efficiencies are irrelevant here. the most straightforward method would be to insert a fused heavy duty ammeter in series with the battery and then turn on appliances, perhaps one at a time to avoid accidently blowing the ammeter fuse, and noting the current with everything on. dividing the amp-hour rating of the battery by this current will yield the maximum operating time in hours: t = amp-hours/amps note that a discharged battery is not out of electric charge, but out of chemical energy. conversely, a charged battery has no net electric charge, but chemical energy to do work on charges and force them through a load. daniel On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 09:39:47 -0800, Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET> wrote: >Anyone want to offer an easy-to-follow, practical way to to figure how >much battery it will take to run lights, fans, etc. in the real 12v >world? > >What would be helpful is a way to determine the amperage of various >appliances and then figure what the rule-of-thumb efficiencies would be >to then determine how many hours you could run various combinations of >things |
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