These days RV’s are amazing at providing the basic necessities of modern life. Everything you need to survive on the road can be carried in your RV. One of the most important amenities that your RV provides is power. Having the ability to keep the lights on while you are traveling or sitting stationary is an absolute marvel. Now the systems that provide that power are not extremely complicated but each has its own merits, benefits and drawbacks. The three conventional ways to provide power to your RV are:
- Shore Power
- Generator
- Solar
With all of my three RV’s I have used all three of these methods to generate power. The most common, and the one everyone knows is shore power. This is where you take a power cord from your RV and plug into a park pedestal and then you have either 30amp or 50amp service depending on what the pedestal offers. 30amp is the most common, though a lot of parks and campgrounds are upgrading their power distribution system to 50amp in order to accommodate the big rigs. Now 50amp is most common on Class “A”’s while 30amp is for all the rest. Since we have a Class “C” we use 30amp. Now due to the type of camping we do we don’t usually have a power pedestal to plug into, but when we do its magical! Having unlimited power to run all of your devices and air conditioner / heater is awesome, but not often practical in most dry camping campgrounds. That’s where having the ability to create your own power comes in handy.
Generators are the most common way to generate your own power. Class “A”s “B”s and “C”s typically all come with their own generators attached to the chassis, whereas travel trailers and fifth wheels require an external generator to be purchased for the rig. Generators typically work off of the RV’s on board fuel system drawing gasoline until the tank reaches ¼ full then the flow of gas will stop and the generator will turn off. Some generators will work off of propane and again will use the on board propane system to fuel the generator. In our old RV we had an external generator that I plumbed into my propane system, as the generator was a 3000w Yamaha tri fuel generator. This was a great generator, quiet and with three fuel options, gas, propane, or NG (Natural Gas), the only problem with this generator was weight. It weighed 160Lbs or 72.5KG. It was a beast, and every time I setup camp I had to wrestle this generator out of my storage compartment and take it to the back of my rig where the propane connector was located. Can you say Pain in the A**? Now with our new RV, the RV has a 4000w on board Onan generator. Having the Generator bolted on to the RV chassis instead of having to wrestle it out of a compartment is a game changer for me. The Onan 4000-RVQG is a great generator it powers all of the RV’s systems including the Air conditioner and roof top heater, but it does have one drawback and that is noise. Onan says the generator operates at 68db which from a distance is not too noisy but sitting next to it in the campsite the noise is very apparent. Now this is the most common generator on Class “C”s, so there is not much I can do about the noise unless I swap it out for a quieter model, and that would be expensive, but something I may consider down the road.
So how often do you operate your generator? That’s a great question and one that depends on the campground you are located at and also to some extent it will depend on what you family requires in terms of power to lite up all of your devices. For us we find that four to six hours of operation a day is sufficient to power all of our needs, recharge batteries and power devices. Depending on where we are certain campgrounds have restrictions as to when you can operate your generator and for how long. When camping in Federal or BC Provincial parks we can only run the generator for four hours a day. Two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. This can take some planning to make this work and certainly you will not be able to run your air conditioner for the whole day, but with a few adjustments and ensuring that you charge your devices at the appropriate generator time, you will find that you can survive on four hours of generator time a day. When camping in Alberta there is no time restraints other than a morning start time and evening stop time which is typically 7am to 10pm, but of course courtesy and generator etiquette do come into play here and most people only run their generators for the amount of time that they require power.
Solar is a wonderful power generation system. Not only is the power of the sun free, it works all day for you and without noise. The drawback of solar is that it is expensive to deploy, but those costs are coming down as Solar gains popularity. On my fist RV, I installed solar panels on my roof. I had two panels for a total of 200w. This was enough to recharge my batteries during the day and allowed us to run off of battery power in the evening. For the most part it worked, though on cloudy days our charge to the batteries was reduced. Another drawback was that I had to park the RV in sunny spots. Now you might think Duh.. go figure solar needs the sun right? Yes it does, but parking your RV in the blazing sun for the day has the unwanted side effect of heating up your RV, and solar is not typically strong enough to run your air conditioner.
So Solar definitely has a few drawbacks. Now with both Solar and generator you typically require batteries to hold on to the charge that these devices produce, in order to use that power later on in the evening when both systems are typically off. Batteries are a great way to store that extra power and offer a quiet service in which to use that power. Unfortunately batteries are a topic on to themselves and one that I will talk about in another article.
So to warp up this conversation Power generation is an important requirement of RVing. Power keeps the lights on, the heater working and offers us the opportunity to utilize our entertainment systems and devices. Power is what separates us from the elements and animals of this planet we call earth. Without Power we would once again be living in caves as our ancestors once did. With all that said, I find that when we are out in the wilderness my preferred power generation is still my good ole generator. It is easy to use, efficient, and produces more power than what we typically use, so the excess can go to my battery bank for use in the evening. Yeah it is noisy but that is the tradeoff we make in order to have the power that drives us.