Inverters...how important is pure sine wave vs. modified vs. square wave output

Thread Starter

tracecom

Joined Apr 16, 2010
3,944
I understand the differences between pure sine wave, modified sine wave, and square wave output, and I know that there is a great push to pure sine wave. However, my personal experience with both inverters and generators does not support the "need" for distortion free AC in most applications.

Please post your personal experiences in this regard. Thanks.
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
I haven’t encountered anything that needs pure sine, but I haven’t tried much more than laptops and AC adapters for small electronics. Every inverter I’ve tried was modified sine. No square waves.
 
Last edited:

Hymie

Joined Mar 30, 2018
1,277
For what it’s worth, I have experience of electric motors that would not run when fed with a modified sine wave from an inverter – but then, it was a very cheap inverter.
 
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