Electrical

Four six volt golf-cart batteries provide a huge reserve of electrical power to drive computers, printers, network connections, etc., etc., and keep the lights on. You can even power the microwave off the batteries.

They are mounted in a custom-welded bracket in the front, and arranged in dual series/dual parallel configuration. Think of it as two twelve volt batteries wired in parallel, each twelve volt battery consists of two six volt batteries wired in series.

This is mounted in the basement and provides normal 120 volts throughout all the outlets in the coach. The Freedom series of inverter/chargers are reknown for their efficient delivery and conservation of battery power - drawing only what's needed - and for their ability to send high charge rates to the batteries to charge them quickly. That's essential when you're running a battery bank like this - it takes a lot to charge them.

With the high-rate charger, from either shore-power or generator power, it takes about three hours to recharge the batteries after they've dropped around 50% in capacity.

The intelligence of the electrical system - provides specific information about the state of the batteries, whether charging or on the inverter, the current battery voltage, and amps drawn or delivered. Takes all the guesswork out of keeping the batteries at optimum power.

The unit has the original 6.5kw Onan generator. This provides plenty of power for charging, running the AC, and sips gas.

The generator is a bit finicky - it needs to be run more continously (true of all generators, actually - read posts on rv.net- do a search for generator maintenance: gummed carburators from sitting idle is the biggest instigator of running problems).

In general, it takes a few minutes for it to stabilize, and it really doesn't like cold weather.

Mechanically, it is very sound - it doesn't burn any oil or anything like that. Once it settles down, it does it's job very well. I've just changed the oil (not the filter, since it didn't really have enough hours since the last oil change to justify it.)

I considered putting solar on it, but my RV maintenance guy (who is pretty savvy on these things) talked me out of it. The bang for buck just isn't there, and the battery bank really requires a lot of juice to get it back up.

His opinion was that the generator would recharge the batteries more dependably than solar.

That's where it's at, today. You can certainly add solar, but you'd want a couple of really big banks to do it, and you'd probably want auto-tilt panels, to boot, to max exposure to the sun.

And, you'd have to make sure they didn't interfere with the satellite dish, if you install one.

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