Choosing the Best Generator for Your RV

Understanding your power requirements and the fuel source you have available on your RV, is important in choosing the right generator. For example, if you're starting with a small little trailer you don't have an onboard source, you wouldn't be able to put the larger generators on it. So you're looking at a portable. I wanna run my roof air conditioner. I could be anywhere from 1400 Watts to 2400 Watts.

Small little appliances inside are also gonna draw. The way you would determine that is, get a product like this called kilowatt, that I can simply plug it into an outlet plug various different appliances into it. I can see what my usage is out of here my power demands. A lot of your appliances will also have it listed right on the data plate. Air conditioners for example, refrigerators, small stuff like that.

This is another version here that is by, it's called an AmWatt. So I can flip it to either Amps or Watts. But the main thing is to determined how much power do I need? So these smaller little ones if I do a thousand Watt portable generator I'm not gonna be able to run roof air conditioners. I'm gonna be able to do TV, DVD player some of the small little items and not all at once, either.

Also it's important, if you're looking at a portable generator you want a generator inverter. You don't wanna just look at the plain generators that you find at home repair facilities. Those are gonna give you raw power. They're gonna do damage to microprocessors that you might have in computer, circuit boards, your electronics. And so you want a generator inverter that's gonna give you a true sine wave.

If I'm looking at running a roof air conditioner and a few other appliances, I'm gonna have to be at least at 2400 and maybe up to 3000. Now today's portable generators, are running very, very quiet. You know, some of the problems with those in the past is that they were noisy, fumes. We had to put them about a hundred feet away from the RV. And so we had to have a pretty long extension cord.

Today's portable generators run at about 80 decibels. That's about the same level as people talking around a campfire or less. So pretty quiet. Now when I get up to the bigger generator or excuse me the bigger RVs I'm gonna have more power requirements. I may have two roof air conditioners.

I also have to look at do I have the capability of putting them on board. A lot of your fifth wheels, you're gonna have two air conditioners a lot of power requirements. So I'm gonna look at the bigger generator. But what kind of fuel source do I have? Typically I don't see a gasoline source.

So my only option on those is to go with propane. I will have that available. Now propane is pretty precious when you start dry camping especially if you're gonna be using the stove, the oven running the refrigerator on propane. Although if you run your generator you could run your refrigerator on LP. But a lot of people in those cases we'll go with an Auxiliary generator and get the larger size of it.

When I'm looking at the large units going on board then again, I have to find my Amp draw my Watt requirements, two rough air conditioners. You know, I'm probably getting up into that 5,000 to 6,000 6,500 Watt onboard. I also then look at some of the diesel pushers. You know, they have the choice between diesel and propane. You know, in the past the diesel was loud, a lot of exhaust, you had the vibration of it.

So they would go with propane. But again, it goes pretty fast. So today's diesel runs really quiet. Now in fact they've got the Whisper quiet version runs really at about probably about 85 to 90 decibel levels very minor emissions coming out of those. So you have to decide again, finding the right power draw or your power draw, the fuel source and you can choose the right generator for your needs.