How Much Power Does An Inverter Draw With No Load？

Did you know that inverter consume power even with no load is connected? How much power does an inverter draw with no load？

Every inverter has no load consumption, you can also call it the Idle consumption, standby consumption which meaning that it is consuming power from the battery even when it is in standby mode. This is because the inverter is still producing waveform, the larger the inverter is , the more power is required to keep it on.

How To know Or Calculate Inverter No Load Current Draw

The best way to find the idle consumption is read the manual or look at the specification with the inverter.

It can be the no load current draw or no load power draw. 

If the manual only list the no load current draw, you can get the no load wattage draw by multiply the battery voltage.

For example, a 12V 1000W power inverter, the no load current draw is 0.3A, you will get  the no load power draw: 12Vx0.3A=3.6W

The other way is that you can test the idle consumption at home with the DC clamp meter, first connect the inverter to a battery and turn on the inverter, then use the clamp meter over one of the conductors, you will know how much the no load consumption is.

Advice To Users On Reducing Standby Power Consumption

1. The more money you spend on the high quality inverter, the lower the idle consumption is. Therefore, we recommend that users make sine wave inverters their first choice .On cheaper inverters, this usually is much higher, that means you need put more solar panel on your roof to compensate if this is going to be on 24hrs.
2. Adding a remote controller when buying the inverter. If you have a power system which is far from your living area and you plan to turn the inverter ON/OFF, we would recommend everyone to buy a remote controller for the inverter. It is so crucial to have this because we already know the standby consumption of all of these inverter can be quite high, you can discharge your batteries, the remote control will make it easier for us to control the inverter ON/OFF and save battery power.
3. Choose an inverter with power saving mode, users can set the saving mode if there is no large load connected to the system, it will go into a power saving mode, the idle consumption can go down about 5-10W.