We own a little Honda Eu10i generator, bought 12 years ago to keep both our starter batteries & house batteries charged when our alternator died & took several months to get a replacement. Since the end of that trip it has never left home again, but has proven useful in the garden now & then.

Although reputed to be the quietest on the market, I suspect that those who say they cannot hear them must be hearing impaired. I feel sorry for them because not only do they not hear the the gennie, they also won't hear the reason we dislike using a gennie & choose to no longer carry it with us. You see what attracts us to the bush where we mainly choose to be, is that we love nature. Listening to & watching the wildlife. Waking to the dawn chorus of birds in any location is wonderful. Waking to the drone of someone else's gennie blocking out 'nature' is quite the opposite. They are not 'excessively' loud, but when one , our own included, has been running, & gets shut off, there is a sigh of relief & a sense of 'Thank goodness for that' every time.

The reality is that a Solar battery system is both silent, free to run once installed, and has purchase costs not dissimilar to the purchase cost of a generator these days. With use it becomes cheaper without the ongoing cost of fuel

Roof space allowing, there is no need to have to constantly move panels around throughout the day. With Dc to Dc charging as part of the mix it is easy to be set up for a week or two at a time , & once set up for that sort of period you are set up for indefinite self sufficiency. We have our panels on top of our tow vehicle & the 'house batteries' inside the tow vehicle. When camped we use an 'umbilical cord' to connect to our camper, allowing us to camp in the shade with the vehicle & panels out in the sun. Admittedly we are set up for full time travel,& have our fridge & freezer in the tow vehicle too. During the past 3 years full time 'on the road' we have never had need to plug into any other power supply & certainly have never wished we had the gennie with us.

Done properly it's a lovely way to travel & camp, affording maximum flexibility. I often wonder if it is the wish to avoid the 'learning curve' which is required when approaching solar for the first time (combined with the many self professed 'experts' who thrust poor advice onto the unwary) which pushes folk down the 'easier' path of just buying a gennie & plugging into it. I make no claim of expertise, but I am very happy with the 100% self sufficient solar battery systems I built with knowledge & aid from others on two different RV's now.

iana wrote:

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My purchased generator brought off Ebay arrived yesterday, I am unsure whether to mount it on the caravan "A" frame, or the rear bumper.

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 Which reminds me, why aren't we all using silent, zero emissions, fuel cell generators? They seem to be available at industrial scale, but where are the portable personal units we were promised a few years ago? 

Peter_n_Margaret wrote:

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Mamil wrote:

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 Which reminds me, why aren't we all using silent, zero emissions, fuel cell generators? They seem to be available at industrial scale, but where are the portable personal units we were promised a few years ago? 

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 We owned this second hand Efoy for a couple of years 2014/5 while touring Europe by motorhome.

Fantastic jigger. Wanted to bring it home, but that was difficult. Expensive new.

Uses methanol as the source of hydrogen. Makes about the same noise as a compressor fridge. Waste products are a little CO2 and a little pure water. It was installed inside the motorhome under a seat.

Output is a constant 75W (24/7, if required) at battery charging volts.

Cheers,

Peter

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Thank you Peter, once you gave me the brand name it wasn't too difficult to find an Australian supplier https://www.powerbox.com.au/battery-chargers/efoy-pro-fuel

Sounds very interesting - why aren't we all using these to back up our solar systems? Seems like the combination would make the ICE generator obsolete!

EFOY Pro Fuel cell generators   are smart energy producers that can be used to continuously and fully automatically recharge batteries. To do this, the fuel cell is connected directly to the battery that supplies consumers and monitors its charge level. The fuel cell recharges the battery fully automatically and then switches to standby - without any need for maintenance or intervention on the behalf of the user, and are perfectly suited for installation inside a vehicle.

-- Edited by Mamil on Monday 28th of September 2020 01:02:01 AM

Cuppa wrote:

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We own a little Honda Eu10i generator, bought 12 years ago to keep both our starter batteries & house batteries charged when our alternator died & took several months to get a replacement. Since the end of that trip it has never left home again, but has proven useful in the garden now & then.

Although reputed to be the quietest on the market, I suspect that those who say they cannot hear them must be hearing impaired. I feel sorry for them because not only do they not hear the the gennie, they also won't hear the reason we dislike using a gennie & choose to no longer carry it with us. You see what attracts us to the bush where we mainly choose to be, is that we love nature. Listening to & watching the wildlife. Waking to the dawn chorus of birds in any location is wonderful. Waking to the drone of someone else's gennie blocking out 'nature' is quite the opposite. They are not 'excessively' loud, but when one , our own included, has been running, & gets shut off, there is a sigh of relief & a sense of 'Thank goodness for that' every time.

