Naio wrote:
At the first cg, I felt bad because my van engine was louder than the neighboring gennys. At the second cg, I did not, because some gennys were louder than my van, so I felt I was fitting in with social norms :).
For a snowbird "some" solar is very desirable. With today's prices I would say - a must. On a camper van you can probably have 200W total.
As noted, the last 10% of charge is very slow, you're running your engine or a generator with almost same noise level and substantial gas per hour, while your battery can only accept a few amps or less. Solar will do the last 10-15% quietly. On some days maybe "the last" 50%, i.e. no engine or generator use. Though this would make your fitting with "social norms" even more difficult, especially when somebody is running an open-frame contractor grade generator all day.
