I purchased the 5000watt inverter along with the "bigger is better" battery for our mobile repair van. The primary use of the equipment, as can be seen in the attached picture, is for changing out tires on some commercial
work trucks.
The main trick to make this "gasoline free" setup was to find a "continuous run" compressor that was capable of around 10cfm. Continuous run is important because the required amperage never really exceeds 19amps whereas your regular compressors stop compressing when a certain air
pressure is achieved. The problem is that when you run the air pressure down on one of those regular compressors, the amperage to start compressing again can be huge, possibly exceeding the capacity of the inverter (it really depends upon the size of the compressor motor). We do need to be careful of one thing though, and that is that we must empty the air tanks after every use. Starting the compressor with air already in the tank is the same as the situation just mentioned for those regular compressors
but its good practice to do this anyway to prevent moisture buildup in the tanks.
Soooo, for you techies out there that have been considering a setup like this and wondering if it would work, well I'm here to tell you that it does. And the battery really seems to hold its charge for quite a while. At this point, we just charge the battery in the shop when necessary but we are considering running it off the vehicles alternator with a switch.
If it wasn't for this inverter and monster battery, none of this would have been possible.
