Thread: Camping generator.... enough with 950W?

i hope that was a typo with the 400w laptop!

It should be fine for what you have stated.. the thing to watch out for on the cheaper gensets is that they dont produce true AC be worth seeing if the things to intend running are bothered by the type of output it gives.

do a search on pure sine wave generators and that may give you some hints...

Steve

if its a 2 stroke unit they are only really good for powering "dumb" electrical loads like brushed motors in drills, transformer powered electronics (read old school) small electric motors (fans) and small heating elements or lights. they suffer from some very nasty voltage variations under load.

IMHO your better of buying dedicated 12v items and using them from a decent 12v supply and using the genset to top off your batteries off of an old school transformer type battery charger if needed.

What ever you do, get a sine wave gennie.

I blew my old Toshiba up by hooking it into a Yamaha gennie which my mate swears by. As said above, only hook up dumb electrical appliances.

I do believe you can get a in line filter for charging your laptop though or just run off your car to charge it.
Personally, I would save up a bit more, get a 2kw unit to run proper tools, many tools have a high start up current and the small ones will definately struggle.

I have a 1000w GMC four stroke. For the money ($99) it works well. I wouldnt be game to run my laptop off it (I use a car charger instead) but its fine for fluro lights, flood lights, battery charging, small power tools, bar fridge etc. It will run my angle grinder but I have to give the governer rod a blip at the same time I hit the grinder switch or it will stall on startup. It will even run a small circular saw when the motor has warmed up.

with laptops/notebooks how come you dont run them on their battery and charge the battery when you are finished