Let's talk - Batteries, Generators, & Solar Power

This is my take on it....

It seems like everyone wants to be able to run everything in their trailers including the air conditioners and high wattage microwaves. I too was thinking about this as well. Then reality sits in when traveling around the East side of the US camp grounds we figured out not many places would allow us to run our generators during the day when we needed the air conditioners running. Let alone after dark. The public camp grounds all have some generator run restrictions in place it seems.

With this in mind I started beefing up my trailer to be able run all the 120VAC items from a an inverter and the 12VDC items we wanted to run direct connected to the batteries for the one day/one night run camping off the power grid.

This included making sure we have a smart-mode converter/charger unit on board, changed out the automotive high current lights for LED lights, added more batteries to sustain what we wanted to run in the trailer, beefed up the battery cables etc...

I ended up with a three battery hookup of the standard issue Interstate batteries that came with the trailer. This gives me around 255AHs battery capacity which will run all the toys we wanted to have running when camping. This of course does not include the AIR CONDITIONER or the HIGH WATTAGE MICROWAVE UNIT.

With all of this planned out we normally draw the most current from the batteries from 8PM to 11PM running the home entertainment items and lighting etc. This is a 20AMP drain on the battery bank during this time. In addition to other 12VDC drain on the batteries that are always on all the time this drained down our batteries to around 12.0VDC by 8AM the next morning.

This is when I then connect the 30AMP Trailer shore power cable to the 2KW Honda Generator 120VAC front panel connection using a RV30A-15A long adapter (WALMART) which will alow the on-board PD9260C Converter/Charger re-charge my three Interstate GP24 12VDC batteries back up to their 90% charge state state in as little as three hours of generator run time. This usually fits into the public camp ground generator run time restrictions.

Once my batteries are back to their 90% charge state I can do all of this all over again for the next day/night run off the batteries. We can do this 50% to 90% charge cycle thing for a couple of weeks without doing harm to our batteries. After that however we must do a full 100% charge on the batteries which takes around 11-12 hours of generator run time or this will start doing damage to our batteries.

Of course running a generator for 12 hours continuous is not allowed at many public camp grounds so you are out of luck being able to do this. This is when we head back for the house...

I am now very successful for doing this when camping off the power grid. I can really enhance on this by adding solar panels to the trailer to be able to recharge my batteries during the day when the strong sun is out. This extra recharge just makes the batteries go longer before recharging with the generator. However usually I would think you might run into the generator run time restrictions and without a lot of solar panels you may not be able to do a full day or so just keeping the batteries charged up without running the generator. Your batteries must attain the 90% charge state when you recharge or you will not get the required battery performance to make it thru the next day/night battery run.

Going with just SOLAR PANELS only to me is a risky situation unless you go real big panels. You have to have the batteries anyway to store the solar energy because the solar panels only put out energy when the sun is out. I haven't added solar yet but really think just adding 120WATTS or maybe double that will really help me out. Sometimes you might end up going for several days of real cloudy skies where the solar panels won't keep the batteries charged up. Then you need the generator setup. SO my plan was to get very successful using the generator first within all of the camp ground rules in place and then think about adding solar panels to enhance my generator operations...

Just some of my thoughts on the subject. It takes some planning but we have been very successful doing this method of camping off the power grid over the past five years. We do just about everything we do at a regular camp ground with electric hookup except no air conditioner. I have a small low wattage manual operated microwave ($35 WALMART) I bring along when camping off the power grid and it does great off my 600WATT PSW Inverter setup for the few minutes I need to use it.

Its all in the planning and having good PLAN Bs in place.
Roy ken

GooberGuz wrote:
I want to start off by saying - yes i have searched and yes there is a ton, but really there is not a conversation about it.

Let me explain. I own a 2011 Coachman Catalina 21 BH and we love it, just the right size and all the perks we have need so far. The other day i had a guy walk over to me and start to ask me questions about my Gennies (Set of Honda EU2000i's linked together so i can run the A/C is needed)

Where am i going with this - I am not an Electrician so I don't understand much about watts and amps.

Some of the questions that came up -

Do i need 1 or both to charge up my batteries so i can run over night? I don't know....


I have 2 - 6Volt batteries and thats all. I have seem them sit at 13.0 and as low as 11.9 I have no clue what is what is and what is not fully charges - I just go off the little push button gauge...



also I have a Solar Panel (two Boulder 30's from Goal Zero 60 Watts with a Guardian 12 V converter... I throw it on to keep things topped off when running the Generator is pointless. not using the A/C, TV, Fan or Sat Dish.

I am really new at this and wanted to strike up a conversation.

Please POST your thoughts....

You would only need one generator running to charge your batteries.

A set up of 6v batteries is the way to go. What you're looking at is the actual voltage of the batteries while hooked up to produce 12v power.) Voltage Explanation