Do You REALLY Need To Run your Genny?

We run ours all day.

It's the wife's fault, she has to have electricity of the 120 volt flavor.

We do get about 3 days of use with them MAXX batteries when not generating tho...

I guess it's a matter of what kind of juice is wanted whilst trailering.
Excessive microwave and coffee maker users here.

You don't need to run the genny unless you want to run something that can't run off batteries like the AC, MW, or TV. That's usually enough to charge the batteries at the same time. When we dry camp, we run the genny every night to watch a movie, then it goes off. We fire it up again when I want to dry my hair. Other than that, we don't usually run it.

no.

Generator hours doesn't mean you must run it. LOL

A very Quite genny......as gennys go........................IF I am dry camping, it is in a casino lot, or WAY away from anyone else ,in a remote forest service campground, lots of trees, coupl sites away....you do not even hear my genny......Mounted on rig, covered.....



BUT...................never fails...................someone will set up RIGHT next to me. Land aplenty ............but lets get close.





I can go for couple days on dual battery but I choose to do some things with 120 needed............so, sometimes..........yes, I need it.

plenty of arguments about this topic here. i mean threads. this next statement may offend but its my vacation and im gonna enjoy it how i want. :)

I would only run my generator to recharge my battery bank if the batteries get down to around 12.0VDC which is approximately 50% charge state. If it only gets down to 66% of charge and I know it will most likely get below the 50% state of charge before I will be allowed to run my generator again due to the restrictions in place I would probably go ahead and re-charge back up to the 90% charge state..

It has been my experience if I don't recharge at the approximately 50% charge state and also do not attain at least the 90% charge state during this recharge period then when I start using the batteries again they do not have the same expected performance.

If I don't get my batteries back up to the 90% charge state each time of recharging then the worse the battery performance gets when I start using them again and eventually I start doing real harm to my batteries.

Our normal camping run using 120VAC appliances from an Inverter and other direct connected 12VDC items usually ends up consuming around 20AMPs of power drain from 8PM to 11PM hours each evening and of course a full day of maybe 1AMP additional battery drain for the trailer parasitic drains. This usually gets my 255AH battery bank down to 12.0VDC at 8AM each morning when I need to start re-charging again.

We have been very successful over the past five years using this method of recharging using the 2KW Honda generator. I am still on my same batteries that were installed in 2008 and are just now starting to show loss of performance.

My success is because I watch the battery drain very close when we are camping off the power grid.

All of this is based on my experiences...

Just passing along what we do camping off the power grid

Roy Ken

Sorry, but neither of my Honda 2K's are quiet when the wife has her blow dryer going :E

I run my solar generator all day. Even during quiet hours :B Inverter provides 120v as needed.
If I need air I go find some hookups.

2oldman wrote:
no.

Generator hours doesn't mean you must run it. LOL

X2....

To the OP....when you say the batteries were 2/3 charged, are you taking 2/3 of 12VDC (8V)? Or going with the fact that batteries are pretty much "dead" when they are below 10.5 VDC?

If they are getting run down, you will want to charge them, and that is what you have the genset for......and you only have a few hours to do it.

You don't HAVE to run your generator except for Air conditioning if you are set up right. Some people have larger battery banks, other use solar. We have some of both and no longer use the generator for charging at all.