AIMS Power 1250w Inverter Charger | 300A Fuse Blown, Won't Power On, Then STARTS WORKING FINE???

It's quite strange, the fuse in our BigBatter 12v owl blew, which is a 300A fuse that we have put under heavy loads before without issues.

Maybe there is something to be learned, maybe since I haven't had my coffee I'm missing everything. Also when dealing with Aims, I plan to share my experience working with them.

I have a 1250w inverter/charger from AIMS Power that I've been using for some time with a BigBattery 170ah owl. The use case is as a UPS for my desk, which is two computers, printers, and other small doo-dads. Max load is probably around 600w, but the rest of the time around 200-300w. I like this inverter because it has an IEC input connector (the same type of connector things like computer power supplies use) and then a GFI output. Literally all I had to do was connect up the Anderson connector from the battery to the inverter, plug a few cables in, and then we were good to go.

It should give me about 3-4 hours of backup power in case I am doing some work in a panel and need to shut the power off for an extended period of time. We are off-grid, so our power goes out from time to time for this kind of thing and I dislike how these cheap UPS units you get from amazon/bestbuy only last like 5 minutes.

Our main power source is a Sol-Ark 12k. Last night I was up til about 1AM on the computer, then went to bed, leaving (of course) 20 tabs open, all sorts of programs without totally saving, the usual when you get over-confident that stuff isn't going to shut down. Everything was working and I went to bed.

This morning, I roll out of bed about 8:30, and start heading over to the office, and Jarrett (my partner) is trying to figure out why everything is off. The inverter was totally off, BigBattery voltage meter was not on...Same kind of behavior as when the battery gets run dead.

So I tried connecting up a regulated power supply to the inverter, inverter wouldn't turn on with 12.00v input...So we crank up the voltage to 14.00v, still nothing. At this point, I realized that if the BigBattery was fully discharged, then the voltage wouldn't have just gone up this easy, and at this point it was obvious to me that something totally failed. We pull out the BigBattery pack and check the 300a fuse inside...Blown.

Obvious to me now, it seemed that the inverter had failed...So we pull it out of the rack, take it to the autopsy table and take it apart. I'm thinking that inside I'm going to find burned fets, maybe a stuck transfer switch, something crazy like that.

But inside, it was as spotless as the day I got it. How do you blow a 300a fuse without causing serious damage I ask myself.

I was tempted to take it down to nothing and find the problem, but Jarrett wants us to check into the warranty first before we potentially void that. This unit was like $450, so it'd be nice to have a working solution again.

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