To make my own power w/ alternator & dc car batteries. would a 2000 watt inverter be enough to hook to a main

Question

It is a 200 amp main

Answer 1

You are not even in the ballpark. Actually, you are not even in the same town as the ballpark.

Even if you had 2000 watts, that is less than 20 amps of 120volt ac. That would require somewhere around 200 amps from the 12 volt dc batteries. That is a tremendous amount of amperage. Look at the wire coming into your breaker panel. Way too much to be at all practical.

The quality of power is also not the same as the power company. That can cause some electronics to not work properly or it could shorten their life.

This is totally impossible from a practical standpoint. For an entire house, you need a gas powered generator. Even many of those are not powerfull enough to run the entire house.

Either way, just switching between the grid and your power is more complicated that you might think.

P.S. when you are doing the math, remember that nothing is 100% efficient. There are going to be some signicant losses due to that. We refer to a vehicle battery as 12 volt, it is actually more like 13.6.

We sometimes refer to houshold ac as 110 volts, but it is more like 115 to 120 volts. It changes a little bit all the time. Mine is 118 at this moment. All these factors effect the math.

Answer 2

you can run a furnace ignition, blower or pump and some lights on such an inverter, which may be all you need to get you through an emergency.

if you want enough power to run your whole house, a gas powered medium sized generator is needed, these are often available used for $300 to $3000 on line....

Answer 3

In short. No. Depending on how much power you're actually drawing from that 200 amp main. If you're drawing more than about 17 amps of 110, you'll be in trouble with that inverter.

Volts x amps = watts

12 volts x 10 amps = 120 watts

110 volts x 10 amps = 1100 watts

Watts = power

Volts = a measure which translates into potential energy per electron

Amps = description translatable into number of electrons passing per second

Answer 4

Yes do it  I reconmand, I use 1000watt inverter with 150AH battery to the main .21 inch color tv 40 watt two flouresent tube can keep using for 10 hrs .