Portable generator for wilderness camping?

[linuxdrake]

I do most of my off road travel out west. There are large sections of Utah and Arizona with no Superchargers. I have to plan my trip carefully to make sure I don't strand myself with an empty battery. Even so, there are unanticipated events that can cause range anxiety. I need the equivalent of 'emergency gas' in these circumstances. There are other cases where I simply do not have the range needed to complete a trip.

My solution is to take along this Westinghouse iGen 4500 Dual Fuel 120V inverter generator and at least 20 lbs of propane.

I prefer propane because I can easily change the orifice for operation at various altitudes, propane doesn't smell up my truck, I use propane for cooking, and a propane generator doesn't require annual maintenance the way gasoline generators do. Being dual fuel, I can always resort to gasoline if necessary. The generator is not so heavy (100 lbs) that I can't get it into and out of the truck without a ramp.

I tested my generator by charging my Model Y Std Range. I set charging to 24A. The generator ran at 75% load. The car’s UI indicated that the charging time from 59 to 80% would be 5 hr and 40 minutes. The bottle of propane weighed 28.39 lbs at the start. I charged the car using exactly 1 lb of propane in 24 minutes. The car UI indicated charging at 120V and 24A. That’s 2,880 watts for 24 minutes = 1.15 kWh.

For multi-day overland off-road adventuring this works.

It means that from a single 20 lb bottle of propane containing 20 lbs of propane (not a short filled tank exchange), my generator can put 23 kWh of charge into the battery in 8 hours while camped. At my lifetime CT efficiency of 0.420 kWh per mile, that’s a range gain of 55 miles a day (6.9 mi/hr - Level 1 charging rate). Two 20 lb tanks will extend my range nearly as much as Tesla's 50 kWh Range Extender, but at a quarter of the weight, and not permanently taking up vault space.

At things considered, this fits my needs perfectly.

Might do the same, whats that adapter you have there on the Generator Output?

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[mongo]

Might do the same, whats that adapter you have there on the Generator Output?

Travel trailer 120V 30A. TT-30R, available 3rd party.