![]() ![]() Risk of damage: You simply shouldn’t play around with such high current devices.Your car battery is likely to overheat and get permanently damaged.Ĭonnecting a space heater to it would put the same stress on your battery as cranking the engine continuously (for hours)! A space heater easily surpasses this limit. If you remember what we talked about before, you shouldn’t pull more than 4.5A from a car battery. High current draw puts stress on car battery: The high amount of current your space heater needs puts a lot of stress on your space heater.Let’s take a look at all the risks and downsides: We’re going to cover whether it actually makes sense to power a space heater with a car battery. This is going to be the most important part of this article. Downsides of powering a space heater with a car battery Car batteries can store huge amounts of energy because they consist of many smaller battery packs that are connected to each other. Still, the 3.6 hours are more than I initially expected. That would mean your car battery would last for 3.6 hours with a space heater.Īnd we didn’t even account for the energy losses of the inverter and transformer. Let’s assume that you have a car battery with a capacity of 45 ampere-hours. How long would a car battery last with a space heater? Especially if you’re unfamiliar with electronics.Īnd it’s dangerous as well. To connect and run a space heater off a car battery, you’d need to connect the space heater to a transformer, the transformer to an inverter, and the inverter to the battery. For increasing the voltage, you’d need to use a transformer. So, you would need to install an electrical inverter (a device that transforms DC to AC).Īdditionally, car batteries have a voltage of 12V, whereas a space heater needs 120V (or 240V in Europe). You would need an inverter and a transformerĬar batteries only deliver DC current. We’ll cover whether it makes sense later on. So, theoretically, a car battery can produce enough energy to run a space heater. ![]() But most space heaters require 10-15A.īut in an emergency situation, where you need to keep warm, you don’t care about that rate. However, according to what the quote above says, you shouldn’t discharge a car battery at a higher current draw than it’s rating divided by 10.įor a 45 ampere-hour battery, that would mean you should keep the discharge rate below 4.5A to keep the battery healthy. So, they are capable of producing 12.5 amperes of current for a space heater. If short-circuited, car batteries can deliver up to 300A (caution: extremely dangerous). A battery should not be discharged at a higher current draw, or asked to deliver more amps than its amp/hour rating divided by 10” UH Manoa Chemistry Department That means that it will supply over two amps for 20 hours. “A standard small car battery is about 45 ampere-hours. If you want to run a space heater off a car battery, you first need to know how much power a car battery can deliver. Can you run a space heater off a car battery? That means that 1500W, the power a space heater needs to run, would equal the power you need to climb 132 meters (433 feet) vertically in a minute. “A climber who raises his own body weight (say 70 kg or 154 lb) by moving up a slope of 10 meters (33 feet) vertical height in one minute is working at the rate of 0.15 horsepower or 114 watts” American Alpine Club Now, if 0.1-0.2A are lethal already, think of what 12.5A can do. “While any amount of current over 10 milliamps (0.01 amp) is capable of producing painful to severe shock, currents between 100 and 200 mA (0.1 to 0.2 amp) are lethal.” Ohio State University – Physics Here’s what the Ohio State University says: Heaters are among the household devices that need the most power. Most space heaters in the US need about 1500W of power. But can a car battery handle such loads? And how long would it last? And are there better ways to stay warm?Īt the end of this article, I’ll give you a much better alternative for heating than trying to run a space heater off your car battery. You would need to convert the DC current to AC first and then transform it to 120V. Question: Can you run a space heater off a car battery?Īnswer: Yes, you can run a space heater off a car battery. So, is it a practical solution to connect a space heater to your car battery? I’m an electrical engineer, and I’ll show you how it would work! ![]() In an emergency survival situation, you’ll try everything you can to stay warm. In this article, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about whether you can power a space heater off a car battery when there’s no other energy source around! To run a space heater off a car battery makes sense in two cases: When you camp in a freezing cold car, or during an energy outage. ![]()
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