Cheap Chinese inverters — any good ones?

Right, I'll cut to the chase here — I went down this exact road two years back when I extended my garden office and thought I'd need to charge the car off-grid too.

The honest truth? A cheap Chinese inverter might handle the steady-state load, but EV charging is brutal. You're looking at a 7-16kW spike, and those budget units often can't manage the inrush current without either throttling back or shutting down completely. I watched a mate's Growatt literally reset mid-charge because it couldn't handle the demand curve.

What actually worked for me was keeping the Victron for the house basics and adding a separate, smaller inverter dedicated to the EV charger circuit. Sounds daft, but it's cheaper than buying one oversized unit that'll struggle. The Victron handles it gracefully, and I can control when the car charges via a timer so it's not competing with other loads.

@OffGridFreak, before you buy anything — sort out your battery bank size first. If you've only got a 10kWh system, no inverter (cheap or posh) is going to

The lads above have nailed the critical bit—simultaneous demand is what'll sink you, not peak watts. I learned this the hard way extending my EV charging setup last year.

Here's the thing: cheap Chinese inverters (I've tested a few Growatt and MPP Solar units) are fine for stable, predictable loads. Where they crumble is transient response when your EV charger kicks in alongside other circuits. Your existing Victron handles that smoothly because of the firmware and transformer design.

If you're serious about EV charging, you're looking at needing either:

1. Stacked capacity (two smaller inverters in parallel—doable but tedious)
2. A proper split-load design (dedicated circuit from batteries through a separate charge controller, bypassing the main inverter for EV duty)
3. Bite the bullet on a bigger Victron or Fogstar unit

For budget, option 2 is genuinely underrated. A basic 48V MPPT controller pushing directly to a 7kW DC-DC charger costs less than you'd think and eliminates the inversion losses entirely.

What's your actual battery capacity and chemistry? That answer changes everything about whether this is even feasible in your setup.

The simultaneous demand angle is absolutely right, but there's a practical workaround here that might save you money properly rather than just buying a cheap inverter and regretting it.

If you're genuinely adding EV charging, you're looking at 7kW+ anyway—that's a hard floor. Cheap Chinese units will handle the wattage fine, but you'll burn through them managing inrush currents and voltage sag when your battery bank is mid-discharge. I've seen three different brands crater within 18 months doing exactly this.

What actually works is load prioritisation. Keep your Victron 3000 handling the essentials (house, refrigeration, whatever), then add a second smaller inverter (doesn't need to be premium spec) purely for the EV circuit on a separate breaker. You can stagger charging to off-peak solar hours with a simple timer, which means you're not trying to squeeze 10kW out of one unit.

Costs roughly the same as buying one decent 5kW unit, gives you redundancy, and means neither inverter is screaming under load. Used Victron or Renogy

Has anyone actually run one of the cheaper Growatt or Sofar models alongside a Victron? I'm curious whether you'd be better off stacking two smaller units rather than upgrading to a single larger one — seems like it might give you more flexibility for the EV charging peak without needing to overspec everything.

The reason I ask is I'm in a similar boat with my van conversion setup. Currently running a 2kW Victron and I've been looking at either going up to 5kW or running two 3kW units daisy-chained. The redundancy appeals to me more than I expected, but I'm worried about the complexity of managing two systems.

@SolarJake — when you say there's a practical workaround, are you talking about load management/prioritisation? Because if the cheaper Chinese inverters play nicely with that sort of control, it might actually change the maths here.

What's your actual simultaneous demand looking like, @OffGridFreak? EV charger plus house loads?

@OffGridFreak I'd pump the brakes on stacking inverters unless you've got a proper energy management plan in place. Been there with my narrowboat setup—added a cheap Growatt alongside my Victron thinking I'd just load-balance them. Nightmare. They don't talk to each other, so you end up with voltage sag and one unit hammering away while the other sits idle.

The real issue with EV charging isn't the peak draw—it's that it'll run continuously at 7kW+ for hours. Your Victron 3000 will struggle not because of the wattage but because it'll be stuck in boost mode the whole time, battering your batteries and charger.

What's actually worth considering: can you stagger the charging? Charge the car during peak solar hours only, keep household loads off during that window. Cheap, effective, and your existing inverter handles it fine.

If you genuinely need more capacity, split the cost differently—better batteries first, then upgrade the inverter properly to something like a Victron 5000 when funds allow. You'll thank yourself later.

Been there with the narrowboat setup — tried daisy-chaining inverters once, absolute nightmare sorting out the handover logic. For EV charging specifically, you'd want something that can handle the inrush. The Victron's bulletproof but pricey. Worth investigating whether you can stagger charging off-peak instead? That's what saved my install costs in the end.

@OffGridFreak EV charging's a game-changer power-wise. Rather than adding another inverter, have you looked at a single larger unit instead? A 6kW Victron or even a Growatt would handle both loads cleaner than juggling two systems. What's your battery capacity looking like? That's often the real bottleneck for charging.

EV charging's going to hammer your battery bank hard. Before stacking inverters, what's your current battery capacity and daily consumption? On my shepherd's hut setup, I went Victron 5000VA instead of paralleling units — cleaner, fewer synchronisation headaches. The Chinese units are tempting price-wise but firmware updates and support are dodgy when things go wrong.

laughs Mate, you're already married to Victron — just accept it and upgrade to their 5000VA, your wallet will forgive you faster than it would sorting out Chinese inverter firmware updates at 2am when your Nissan Leaf's half-charged and the arse has fallen out of your battery voltage.