Can I run a watermaker off an inverter?
Sometimes — 10 of the 12 mains systems we rank draw under 2,000 W while running, which a large inverter can carry. But running draw is not the whole story: a high-pressure pump asks for a surge at startup that a sine-wave inverter has to absorb.
The 2,000 W figure above is a common inverter size used here as a reference point, not a recommendation — check the surge rating of yours and ask the manufacturer whether the pump is inverter-friendly, because some are explicitly not.
The more important point: putting a DC bank through an inverter to feed an AC motor costs you something at every conversion. If the boat is DC and the watermaker can be DC, that is usually the simpler and more efficient path.
Where this is worked through
Other quick answers
Where these numbers come from. Every figure on this page is computed at build time from the comparison table — rated output and rated draw as the manufacturer publishes them, with watt-hours per litre derived as one divided by the other. Nothing is typed in by hand, so nothing here can drift from the table. Where a figure is an assumption rather than a specification it is labelled as one. Methodology · the table.