[afshin]

I have so far successfully used a 400 watt and an 800 watt inverter with my chevy volt during power outages.
I connected the inverter to the 12 volt power leads in the trunk.

My question is how much power can I draw from the 12 volt battery on the 2014 volt with an inverter?

The inverters I'm interested in using are :

1) Power TechOn 1500W Pure Sine Wave Power Inverter
2) Power TechON 2000W Pure Sine Wave Power Inverter

Can chevy volt 12 volt battery supply enough current for the above inverters?

 

[mike100]

A fully charged 12v battery will supply the current needed for a little while if you actually load the inverter close to its rated wattage, but the voltage will dip if the onboard charger can't supply the same power. Modern cars usually have 80-120 amp alternators so I would think the volt's 12v converter would be rated similarly...the a/c is electrically driven so it could be a 100a charger..just a guess.

My feeling is 1000w might be the safe maximum. I was thinking the onboard battery charger (aka alternator equivalent would be 1100 w continuous). It might be bigger than that, but I'm not sure I would want to run it flat out for long periods. The stored charge in the lead acid battery will definitely deliver way more than that for short periods so it would work with a larger inverter, but you would have to keep an eye on the draw.

 

[bjrosen]

What are you trying to accomplish? If you are looking for a little bit of power during outages then you could get a portable generator, they aren't that expensive and they will supply a lot more power than your Volt can. I just had a 20KW Kohler generator installed, that's real money, it cost me a little under $10K for the generator, transfer switches and installation, plus another $1.7K to the propane company for tank installation and fuel. I had two week long outages last winter which is why I decided to get a whole house generator, but if you are looking for a cheaper solution the portable generators are much less expensive.

 

[Barry]

The question is not the battery, but the APU. You have to leave the car turned on so the APU supplies power to keep the battery supplied. If you stay within the capacity of the APU, then you won't run down the battery.

I believe the Gen 1 Volt APU is 160 Amps at 14 Volts, so it is about 2kW or slightly over. Having the car turned on consumes some of this output to run the computers, screens, cooling fan for the APU etc. And if you have any accessories turned on like the fan, lights, radio, etc. Not sure what this draw is, but I think the minimum is around 300-500 W. Should probably count on at least ~500 when the APU cooling fan is running and everything else you can control is turned off.

You can see this leaves you a little under 2 kW. A 1500 W inverter is probably the largest you can run while leaving something for a safety margin. This is the size that one Volt owner was selling with a wiring package kit a while back, so I think he did the math and settled on this as the best option. I guess you could run a 2000 W inverter as long as you were careful not to run it at max for any length of time.

It seems you may already have an 800 and a 400 W inverter. Not sure, but I guess you could run both at the same time to give yourself more power without buying additional equipment.