Dual Battery Setups & Solar or Generator

Gidday Chad

Buy a 2KVA Honda. This will provide everything you need including power tools to help if you get stuck.

If there are a few people camped around you, turn the generator so the exhaust is facing in the opposite direction. All that will be heard is a gentle hum.

Be warned though. Here are some synthetic individuals out there who will bitch and complain, whilst allowing their kids to screech all day and make you life a misery, with trail bikes thrown in for good measure.

I have an 80 Watt Solar Panel but rarely use it because all my needs are provided from the generator, including recharging the batteries.

Regards

Kim

Hi Chad

While the Honda is a quiet, light and easy to start genny, I prefer solar. What is your genny? Manufacturers do not advise running them in silencer boxes even with fans fitted and it may invalidate your warranty. If you are driving a few hours each day, have your car charging the battery, then if you choose to stick with the genny, just run it in the evening for your fridge and lights then the fridge should last all night if you don't want to put it back onto the battery. An LED torch can be used to see you through the night.

We got an 80 w panel and even when used as a portable and only put it out when we stopped, it was still enough to charge a deep cycle battery to run an Engel and the lights. Better still now it is roof mounted. No need to carry genny and petrol cans and no worries about camping where generators are not permitted.

Go solar: Light, cheap (after initial outlay), silent, convenient.

Motherhen

Chad. You will need around 2 x 80w solar panels to heep up to your fridge with no genset. There is a lot of options for these now. You should go portable that you can set on top of your camper while driving and move as required during the day. If you go the genset it should be run through a smart charger and you will need a min of a 17amp charger I would say. The panels will cost around $800 ea and the charger around $180 - $280. You could do as I have and run 1 x panel and use the genset to do a top up. I also have 2 x 115amp Batteries with a 30amp Charger. If you have an old genset, I highly recommend either the Yamaha or Honda 1kva. Not cheap but they do come up on ebay now and again for a reasonable price. They are very quite and use very little fuel. I have my older genset in the shed and went the Yamaha. The noise difference is amazing. I do not think anyone could complain if you only ran your genset up until it was bed time. A lot of outback fuel and accomadation places run on gensets and as a rule of thumb shutdown no latter than 10pm and who could complain. Cheers tony

Chad,
Do yourself a favour and speak to "Home of 12 Volt" first.
I have solely solar.
Trevor

I have both solar and a gennie.

Both have their problems but combined they work well.

Solar is at its best in mild sunny weather. If it's overcast, raining or stinking hot it struggles badly. They also need to moved regularly to be positioned for optimum performance.

A gennie is foolproof, generally will need to be run a couple of times a day (morning and night). For how long depends on the size of your fridge and the size of the charger (and you must have one) that you use. However you do need to carry fuel for it and run the risk of some envious enviro-nazi whinging about the noise.

As for batteries, to get the most out of a gennie with a large output charger, you'll need a good quality AGM battery because only those will accept an high charge rate.

From my vast experience over years of camping, if you are choosing one way or the other; it has to be a gennie. Far more versatile than solar alone. A 1 Kva job will do what you are after, but a 2Kva is more versatile (eg it will run small caravan aircon).

The added versatilty runs to stuff like making bread. When going remote I'll chuck the breadmaker in and bake a loaf each night, I figure if the gennie is running to charge the batteries I might as well cook a loaf at the same time. Or running/charging a laptop. Whilst some of the camping purists scoff at the idea of taking away a laptop, some of actually have work to do whilst we are in the bush.

Hope this helps,

Jim.

FWIW here is my advice if you decide to go the generator route.

Don't use the 12 charging output of the generator. It is hazardous to your batteries and usually about 8 Amps capacity.

On the pother hand a 1kw generator has a capacity of about 4 A at 240V or 65A at 14V ( 1000W) after going through a step down transformer.

So get the highest capacity, good quality 240v to 12v battery charger you can find. Eg the 25 A C-tek. That way you don't need to run the generator as long.

For example if you have a 100 AH battery that is 50% discharged you need to run your Gennie for just over 2 hours with a 25A charger, or about 7 hours with a 8A charger or the inbuilt one to get back to a full charge.

Chad,
I think there are 2 answers which depend on what your trips are like.

If you tend to travel 4 hours or more each day then you may not need anything other than making sure your wire feed to the battery from the alternator is heavy and the isolator is well installed. I have an old model (>30y) Engel fridge which still runs well but pulls more current than the new ones. I have a 100AH deep cycle aux battery and find that there is plenty of capacity for overnight and up to one day if not too hot.

If you tend to stay in one place then I would go for solar. I admit there is a problem if the weather is overcast but for me the peace and quiet in the evening when camping in the bush is part of what it is all about. The noise of even the quietest generators spoils it. If you tend to stay in camping grounds then the above is probably invalid as the extraneous noise level is high.

Each to their own but for me peace and quiet will always win

alastair

Hi Chad

Perhaps its because I have a petrol car but my take on this has always been to use what you have and charge it from the car as you do normally anyway.

Mind you you can make even this process more efficent with specialized charger or good cables if you feel the need.

I use a fast idle setting on my car and hence this allows for minimum of 50 available charging amps, but in practise this isn't needed and you can switch your fridge or other appliances on high at the same time and get the most out of running the car.

Usually run the car for some 10-15 at start and end of day as required and while a car engine is not as effienct as a Honda it would be many years before you'd spend the difference on fuel.

Incidental benefits include a warm car engine, no extra fuel containers or panels and stuff, your charging the cars battery as well, and the noise of the car is more acceptable than a genny espically if petrol.

Also you can run the car in "No genny places"

Chad,
First the new battery, how much space have you got to put this new battery or possibly batteries, and why "about 130 ah" capacity ??

Solar is probably not the most popular, it's just those people using Solar are much happier about their own battery performance, therefore will talk about it more often in a very positive way.

I expect my own Solar system to last for a while, after all the Solar panels are guaranteed to *PERFORM* for at least 25 years, somewhat longer than a Gennie is I believe, but then, yes, it does initially cost more, but Solar has no further ongoing costs for at least the next 25 years, wonder how many gennies will last half that long and at what extra expense including fuel and servicing etc.

As far as recommendations on Solar panels is concerned, look for a good warranty, good technical knowledge from the retailer and a panel that has a very good reputation within the trade!!

The high wattage power numbers are not completely relevant as they are only the maximum wattage in absolutely perfect conditions, what you need is very good performance in low light conditions, this is much more important, and is the condition most often encountered by many travelers using Solar systems.

Mainey . . .