Inverter Generator Help Please
Recently I booked a 4 night stay at a State campground with no electric hookups for this upcoming camping season. It will be my first experience relying on just battery power. My Travel Trailer has th...
Forum Discussion
We camp alot off-road do just fine with our 2KW generator setup. We have a 600W PSW Inverter running off the battery bank that provides for what 120VAC items we want to use when camping off-road. Most everything is run from 12VDC direct connected to the batteries actually...
All of this has been planned out to run down our Added battery bank to its 50% charge state by 8AM each morning. Then we run the Generator with the Popup trailer connected to it to use the on-board PD9260C Smart Mode converter/charger to recharge our battery bank back up to its 90% charge state. This takes around three hours to accomplish this. Doing this at breakfast also allows us to use the generator for a couple of other items. All I really need the generator for is have enough watts to run the on-board Converter/charger unit which is around 1000WATTS. There of course could be other items turned ON in the POPUP but all of that gets turned off if it is going to not allow me to use the on-board converter/charger.
One must also know how many cycles of 50% to 90% charge states you can do without doing harm to the battery bank. I have to run a full charge on mine after around 12-14 days of doing the 50%-90% charge state cycles. I usually do this at home as it takes around 12 hours or so to do a full 100% charge state for me. That would be too long to run my generator when off road...
One could also setup some solar to do this as well but you will still need the generator to get past the initial charge which is my case is around 53AMPS DC current for the first 15-20 minutes or so when I first start my re-charge - then it starts tapering down to the 6-8AMPs DC current after that.. If I had good high sun then I could switch to a few solar panels to finish off my recharge during the day and maybe only run the generator for the first hour. Getting 50AMPS DC current out of solar panels would require many panels on the roof. My idea is to get my batteries back up to their 90% charge state as soon as I can during the day. If I can do this with solar panels I would do it that way and not have the generator running making noise. Getting high sun all day is not guaranteed...
After my initial run of the generator the total DC required to finish my battery charge is 6-8AMPS for a few hours. That could easily be provided by solar panels if the sun is out. For me having the generator is a must have item. having solar panels would just be another way to keep the batteries up if needed. You might have rain for two weeks and no sun - who knows...
Been doing this 50% to 90% charge routine alot since 2009 and our original GP24 Interstate 12V batteries are just now dropping good performance. I am currently planning a new battery bank using four GC2 6V batteries like you have suggested... This will give me 440Ahs of capacity verses the 255AHs I have had since 2009...
We do what you are describing all the time time and after upgrading a few things on my OFF-ROAD POPUP we manage things just fine staying off-road for up to 2 weeks long a few times...
We watch HDTV every night and I get to play with my Ham Radio... What more would you want to do haha... Just have to keep one eye on the battery monitor as you do not want to drop below 12.0VDC which is approximately the 50% charge state.
Roy Ken
All of this has been planned out to run down our Added battery bank to its 50% charge state by 8AM each morning. Then we run the Generator with the Popup trailer connected to it to use the on-board PD9260C Smart Mode converter/charger to recharge our battery bank back up to its 90% charge state. This takes around three hours to accomplish this. Doing this at breakfast also allows us to use the generator for a couple of other items. All I really need the generator for is have enough watts to run the on-board Converter/charger unit which is around 1000WATTS. There of course could be other items turned ON in the POPUP but all of that gets turned off if it is going to not allow me to use the on-board converter/charger.
One must also know how many cycles of 50% to 90% charge states you can do without doing harm to the battery bank. I have to run a full charge on mine after around 12-14 days of doing the 50%-90% charge state cycles. I usually do this at home as it takes around 12 hours or so to do a full 100% charge state for me. That would be too long to run my generator when off road...
One could also setup some solar to do this as well but you will still need the generator to get past the initial charge which is my case is around 53AMPS DC current for the first 15-20 minutes or so when I first start my re-charge - then it starts tapering down to the 6-8AMPs DC current after that.. If I had good high sun then I could switch to a few solar panels to finish off my recharge during the day and maybe only run the generator for the first hour. Getting 50AMPS DC current out of solar panels would require many panels on the roof. My idea is to get my batteries back up to their 90% charge state as soon as I can during the day. If I can do this with solar panels I would do it that way and not have the generator running making noise. Getting high sun all day is not guaranteed...
After my initial run of the generator the total DC required to finish my battery charge is 6-8AMPS for a few hours. That could easily be provided by solar panels if the sun is out. For me having the generator is a must have item. having solar panels would just be another way to keep the batteries up if needed. You might have rain for two weeks and no sun - who knows...
Been doing this 50% to 90% charge routine alot since 2009 and our original GP24 Interstate 12V batteries are just now dropping good performance. I am currently planning a new battery bank using four GC2 6V batteries like you have suggested... This will give me 440Ahs of capacity verses the 255AHs I have had since 2009...
We do what you are describing all the time time and after upgrading a few things on my OFF-ROAD POPUP we manage things just fine staying off-road for up to 2 weeks long a few times...
We watch HDTV every night and I get to play with my Ham Radio... What more would you want to do haha... Just have to keep one eye on the battery monitor as you do not want to drop below 12.0VDC which is approximately the 50% charge state.
Roy Ken
