Dry-camping....and small generators

[Uncle Dave]

To answer the posters questions-

I do not know of a DC "only" compact inverter style generator.


I have camped both ways- with a small genny connected to AC connector

- and a small genny running a high quality charger connected to DC only and inverting the whole stay.

There are tradeoffs to each method, but I think the absolute cheapest is to use a very small genny powering a high quality charger and inverting- something like a yamaha, or honda 1K running a modern charger where you set the selectable upper amp out range and your house bank absorbs any overage for however long it needs to.

The usual problem is that few coaches are wired identically for both paths leading to sacrificing something (typically AC) when choosing either path.

You seem to have 3 choices fro DC powered stays-

1. Deal with whatever minuscule amperage is built into the gensets dc out.
(Honda 2K is 8 amps and unregulated noisy DC and not great for AGM's)

2. Run a full genset with an alternator head outputting DC directly into the bank

3. Connect a modern charger to the gennies 110V - set the upper amperage limit to say 50 and purr away letting the charger regulate between bulk & float depending on your inverters draw.

There are probably full size gennys that give you full range of both , but I know of no small inverter gennys that do.

UD

[Gary - K7GLD]

Just a FWIW - here's a handy setup I made up to recharge the large Trojan deep-cycle battery I sometimes use to power the Minn-Kota electric trolling motor on my fishing boat in dry camping lake situations:



The (noisy!) gas engine is a 3.5 HP Briggs and Stratton job, the alternator, a GM setup with built-in regulator is very simple, and with it's 65 or so amp output, recharges batteries in far shorter time than I could otherwise...