Generator Vs. Solar discusion thread

Solar discussions changed my mind in 2016. 

A small power station used only for your CPAP recharging should work. How many watts does its battery hold?

I didn't in this thread but I can tell you real easy.  when you size yor battery bank ou size it to last you for the normal duration of your average camping trip.  so if you are generaly a long weekend camper then size it for 36 hours work of power and a pinch more.   so what this does is if you have three days of bad weather you don't have to go home early.  I actualy have my stuff sized for 9 days because quite often I will go out for a week.  with the solar I sized it to recover my normal overnight usage by noon.  yes this will take some calculations to figure out, but when you are done your ovr night usage is recovered by 11-noon and the rest of the day you are running off your solar.  so I size the solar that big for a few reasons, 1 its the cheepest thing you will every buy for your rv.  with 400-500 watt panels under 200 bucks in Canada, its a small investment to get a lot of power capability.  the second reason I do this is if I had thoes 3 bad days, on the 4th day when it is nice I can pretty make up for 2 if not all of thoes days and be reset.  

as for shade, moderent panels are very good in the shade also, some better than others. ya you won't get the same charging power but you will still get some.  for example my 325 watt panel on my truck camper puts out 21 amps during the best 4-5 hours of the day (if my battery is down on the SOC) in shaded sites I might get 5 to 8 amps.  which when you only use 36ah over night will still get me to full by sunset.  now if you use more as your in a bigger rig then you have room for more panels, remember I said they are the cheepest thing..   room is the limiting factor for solar.  in a truck camper if you want to camp like your at home or have to run a AC it gets hard.  it has been done but its not easy.  

as far as champion generators go they are for construction sites not campgrounds.  they are cheep budgit and loud.  I looked at the 4000 watt inverter champion.  it is rated for 68db at 25 feet I believe was the distance, the 3000 honda was 49-50db.  your also throwing american prices out against my canadian prices to make it look even better so make sure you list what type of curency you are talkign about.  

as for your cpap many do run solar and have it going.  12V models are more efficent than the 120V ones, and its just a matter of sizing things properly.  how many AH does your cpap use overnight?  how many does your fridge use in 24 hours on average.  this is all in the proper sizing of your battery bank and solar.  you can't just expect to throw a 100 watt lifepo4 in there and a 200 watt panel and go.  for example I use a fair bit more energy in my 5th wheel and it is about to get larger.  right now I have four 6V batteries in it and 480 watts of solar and in 10 years we have never run low on power.  but now I decided I want to start running the bar fridge in the outdoor kitchen  and my ice maker, so I did a trial a couple years ago during the heat dome (hotter the better as it raises the consumption of electricity in both the fridge and the icemaker so I was getting an extream usage)   so the result of my test is I lost about 20% of my capacity a day, so the solar couldn't keep up.  so it is upgrade time for the 5th wheel in the next year or two.  I had the solar system put on when I bought it as I didn't know much about solar then and it was a dealer offered kit.  it is a PWM, 12V, 480watt and only puts out 1amp more charging power than my 325watt MPPY 24V setup that I sourced and installed.  so now the 5th wheel is getting up graded to 1200 watts of 24V panels, a MPPT controler and once I get more cells from china about 1200 AH of lifepo4 battery.  this will let me run a lot more than I want, but I want that battery capacity for longer trips if it is like you said, rainy or very shaded) and I want that solar because that is only 3 panels for a total of 600 bucks cdn, plus it lets me recover from bad days very fast, or gives me extra power if I want to run my ninja slushy or my margaretaville.  but it will also giv eme the capacity to run my ac for about 2 or 3 hours a day with out worring if I have to cool it down in the evening.  

and as I have said in every post the exception to this is if you have to run ac 24/7.  then a generator is way way cheeper, and in smaller units you simply run out of relestate for put enough solar up.  

I beg to differ, every year up here I see more and more units with solar on them.  the only minds that arn't changing are the ones stuck in the dark ages and don't care about their fellow campers.