I am looking into installing an inverter in a car and was wondering if I could get some advice. Here is some context.
The battery setup
For some context, I have an Ecoflow Delta 2 and plan on adding an expansion battery at some point. The issue is that adding an expansion to this battery precludes the use of their proprietary DCDC inverter for fast 800W charging. The Delta 2 has a few DC input ports which reportedly only support 500W.
It does however have an AC input that supports charging at up to 1200W, but can also be limited via the firmware to charge at only 1000W for example. The caveat here is that, when the battery has AC input, and is also providing AC output to a device, it will then pass through all AC connections and use it’s own inverter to charge. I don’t believe this pass-through wattage can be limited but has a hard cap at 1800W. I’m also not sure how much it will attempt to pull for charging, or if an upper bound can be applied for charging on pass through mode specifically.
There are ways to mitigate the pass through mode though, I’m mainly concerned with getting good fast charging while I’m driving.
The car
I have a Ford Maverick Hybrid, and the service manual states the following:
The DCDC is protected by a 50 amp high voltage low current fuse located in the high-voltage BJB. The DCDC steps the high-voltage down to a low-voltage (between 13.0 and 15.5 volts, depending on vehicle needs), providing power to the vehicle low-voltage battery systems. Depending on the vehicle and environmental conditions, the DCDC is capable of outputting up to 265 amps to the 12-volt battery.
So the battery terminals seem to be capable of providing high amperage current at ~13 volts.
Here is the battery, and the nearby storage areas.
My Question
Would installing something like the Victron 1200VA as a permanent inverter make sense here? The spec sheet seems to say it can handle a consistent load of 1000W which would be great for charging the battery while I’m driving. I am just worried that it will overheat in these storage areas, but seems like it has the mechanisms to handle such a situation.
At 90% efficiency I believe 1000W would pull 1111W from the battery terminals. At ~13V that would be 85 amps, which is I guess in spec even though it seems like a lot to me!
What do you all think about this idea in general? Is there another product that would better suit this project? It would be cool to be able to pull power from the car for something like cooking, but I think that would overload the 1200VA inverter. Is there a larger inverter that could support say an 1800W induction cooktop?