Generator or Inverter
Im sure this has been discussed before on here but that was before my time lol.. Going to purchase a power supply for my camper but not sure of what I need. Honda tells me Inverter at $2200.00 and Cha...
Forum Discussion
Where we camp here in Virginia and along the Blue Ridge parkway we run into Generator run time restrictions just about everywhere at the public camp sites.
With this in mind I beefed up my batteries and associated battery cables, replace my Incandescent automotive type bulbs for LEDs and exerise as less power drain as I can to do in an one day/night run off the batteries for the things we want to use when camping off the power grid. The plan for us is to not run down the battery bank lower than its 50% charge state which is around 12.0VDC
Then the next morning at 8Am when allowed to run our small 2KW Honds Inverter type generator we can re-charge our battery bank back up to its 90% charge state in a quick three hour generator run time. Now we are ready to do the next day/night run off the batteries.
Been doing this method since 2009 and have the routine down pretty good now as it is all second nature for us. Just now thinking about about adding solar panels to the off-road POPUP trailer so we would only need to run our 2KW generator for maybe one hour each day and then let the solar panels finish the 90% charge or more before we lose the high sun. My battery bank like to see around 53AMPS DC Current when first hit with 14.4VDC boost charge voltage and after 15-20 minutes this DC CURRENT will taper back to around 8 DC AMPS or so which is readially available from a small solar panel setup in high sun...
This is how we do our OFF-ROAD camping which does not include air conditioning or high wattage appliances like the microwave etc... When camping in the cold weather season running the furnace 12VDC fan motor all night long is another challenge as well.
Roy Ken
With this in mind I beefed up my batteries and associated battery cables, replace my Incandescent automotive type bulbs for LEDs and exerise as less power drain as I can to do in an one day/night run off the batteries for the things we want to use when camping off the power grid. The plan for us is to not run down the battery bank lower than its 50% charge state which is around 12.0VDC
Then the next morning at 8Am when allowed to run our small 2KW Honds Inverter type generator we can re-charge our battery bank back up to its 90% charge state in a quick three hour generator run time. Now we are ready to do the next day/night run off the batteries.
Been doing this method since 2009 and have the routine down pretty good now as it is all second nature for us. Just now thinking about about adding solar panels to the off-road POPUP trailer so we would only need to run our 2KW generator for maybe one hour each day and then let the solar panels finish the 90% charge or more before we lose the high sun. My battery bank like to see around 53AMPS DC Current when first hit with 14.4VDC boost charge voltage and after 15-20 minutes this DC CURRENT will taper back to around 8 DC AMPS or so which is readially available from a small solar panel setup in high sun...
This is how we do our OFF-ROAD camping which does not include air conditioning or high wattage appliances like the microwave etc... When camping in the cold weather season running the furnace 12VDC fan motor all night long is another challenge as well.
Roy Ken
