What portable power station do you choose for camping?

Started by Bill.Candy, October 16, 2019, 03:24:08 AM

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Bill.Candy

What portable power station do you choose for camping?

DavidM

Not sure what you mean about portable power station. It could mean extra battery capacity,
portable generator or a battery/inverter pack to produce 120V power.

Here is an article that discusses the latter two: https://www.bestpowerstation.com/best-generator-for-rv/

If you mean batteries, you can change the typical single group 24 battery (about 70 AHs) to a single group 31 and get about 100 amp hours. Or go with two 6V golf cart batteries wired in parallel and get 220 amp hours.

David

Jake Ditch

Quote from: Bill.Candy on October 16, 2019, 03:24:08 AM
What portable power station do you choose for camping?

First of all, how much power do you need?
Second, commercial ones often don't last. That's my experience as well. One thing to combat this is to always keep them charged. These things don't do well with full discharge. Kind of a design flaw considering people buy them to keep in the trunk of their car for some future need. But you have it exactly right; you're paying for "pretty" not for functionality. Most of the off-the-shelf ones have really cheap internals with low grade, low capacity batteries.
If you build it yourself from an inverter and your own batteries it will be WAY, WAY more cost effective than a portable power station (the Marine battery and a separate charger/inverter set might be the better way to go). My father built a station like this for his needs several years ago, and it works perfectly.

Though, if generators are an option and you need more energy, than it's hard to beat a Honda. The main reason to get a Honda is that they are really quiet. You can run them without ticking off everyone in the camp area.
I use Honda 2200i, and it works perfectly + almost silent. Just be careful with latest ones as they've been reported to have issues with leakage (https://olivertraveltrailers.com/topic/split-honda-generator-did-i-buy-the-wrong-one- eu2200i-or-eu2200i-companion/#post-162224) - so I'd recommend you find a used one. Sure there are cheaper generators out there, but Honda works reliably. A friend of mine uses his Predator 2000 inverter gen and pretty happy with it (runs a fridge in his RV w/o any problems).