For a few seasons now I have had 400w of solar on the roof and 200Ah of Battleborn batteries inside my 25ft Flying Cloud, Why would I want a portable battery or a Solar generator? It just did not make any sense to me.
We do most of our camping in the typical summer camping season, where we can harvest an endless amount of solar and we rarely take our gas generator with us. The factory inverter and the 12V system gives us all the outlets we need.
Then something changed, we started camping more in the shoulder seasons.
This Spring we started camping with the horses at sites with no infrastructure, typically in wooded areas around central Oregon. I packed the generator just in case. Good job I did as we did not harvest nearly the amount of solar I was expecting and our power usage was way up, due to a new Traeger and using the furnace more than planned as it was cold out.
I did not think much of it as we did this only a couple of times in the spring, then the days got longer, the sun higher and we were back to having more energy than we needed.
Around this time I started transitioning my yard equipment from gas to battery. Now this is key.
I ended up going with the Ryobi 40V line of equipment. Chainsaw, blower, weed eater, hedge trimmer – these are amazing tools and I gave away to friends my older gas versions. In no time I had a number of 40V batteries.
As I started looking at the extended line of 40V accessories I noticed a 1800W (~$800 with batteries) and a 300W (~$70)inverter was available, then I noticed there was also a 150W 18V (~$30) inverter. This was intriguing to me. A quick trip to Home depot and I had both the 40V 300W and the 18V 150W. The 1800W was more size and cost than I was ready for.
The wife went tent/horse camping without me and I sent her off with the 150W inverter and 2 6Ah batteries to keep her laptop and phone charged. When she got back she had only used around 50% of one battery. This summer she made a few trips without me and took the 150W inverter and one battery and was able to keep her and her friends tech charged all weekend.
While this was going on I decided to play with my Traeger Ranger - a portable pellet smoker. I hooked it up to the 300W Inverter with a 40V 4AH battery and was able to run it for nearly 4 hours. This was my lightbulb moment. I could use the 300W inverter with my 3 batteries while camping in the shoulder seasons.
Needless to say it has been a raging success. I am able to run my Traeger, outdoor speaker, some string lights and not worry about the house batteries and the furnace. This has proven to be a convenient addition to my electrical capacity without having to add another $1000 battery – which would solve my capacity issue but as you will see at a reduced flexibility.
I now keep the 150W 18v battery based inverter in the airstream too. I carry 2 6Ah and 2 4Ah batteries for a tire inflator, drill/driver, a couple of lights and a fan. This little inverter gets borrowed by our friends at night to charge their phones and laptops while we sleep and we do not have a pile of tech being charged in our dinette draining the house batteries.
Another pro for the portable battery is, well, it is portable. If we move from the campsite we can take it with us to keep speakers, lights, smoker or whatever else we may want to take for a day trip and not worry about power. .
As an aside, a lot of the time when we are camping this way, I can take the 40V or 18V charger and I can find a place to plug it in to recharge/top off a battery or two and in a pinch I can use the built in inverter in my car as I am driving to charge them too.
Conclusion:
While I thought I had enough solar and battery capacity there are trips and days when I cannot harvest enough solar to meet our needs. In these scenarios I can use the 40V batteries from my yard tools or the 18V batteries from my shop tools to give us extra capacity. These batteries can easily be charged when I am driving my car or visiting a friend.
Having a smaller portable source of power can be a useful bridge to accommodate power surges or solar dips while preserving the reserve in your house batteries and I already had the batteries sitting idle at home. You may have batteries idling in the same way, put them to work!
Please note, I bought these with my own money, no discount, no freebies, no endorsement. The links below are provided for your perusal.
40V 300W Inverter
https://www.ryobitools.com/products/details/46396026651
40V 1800W Inverter/charger
https://www.ryobitools.com/products/details/46396023759
18V 150W Inverter
https://www.ryobitools.com/products/details/46396026750
New 18V 150W Inverter/charger
https://www.ryobitools.com/products/details/46396035356
Lessons learnt:
You can’t have too much power and usually other people will not have enough,
You probably already have batteries for your tools in the garage, see if there is an inverter accessory for them.
Things we bought:
Well, the inverters!
The Traeger Ranger – nice compact smoker
Upgraded the Weber Q100 to a Q200 as we seem to be the defector chefs for a larger group these days.
