An inverter turns a battery into a house supply, and in Nigeria that has quietly stopped being a comfort purchase. Whether a unit lasts or comes back within six weeks comes down to two things: a genuine sine wave output, and an honest rating. The wattage screen-printed on the front tells you neither. Both are checkable, and cheap imports fail on both.
Description
Buy an inverter on price and you'll be replacing it, and so will whoever bought it from you. That's the blunt version. A modified sine wave unit costs meaningfully less at the factory gate and it will run a bulb and a ceiling fan beautifully for a month. Then it starts cooking a fridge compressor, whining through an amplifier and confusing a laptop charger, and every one of those turns into a conversation at your counter that nobody pays you for.
Pure sine wave output behaves the way grid power behaves. That is the entire argument. In a market where somebody is going to plug a chest freezer into whatever you sold them and expect the freezer to still be running in two years, it's the only version worth putting in a container. We had a supplier quote pure sine, accept the order, then propose a substitution for cost reasons the week before production started. We caught it on the sample. Plenty of importers wouldn't have.
Second thing to hold in your head: this is a family of products sold under one name. The same design gets built across a wide output range and in both 12V and 24V input, and the input voltage carries no element of preference in it. Your customer's existing battery bank decides that for them. Sell somebody the wrong one and the unit comes back with an argument attached. Lower ratings suit a house running lights, fans, a television and phone charging. Higher ratings go to homes and small businesses intending to run a fridge, a freezer or a pumping machine. The middle of the range usually moves fastest, though that shifts by area, so test it rather than assume it.
The rest of the specification reads as you'd expect and still gets verified. 220V at 50Hz on the output, universal socket so nobody has to hunt for an adapter, conversion efficiency somewhere around 0.9. We measure efficiency and the continuous rating on a sample, because listings conflate continuous and peak wattage constantly and only one of those figures is what your customer actually receives. One 3000W unit came back off the bench at closer to 2100W continuous. The box still said 3000.
Demand for these has stopped following the festive calendar, incidentally. Band A tariffs and the price of petrol have between them turned an inverter from a comfort item into a running-cost decision, and people buy them in April now as readily as in December. Worth knowing if you're planning stock cycles.
Specification
The lines below decide what actually arrives. Each one is confirmed against the specific supplier and against an approved sample before a price gets quoted, waveform and continuous wattage first, since those two get misrepresented more than anything else in this category.
| Output waveform | Pure sine wave, verified on the sample. This is the specification most often claimed and least often delivered. |
|---|---|
| Output rating | Available across roughly 1000W to 4000W. We quote the continuous figure, never the peak. |
| Input voltage | DC 12V and DC 24V builds. This must match the customer's battery bank; the two are not interchangeable. |
| Output voltage | AC 220V plus or minus 10 percent, which is correct for Nigerian equipment. |
| Output frequency | 50Hz. |
| Conversion efficiency | Around 0.9. Verified on the sample rather than taken from the listing. |
| Socket | Universal socket type, so no adapter is needed for local plugs. |
| Display | Digital readout for input and output status on most builds. Worth having at retail. |
| Charger function | Charger and adapter functions are present on some builds and absent on others. Specify it, because it changes the price. |
| Cooling and protection | Fan cooled, with overload, over-temperature and low-battery protection. We check these actually trip. |
| Certification | CE standard on the builds we quote. SONCAP is handled separately; see the notice below. |
We do not publish prices, because the landed figure depends on the specification, the Customs valuation and the exchange rate on the day you pay.
Minimum order
Fifty units to a shipment, counted across everything in it. Twelve volt and twenty-four volt builds spread over four output ratings still make one order of fifty, and it's set up that way deliberately. Spreading a first order across ratings is how you find out what your market actually buys instead of guessing and then eating the guess. Above 100 the per-unit cost improves through freight consolidation and the certification file stretching further. Branded casings or printed cartons will push your practical floor toward that 100. One exception worth stating: this is the heaviest and highest-value item we've written up, and the arithmetic on heavy, high-value goods sometimes behaves differently. Come in under fifty and talk to us anyway. We'd rather run the numbers than turn you away on a rule.
Lead time. Four to six weeks in production for a mixed order of ratings, longer if you want branding on the casing. Sea freight after that, groupage or a full container depending on volume, then Form M, SONCAP clearance and the run out of Apapa. Ask us for a date range rather than a date. Anyone handing you a single date on this product is guessing.
What decides the right one
Start with the load. Tell us what the thing has to power and everything else falls out of that: the rating, the input voltage, whether a charger function earns its cost, the casing, the display. You genuinely do not need to know a wattage figure before talking to us. Lights, fans, a television and a few phones is one conversation. A chest freezer plus a pumping machine is an entirely different one.
The picture on this page shows several ratings side by side, because inverters get bought on specification and their appearance tells you almost nothing. Nobody chooses one by looking at it. What the image gives you is a starting point, an example of the kind of thing we bring in, so you can say "that family, but 2000W in 24V" or "no, mine has a charger built in and a bigger display". Either sentence is worth ten paragraphs of description.
Venocipal is a sourcing firm working out of Ibadan. Nothing on this page is stock. There's no list you're choosing from and no catalogue anybody is steering you into. You describe the load, or you photograph the unit you're already reselling, and we find out who builds it, put it on the bench, and quote you what it costs landed in Lagos.
Fifty comes from weight and paperwork. An inverter is heavy and goes by sea, and sea freight only repays you when you're filling meaningful space. The SONCAP file and the Form M work cost roughly the same for a small consignment as a large one. Under fifty units, freight and certification per unit push your landed cost above what's already sitting in the market, and then you've got nothing to sell against. Fifty to a hundred works. Past a hundred it works comfortably. Ask for branded casings and the sensible floor drifts up toward that hundred, because a factory wants a proper run before it will change anything on the tooling or the print.
Common questions
What's the smallest order?
Fifty units across a shipment. Mix the wattages, mix 12V and 24V, it all counts into the same fifty.
Which rating should I stock?
The middle of the range usually turns over fastest, though that shifts with your area and with whether your customers are running fridges. Unsure? Spread a first order across four ratings at the minimum and let the sell-through educate you.
12V or 24V?
Whatever matches your customers' battery banks. No preference involved. Get it wrong and the unit comes straight back, and this is the single most common cause of returns in the category.
How do I know it's genuinely pure sine?
You test it, or we test it for you. The sample goes on a scope and under load before we'll recommend anybody. A claim printed on the housing proves nothing.
Is the wattage on the front real?
Often it's the peak figure sitting where the continuous rating should be. We quote what we measured continuous, which is sometimes below what the box says. Nobody returns a unit for that. They return units for the opposite.
Can you get hybrid or solar inverters?
Yes. Send a model number, a photo, or just describe the installation you're kitting out. Hybrid units, MPPT charge controllers, matched battery banks. What sits on this page is one family we can bring in, put here so there's something specific to argue about.
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Tell us the load and we'll tell you the rating
You don't need a wattage figure to start this conversation. Say what your customers want running: lights and fans, a freezer, a pumping machine out on a farm. Tell us the battery voltage they're on and roughly how many units you're after. We'll come back with the ratings that fit and a landed cost for Lagos. Already reselling something? Photograph it and we'll go and find that exact unit instead. Nothing to pay for a quote and nothing owed at the end of one. If what you're asking for doesn't add up, you'll hear that from us as well.
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