Hello,
I own a EB70. I wanted to use it to power an electric blanket I own. Everytime I plug it in, the EB70 displays: “Short Circuit”.
The Blanket should only take 150 watts.
Anyone know whats happening?
Blanket in question:
But I’ve also tried with 2 or 3 other electric blankets from the same brand. Same behaviour.
That’s strange, a electric blanket should not be a short. Does this blanket work when plugged into the wall? Have you plugged other similar heating elements into you EB70 (say hair dryer on LOW)?
Thanks for the reply.
Yes all 3 blankets i tried all work perfectly. I’ve ordered a smaller size (I tried Queen and King size, now have a smaller size on order) to see if that remedies the issue;
I just tried to plug in my wife’s hair dryer and it works on low and medium - going up to 750 watt draw.
The electric blankets don’t even register much draw before the “short circuit” gets thrown-up.
This is really strange. If it works with a hair dryer up to 700w then the inverter is producing enough power.
The other factors are power spike, or power factor. But an electric blanket should not have issues with either as it is a simple resistive coil.
Do you have another inverter of at least 300w that you can try?
Do you have a multimeter? Is so measure the resistance of the prongs of the electric blanket to see what that looks like. It should read like 100ohm.
If you have an oscilloscope (I don’t expect you to) then we can do a deeper dive.
You may want to send a email to Bluetooth service to see if they have seen this issue.
Hi @ShortCircuit,
If your electric blankets work perfectly when plugged into the wall. And other heating elements also work when they are plugged into EB70. Would it be a problem of surge power?
It may be an issue with the ungrounded electrical outlet which is neutral bonded.
I don’t know how that would matter… though I recall my Tesla charger complains that there is no ground when I plug it in to a Jackery 1500. I rigged up a jumped wire to short the Neutral to Ground at the plug to the inverter and it is happy after that. However, I don’t know why that would lead to a “short circuit” error.
Thank you all for the help. I tried about a half dozen different blankets from Sunbeam - they all produce the same outcome.
I then tried to “pre-heat” a blanket (plug it into a house AC socket) and then remove it and plug it into my EB70 once its warmed up. Lo and behold it worked perfectly.
I’m guessing they surge-up to some capacity beyond what can be provided by the EB70.
I purchased 2 12v blankets off of Amazon and they work fine. I also purchased a AC blanket from “Brookstone” sold at Costco, and that too works fine.
It seems that Sunbeam blankets simply draw too much power initially for the inverter on the EB70 to provide.
On one hand I’m disappointed, because Sunbeam produces the best heated blankets out there. On the other hand, there will always be compromises with this type of system.
Thanks everyone for the help.
You could plug in an on line Killawatt meter which would record max. wattage consumed to verify that they do indeed have a very high start up consumption.
Note that some of those watt meters may not observe a short duration spike properly, so if you record a spike, you have a spike. But not recording one doesn’t mean one doesn’t exists. My freezer (full sized chest freezer) overloads the EB70 sometime but not all the time, but the watt meter never or records a max voltage over 400W, when it runs it only draws 100W.
Hi there! Do you prefer the heat of your 12 volt blankets or the Brookstone AC blanket? Does the AC draw considerably more power? I have a truck camper setup and looking to purchase a heated blanket as opposed to the dangerous propane heaters. Thanks in advance!
Heat is heat. And pretty much any electric blanket is nearly 100% efficient if converting electrical energy into heat.
Generally. Battery DC to AC conversion is less efficient than Battery DC to DC. So I would suspect you will get maybe 10% more runtime using a 12V DC blanket.
Thanks for the information. Is there a particular 12 volt blanket you recommend?
Sorry, I don’t really use electrical blankets. Electrically, you can compare by wattage, beyond that I would say comfort and size is what you would want to compare
Have you considered running a lower power draw blanket? I will occasionally run a Stalwart 12v 50w 8amp blanket off my eb70. Using any sogen for heat generation will suck the power from your unit, so consider running low wattage devices. I can only run a 200w personal heater for about 3 hours from the eb70 but a 50w blanket will keep me warm most of the night. Also keep in mind that using the AC pure signwave inverter will also have an inverter use power draw, in addition to your device.
Make sure there are no visible damages to the power cable of your electric blanket. Also, check the connections for any loose or damaged parts. A loose or damaged connection can potentially cause a short circuit.