Off-the-Grid: How Many Watts and Amps Does a Microwave Apply?

Microwave ovens are very popular kitchen appliances usually used for cooking and/or heating food and beverages. Microwave ovens are as well very efficient devices, which is very important in many ways.

Due to their convenient nature, microwave ovens are unremarkably used when camping, on boats, in the RVs, and similar, leading many people to inquire themselves, how many watts do their microwave ovens actually use?

Updated: September 7, 2020.

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Microwave Ovens - Features and Power Requirements

Most popular microwave ovens range from 500 to 800 watts for meaty models and from 800 to 1800 watts for medium to large models, with an boilerplate habitation microwave oven requiring around 1200-1300 watts of ability.

In order to find out how many watts your microwave actually needs, check the label on the back/lower side of the microwave - sometimes there is a slight mismatch betwixt the unit of measurement's label (on the forepart) and the bodily wattage requirement.

When being off-the-filigree (camping, angling, hunting, in emergencies, etc.), having a working microwave can be of great help - it tin can be used for reheating, defrosting, and even cooking and having a warm meal, tea, soup or some other beverage can make a real difference.

When there is no mains ability present, there are several options bachelor for running the microwave oven in off-the-grid situations, including:

microwave oven w300px- portable power stations,

- deep bike battery combined with a good power inverter,

- power generators.

Best of all, fifty-fifty if your power source is 'weaker' than your microwave oven, keep in listen that some microwave ovens come with different power settings (usually 5-ten power levels, sometimes even more), assuasive the user to gradually increase the power - when the ability level of your microwave oven reaches the maximum power of your power source, decrease it a little bit and feel costless to employ your microwave while monitoring power and free energy levels of your power source.

Annotation: well-nigh microwave ovens feature only a timer, without the option of setting the power.

Of course, this should exist avoided, if possible and a properly dimensioned power source should be used to power microwave ovens.

How Many Amps Does a 1200 Watt Microwave Use?

1200 watts is the average ability level of the regular kitchen microwave oven.

When beingness powered past 120V, such microwave apply ~10 Amps - nosotros say '~10 Amps' since the nominal voltage of the grid varies a little chip, and when such microwave oven is beingness powered by a power inverter or power generator, a voltage can vary even more.

But, keep in mind that a 1200 Watt microwave employ x Amps @120 volts.

In order to power such microwave at full power, 2000 watts power inverter combined with a deep-cycle bombardment is recommended.

With an average power inverter efficiency of 85%, the battery must be able to provide ~1410 watts:

1200 watts / 0.85 = ~1410 watts

Such power levels are able to provide large batteries (12V, 100Ah, or more), some of them existence:

- WindyNation BAT-NSAP12-100: ~20 minutes, down to 10.8 volts,

- Renogy RNG-BATT-AGM12-100: ~20 minutes, downwards to ten.viii volts,

- Odyssey 31M-PC2150: 30+ minutes, down to 10.05 volts, etc.

Too, portable power generators are also used for powering various appliances, microwave ovens included.

Once more, 2000W units are recommended for powering 1200 watts microwaves - such load (~60% of the maximum running watts) will not crusade operating issues for most power generators in this form.

Besides, such units feature fuel tanks large enough to operate for hours under such load.

Note: after the microwave oven is turned off, if there are no other appliances or loads, be certain to turn the inverters or power generators off, to conserve the free energy/fuel.

Power stations rarely feature output power of more than g Watts, and are, as such not suitable for powering 1200 Watts microwave ovens.

However, if you have a microwave in the 500-800 Watts range, a 1000 Watts power station will be able to power smaller and compact microwave ovens, with the operating fourth dimension depending on the free energy stored at the power station bombardment and the bodily required ability.

Note: Portable power station is able to ability even the larger microwave ovens if the output power of the microwave oven is decreased - but be prepared for a few alarms popped-out excursion breakers when finding the 'sweetness spot'.