Charging a camper battery with a generator?

[oldfrat]

Does anybody here have experience with this?

I have a small Aliner camper with a 75 amp hour marine battery (will upgrade to 100AH when I replace). Now that I know my usage patterns with it, I have rejected going the solar route and am looking at the Honda EU1000 generator for recharging the battery on longer boondocking stays.

I'm wondering what the best way to use this generator is?

I can recharge via 12V DC direct to the battery. This output is not controlled to shut down when the battery is recharged if done that way. The generator puts out 8 Amps/96Watts at 12V DC.

Or I can plug my battery charger into the generator's AC outlet and hitch that up to the battery. The generator's 120 V AC output is 7.5A/900W. the battery charger puts out 6A at 12V, then goes down to a trickle charge when it reads the battery as being fully charged.

Which is best?

My electric consumption when boondocking in this camper is pretty low. I run a couple of LED interior light bulbs (1141 replacements) in the evenings for a total of 7.2W. My furnace operates on LP gas, but the electric demand for the fan is 41W. If it is warm, I might also run a 3A FanTastic vent fan for a max of 15 minutes/day. I think I am good for at least 2 nights on my current 75AH battery before recharging. If anyone has experience with a similar situation, I'd love to hear how long I would need to run the generator to recharge it after this. Or how often I should run the generator to recharge.

Many thanks!

Brad

[narcodog]

OF. I have a TC and when I have to charge my battery's I do it through my converter or with my three stage battery charger. I would recommend getting a 3 stage like a Shumacher, they are about $75.00. When you upgrade look into getting an AGM size 29 or 31 if it will fit your box. I would also recommend getting it from http://www.bestconverter.com. With an AGM you do not have to worry about putting water in the battery.

If you charge with the genset itself it will take forever and will not charge it full. One other thing besure to measure power usage in amphrs to get the correct amount of usage.

[sharps]

Plug your battery charger into your gen-set then hook it to your battery. No different than plugging your charger into a home receptacle. The only diference could be minor voltage fluctuations but as you mentioned a Honda, they won't be enough to consider. We've been doing that very thing for decades on equipment batteries in the field. I woudln't charge it directly from the 12V receptacle on the gen-set.

[hap]

That generator has a built in 12v charging system and unless it is an older model it should have a shut-down when the battery is charged. I have run marine batteries regularly with both charging systems hooked up when I needed juice NOW to start a boat engine...

[Jayatwork]

Plug your trailer into the 120V on the generator and let the converter charge the battery.

I have two 85 AH batteries on my trailer. With the water pump, lights etc. I can get through a three day weekend without recharging. Any longer or if I need the furnace, I run the generator to recharge. The fan on the furnace is the biggest draw I use.

[Trigg]

Went through the same evaluation when I bought my EU2000 last summer. Check the charging output of your converter. Mine was only 3 amps--really only a trickle charge. I could get 8 amps from the generator 12v outlet, or I could plug in the battery charger which outputs up to 15 amps. So that's the way I went. I since have acquired a new camper with a better converter with higher output. I think I'll just plug the camper into the generator and let the converter do it. That's definitely the easiest thing to do.

We run 2 80aH batteries on the camper. Fairly conservative usage like you describe, and we can go up to 4 days without needing to recharge.

BTW, it's hard to justify the EU1000 when the EU2000 is just a couple of hundred bucks more. Keep in mind the output is reduced with altitude. The 2000 is a little bigger and definitely heavier, though.