Jen and I bought a pop-up camper tonight. Pictures with newspaper to follow (it's dark right now and I don't want to raise it up).

Last week we spent the weekend in a friends pop-up. We liked the concept so much we bought one. This orks in to my long term plans as a portable base for when we buy land. One issue was power, and that's why I come to you guys.

On our friends, they had a 1350 watt generator running that powered a laptop the kids watched movies on and a box fan. I'm sure that the appliances mentioned didn't use all 1350 wats, so fuel was basically being wasted. I'd rather figure out a better way to to power our pop-up.

My pop-up has a 110v fridge, and an AC that also runs off 110. The stove runs off propane. To entertain the kids at night, I expect to run a laptop or portable DVD device for a few hours. At night maybe a box fan instead of the AC. Probalby a string of lights on the outside, maybe LED?

How do I calcualte how much power these things use? Rather than power them straight from the generator, what's the best battery and generator setup? A couple of truck batteries and an inverter, with a generator to power the batteries? Does anyone make a Generator/Battery combo? I spent some time on google and couldn't find any good ideas, but I'm not sure what words would give a better outcome.

Does it hurt 12volt batteries if you drain and recharge them alot? Probably wouldn't be hard to add a Solar panel or two to the top.

If you are going to use batteries, stay away from automotive type batteries. They simply weren't designed to do what you want them to do. At a minimum, you need to use a golf cart L-16 or T-105 type of battery as they are designed to be repeatedly charged/discharged and if properly maintained, will last a long time. Here is an example:
http://store.altenergystore.com/Batteries/...ead-Acid/p1771/
To figure your load, find out the wattage of all of the appliances you want to run and add them together. Add in a fudge factor (10% or so) and that'll give you an idea of the generator size.
To figure your battery bank size, take your total wattage and then figure out how long you want to run that load.
Two of the T-105 batteries (you need two to have 12 volts) will give you a reserve capacity of 75 amps (at 12 VDC) for 115 minutes, or 900 watts for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Inverters typically are only 90% efficient so you'll probably have a lower wattage available.
Now if you could run your stuff straight off of the 12 volts and not go through an inverter, that would be better. All of the items you want to run could be powered from the 12 volt battery. Check around RV suppliers for 12 volt appliances.

I think you're on the right track. If your plans are only to power a few devices for a few hours, and not rely on them for long periods, then a battery set is best. Generators are noisy and annoying.

Herb steered you in the right direction on your power needs. You just need to do a best guess on your total watt-hour needs and size your battery bank to it. As for your laptop/DVD, why not just buy a spare laptop battery? I don't see the sense running down your camper batteries to watch movies when your laptop already has batteries of its own.

I would also greatly recommend using a small PV cell to trickle-charge the batteries on your camper. They have some pretty amazing stuff these days for solar power on RVs and campers. You ought to be able to find some off-the-shelf items that would work great. Probably not enough to fully power your camper, but it would at least extend the usable charge of your battery bank if you were doing an entire weekend of camping.

You could get a small PV panel, mount it directly to the roof and let it be charging the battery bank while your driving down the road.

Check out places like Harbor Freight as well. I have seen PV cells on there and sometimes they have sales/clearance specials on solar power items.

AA

The lights and enertainment loads are easy, but power a refrigertor and AC unit from an inverter?
Your in trouble!

I would look around for a propane fridge before I would put the money into sizing a system to carry an electric one.
The AC would drain a battery bank pretty quick. Maybe a Honda generator to power the AC?

Look up Servel propane refrigerators. They operate off of a pilot light--no motors, no compressors, in fact no moving parts, other than the door. They don't cool as "fast" as electric fridges (you'll wait all night to make ice cubes, for instance), but they don't use much energy, either.

PV is really a good way to go, especially if you're going to go with LED lights.

Something else--don't forget to wire power through the trailer hookup for the inverter. Trailer connections are available for this. Re-wire the connection so that when you're towing the vehicle, your automobile is also charging your pop-up batts.

When calculating refrigerator wattage, there is a difference between "kick-in" wattage, and running wattage. It takes a considerable amount more power to "start" the electric compressor.

The problem with running the fridge and A/C offa an inverter is that they have pretty big draws and they run forever.
If they draw a combined five amps AC, your gonna be pulling about fifty amps out of your batteries!!
No battery bank will stand up to that very long. Inverters are fine for running heavy loads for short periods of time, or small loads for several hours if you must.

I'd wire the trailer for DC lights. I like flourecent fixtures. They are less money that LED stuff, use standard off the shelf bulbs, and throw a heck of allot of light. Also, DC flourecents do not flicker because they run at such a high frequency ( something like 4,000 Hz, as compaired to 60 Hz for regular AC flourecent fixtures ).

Something like this -


My favorite is the L-116, which I use in my cottage, but the L-93 would probably give you all th light you need.
Of course, compact DC flourecent bulbs with edison bases are availible -



I have a few of these, but my only problem with them is when they burn out you must mail -order a replacement. Not that I've ever had one burn out...

You can find small DC flourecent fixtures like this;

Or this;

Or this;


I'm sure you could find something that would suit your needs.

Sure they draw more than LEDS, but they give much brighter light. Trust me, I have a few LED lights and all they are really good for is reading lights and such.

I'd pull the AC fridge unless you expect to spen allot of time in a trailer park hooked up to utilities.
I'd just use an ice box myself. Maybe you could find a used RV propane fridge, but installing it with the vents, gas piping and such would be a pain.

Convert the trailers AC wiring to DC, and switch the lighting fixtures over to DC and your all set.
Buy a good sized inverter, install it close to your battery pack and use HEAVY cables to hook it to the batteries.
Make sure you can easilty switch the inverter on and off, because you'll only be using it for short periods of time. Use and extention cord for the AC output or rewire a few outlets in the trailer.
We use an inverter to run our TV when we fell like watching a movie, or to run small kitchen appliances ( No Toasters!! ), and that's about it.

You might want to look at something like this -

This 200 dollar kit from harbor freight has 45 watts of solar panels, a charge regulator and two lights!
All you'll need to add is some deep cycle batteries and a cheap inverter like this one for from Harbor Freight.