I got the low idle current drain kit for the Exeltech inverter today. Installing it seemed very straight forward since it only had two pieces…. 1 piece of shrink wrap, and 1 ferrite bar. The instructions were very good, but I found that I had to deviate from them slightly to get things to work.
- I used Gorilla glue to bond the ferrite bar to the inductor, and clamped it in place for 10-15 minutes
- I carefully cut the glue between the inductor and that red capacitor thing to allow the shrink wrap to sit flat and neat.
- I used a hair dryer which seemed to take forever! I had to stop multiple time because I felt like the board and components were getting too hot. The shrink wrap just wouldn’t shrink! eventually for the last little bit of shrinking I got out my propane pen torch to finish up the job.
All said and done, measuring the results with my Trimetric 2020, I believe this modification saves me about 300mA of electricity when the Inverter is in an idle state. .3 Amps doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but when you add it up it definitely saves.
After low idle kit:
.7A idle current draw * 24 hours = 16.8 Amp Hours
So in a 24 hour period with the inverter powered on, I’ll save 7.2 Amp Hours. That savings is almost the same as running 90 watts of lights for 1 hour!!