The reality is that a Solar battery system is both silent, free to run once installed, and has purchase costs not dissimilar to the purchase cost of a generator these days. With use it becomes cheaper without the ongoing cost of fuel

Roof space allowing, there is no need to have to constantly move panels around throughout the day. With Dc to Dc charging as part of the mix it is easy to be set up for a week or two at a time , & once set up for that sort of period you are set up for indefinite self sufficiency. We have our panels on top of our tow vehicle & the 'house batteries' inside the tow vehicle. When camped we use an 'umbilical cord' to connect to our camper, allowing us to camp in the shade with the vehicle & panels out in the sun. Admittedly we are set up for full time travel,& have our fridge & freezer in the tow vehicle too. During the past 3 years full time 'on the road' we have never had need to plug into any other power supply & certainly have never wished we had the gennie with us.

Done properly it's a lovely way to travel & camp, affording maximum flexibility. I often wonder if it is the wish to avoid the 'learning curve' which is required when approaching solar for the first time (combined with the many self professed 'experts' who thrust poor advice onto the unwary) which pushes folk down the 'easier' path of just buying a gennie & plugging into it. I make no claim of expertise, but I am very happy with the 100% self sufficient solar battery systems I built with knowledge & aid from others on two different RV's now.

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 We are very much on your path. Generator on the shelf along side the battery charger and any electrical appliances we were using.

Great comment.

Stay safe and travel well

Thanks Mike and Peter, so it seems price is the main barrier to adoption of this technology, not any fundamental technical flaw. In that case I'm sure we'll see more of them in the future as price always falls as production volume rises. As an aside, when searching the internet for information on them I came across this article, not an ethanol fuel cell admittedly, but a related technology. Seems the day of the fuel cell may be coming soon after all...

"An Australian tech startup has revealed ambitious plans to not only restart local vehicle production on local soil, but its diverse line-up of vehicles will be exclusively powered by hydrogen fuel cells, as well as battery and supercapacitor power storage."

www.whichcar.com.au/car-news/h2x-launches-in-australia

Jaahn wrote:

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Hi 

If you search above you will find this thread from the past about Peters EOFY unit and some discussion too.

https://thegreynomads.activeboard.com/t60988228/efoy-methonal-fuel-cells/

I note Peter did offer his for sale but no-one here bought it ??

The cost does not appear to have gone down since that time or the cost of the methanol fuel. 

Jaahn 

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 Thanks Jaahn, interesting reading. If Peter's was still for sale I might just give it a go at that price, although pick-up in Germany might be a problem!

Jaahn wrote:

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Mamil wrote:

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Jaahn wrote:

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Hi  If you search above you will find this thread from the past about Peters EOFY unit and some discussion too.

https://thegreynomads.activeboard.com/t60988228/efoy-methonal-fuel-cells/

I note Peter did offer his for sale but no-one here bought it ?? The cost does not appear to have gone down since that time or the cost of the methanol fuel. Jaahn 

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 Thanks Jaahn, interesting reading. If Peter's was still for sale I might just give it a go at that price, although pick-up in Germany might be a problem!

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 Hi Mamil 

My pleasure ! As I was interested then and now too, I searched for current real prices to get some idea of the costs. I did find a caravan place in the UK that had prices on their shop listings.    https://www.campervanstuff.com/shop_stuff/index.php   These are in UK pounds and in the UK.

There are three current models; Efoy Comfort 80, 140, 210 fuel cells for automatic 12V LA battery charging; 

80 , 40W @ 3.3A, gives 80 Ahr/day. cost 2342 pounds.

140, 72W @ 6.0A, gives 140Ahr/day. cost 3582 pounds.

210, 105W @ 8.8A, gives 210Ahr/day, cost 4914 pounds. 

Fuel EFOL cannisters of methanol, 5 ltr gives 15 days use, cost 39 pounds,  10ltr gives 30 days use, cost 53 pounds. Rate of fuel use is 1.09ltr/100Ahr. for all models. 

Cheers jaahn

 

-- Edited by Jaahn on Monday 28th of September 2020 07:54:50 PM

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 Thanks again, but at those prices I might just chuck a solar panel or three on. I guess the economics are different in sunny Australia compared to dismal Europe 

Mamil wrote:

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 Thanks again, but at those prices I might just chuck a solar panel or three on. I guess the economics are different in sunny Australia compared to dismal Europe 

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 As an aside, we found that solar was totally practical and sufficient in summer in "dismal Europe".

This was even the case north of the Arctic Circle which was a surprise. While the sun is much lower on the horizon, it also shines for much longer and north of the Arctic Circle, it never sets so while the charge rate can be lower, it never stops. All our panels were fixed on the roof. A portable would increase collection considerably.

Cheers,

Peter

Absolutely no offence from me.

Long summer days are great, but having worked in Europe during winter for a while, I can't imagine living there in winter and keeping the batteries charged would need a whole different approach from here, that is for sure.

Cheers,

Peter