Thread: An alternative to solar when camping?

RTGs should be available for power and warmth

Originally Posted by Gav 110

12 VOLT 55 AMP – Christie Engineering
No wind required
Easier to setup
Faster charge
Cheaper
Probably takes up less space
Just need a small Jerry can of fuel

There are people with off the grid houses that run entirely on 12V - there are catalogues and suppliers:

The 12 Volt Shop

The Christie mini generator might be an option for people running on 12V but then the little Hondas might be quieter ....

Edit: actually, if I'm reading that right, the Hondas only output 8.3 amps on 12V, the Christie claims 55 amp.

Originally Posted by Arapiles

There are people with off the grid houses that run entirely on 12V - there are catalogues and suppliers:

The 12 Volt Shop

The Christie mini generator might be an option for people running on 12V but then the little Hondas might be quieter ....

Edit: actually, if I'm reading that right, the Hondas only output 8.3 amps on 12V, the Christie claims 55 amp.

From memory the Christie job runs a modded Bosch alt.

There has been a thread recently about this.

A side note............. yesterday fired up a chinese 13kva diesel generator that was given to me a few years ago.

Took a squirt of aero at first then all good. Only doing this to do a remote welding job, but the thing wasn't really all that loud.

Might take it to winter Wombat to do all the coffee machines at once.

DL

Most of us carry a genset with us when the sun isn't enough for our needs or the Missus wants the air con running

Originally Posted by 350RRC

From memory the Christie job runs a modded Bosch alt.

There has been a thread recently about this.

A side note............. yesterday fired up a chinese 13kva diesel generator that was given to me a few years ago.

Took a squirt of aero at first then all good. Only doing this to do a remote welding job, but the thing wasn't really all that loud.

Might take it to winter Wombat to do all the coffee machines at once.

DL

Should have the new inverter in Stan the van by then which will run the coffee machine.

Originally Posted by Homestar

Should have the new inverter in Stan the van by then which will run the coffee machine.

What are the requirements of the bean machine? I wont start a war by asking the brand......

How do the power demands of full coffee machines and pod machines compare?
Our coffee machine is not very portable, so we bought a little Aldi pod machine for travel, but the pods are wasteful.

Most of the power in a coffee machine is the boiler. Bigger machines tend to have bigger boilers. On an average power basis they aren’t that bad, but the draw high peak currents when heating as they all seem to use a high power element in a pulsed heating mode. So for example my coffee machine has a 2KW. When heating it starts with heating pulses around 5 seconds and then throttles back to as short as 500 ms pulses as it approaches set point.

On average over a cycle it probably draws a couple of hundred watts, but it needs a 2400W inverter to cope with the heating pulses. It also drives the inverter genny mad with its load profile. It spends the cycle madly throttling up and down. I switch it off ‘exon’ mode before making coffee.

We have a little Nespresso machine also. It has a similar heating profile but the element is somewhere between 1-1.5KW. I haven’t bothered to properly profile it.