generator and gas mileage
Does anyone run their generator while driving and if so how does it affect your fuel mileage? We are planning a trip to florida in august.
Forum Discussion
Whether or not roof air, with its gas engine to generator to motor efficiency losses (about 20-35%) is better than dash air, with only mechanical (10-15%) losses but sized to 3-4x capacity, for fuel consumption, is largely irrelevant.
If you want to cool the house, run the genset and roof air. Air from the dash won't really cool the house.
If you want to cool just the cab, run the cab air. It will draw 10-20 HP for the compressor, intermittently (it disengages according to load and demand) but feeds a correspondingly higher capacity cooling system that is just not plumbed to cool beyond the cab. If you want to cool the house, you would bring the cab down to winter temperatures.
Only caveat, if running dash air raises underhood temperatures high enough to engage the engine fan at highway speeds, that fan will cost you another 20-40 HP while engaged. It is designed for intermittent use in slow speed traffic, any other time it engages you have an engine cooling problem.
If you want to cool the house, run the genset and roof air. Air from the dash won't really cool the house.
If you want to cool just the cab, run the cab air. It will draw 10-20 HP for the compressor, intermittently (it disengages according to load and demand) but feeds a correspondingly higher capacity cooling system that is just not plumbed to cool beyond the cab. If you want to cool the house, you would bring the cab down to winter temperatures.
Only caveat, if running dash air raises underhood temperatures high enough to engage the engine fan at highway speeds, that fan will cost you another 20-40 HP while engaged. It is designed for intermittent use in slow speed traffic, any other time it engages you have an engine cooling problem.
