Dry camping power options

[Conner58]

Nothing will be cheap and easy. Maybe a portable power station with solar panels.
You can move it to a sunny spot to charge .
Small gas generator will be cheap probably have to run it everyday for hours to recharge.

[kduane01]

We did the quick and easy - parallel connected another NAPA lead acid battery and bought a Harbor Freight 3500 watt inverter generator to recharge daily and all 110v needs. Gen fits perfectly in stow centered. But we have a 2018 so use propane settings for dry camping.

[JPS350]

I also stuck with lead acid, though if you already have the lithium ready charger, there can be some real advantages there. In our case I put in a couple of 6v golf cart batts as they are true deep cycle batteries providing a more capacity than 2 of the group 24 that was on the trailer, and also installed a monitor. We also have a couple of Honda 2200i generators that we can parallel for the ac or use either one for normal use without ac. We have the propane fridge on ours, so the extra storage will be fine for furnace use, etc.

I put a post up here concerning the upgrade I did to the batteries and the monitor install here:

https://www.mygrandrv.com/forum/show...de-and-monitor

[mrb188]

Honda 2k inverter on eco mode is almost unnoticeable (noise wise) and paired with a boat tank that holds 6 gallons it will run forever! You can run one larger item at a time such as microwave or AC but will work great. The generic Predator version from Harbor Freight is just as good. You pair the tank with special tank lid and will automatically siphon from external tank.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BNBCRRS...C553APDY1&th=1

[Cleetussnow]

My solution is a couple of 100ah lithiums and a predator 2000. I had a cheapo 20 amp charger that i just hooked up to the batteries from the genny. I also have an 1100 watt inverter attached the batteries and I just plug the camper into that to use the outlets and make coffee or whatever. Just have to remember to turn the charger breaker off. It all works for me.

You can get a single lithium and add more later. Thats what did/am doing.

I plan to upgrade the campers inverter charger to 60 amps and add a couple more 100ah lithiums. Someday I will get a 3500 watt inverter genny but haven’t really needed that kind of power.

[GWKincade]

My son has a nice set up for power. He has a fairly small trailer and a Ford F150 hybrid truck. He plugs the trailer into the truck for power. When the batteries get low the truck starts to charge the batteries. The set up works well for him.

[SolarPoweredRV]

The only issue with a generator is how long would you have to run it to charge the battery?
I would think quite a long time

That is one of the advantages of switching to Lithium batteries, they can charge incredibly fast compared to Lead Acid. Of course you have to have a Lithium capable Converter.

If you are planning on dry camping and using a generator to top off your batteries, I recommend a Converter that is capable of 80 + amps of charging.

[SolarPoweredRV]

I think LiFePo4 batteries are the way to go if you're boon docking. 200ah of lithium will give you roughly the equivalent 4 of those lead acid batteries you have on the tongue. Check to see if your converter is already a lithium compatible model and get a 2000w generator.

If you're in shade and not much sunlight gets in, you may want to try a portable 200w panel set up that you can move as needed to not run the generator as much.

This would be a really good starting point. If you have a 165 Watt Solar panel on the roof already, the 200 Watt portable Solar panel would be a very good way to supplement your power. The nice thing about portable Solar panels is they can be moved to follow the Sun, consequentially, they can actually produce more power than a roof mounted panel of the same size.

Here is a really good thread that explains Solar and batteries:

Solar-How-To-Design-and-Install-an-Affordable-Solar-System

I highly recommend following the links that talk about "installing Solar in Phases" and "Lithium over Lead Acid Batteries".

[Reddog303]

Have been playing the 12v fridge game for 2 years and have generally worked it out.300 w solar can keep my batteries up if the sun is unobstructed by overcast,in cloudy conditions I'm good for 2 days without running the gen set 2000watt.Had 5 days of straight rain boondocking and kept everything ok running gen set 2-4 hours a day.I have upgraded my batteries to 200 w but not lithium and they hold their own.The fridge has a night mode and that is a must ,otherwise all as been good.The app that used to control my solar is gone now so using the "new"Future link but it has issues as well.

[TahoeJim]

In the end, I did a few upgrades to support extended boondocking:

• Two 300 Ah LiFePo4 batteries. Installed under the bed. This storage area is fairly inaccessible anyway since we've got a residential queen mattress on top of it. Batteries come with built-in Bluetooth. The app is smart enough to know they're installed in parallel, so it reports SoC and draw / charge rate across both batteries.
• Swapped from the WFCO auto-detect convertor to the one with the Lithium switch
• Installed Victron Orion Tr DC-DC charger, wired to the 7-pin. Battery monitoring app says it supplies 13.8 V charging at ~20 amps with the tow vehicle idling.

That setup, plus the stock 165W solar ought to be enough to get us quite a long while dry camping and just charge from shore power in between.