, my father (an ex-electronics guy) thinks that the 2A draw would be a bit much for the batteries over the run of a day, even with the solar panels. Besides running around swapping out batteries, it may be more efficient to just run AC power lines out to his property and power them directly... Think so?
And finally, how would you go about building one of these beasts, and about how much would it cost?
A friend of mine is looking to power some fly zappers that are scattered throughout his LARGE property. They take 12VAC with a 2A draw. Right now he's powering each one with a car battery (recharged by a good-sized solar panel), inverting to 110VAC, then stepping down to 12VAC. This seems to be a bit inefficient, and he wants something that would do it more directly. Of all the searching I've done, I just can't seem to find a 12VDC-12VAC inverter, or even a transformer that would do (equal windings) in the schematics of normal 110VAC inverters that are readily available.
I've no idea about wave forms or isolation, but I doubt that it's an issue for this application.
Is what he doing now (inverting and stepping down) as inefficient as it seems? Would it be more efficient and cost-effective to build the new inverters? Also, my father (an ex-electronics guy) thinks that the 2A draw would be a bit much for the batteries over the run of a day, even with the solar panels. Besides running around swapping out batteries, it may be more efficient to just run AC power lines out to his property and power them directly... Think so?
And finally, how would you go about building one of these beasts, and about how much would it cost?