Today's Photo - A 2004 Winter Day on Lake OntarioWell, we survived yesterday's rain - 1" of water in the garage & Lakeshore Road is flooded at Snake Swamp.
Still working on trailer options. Electricity is probably going to be another area to ponder. I know I'll probably use more than most small trailer owners. With all my gadgets, maintaining lakeshoreimages.com, a somewhat busy collection of web pages, and the fact that I expect to spend quite a bit of time in the Southwest where air conditioning is likely to be necessary, I'm not going to be able to depend on the solar system to keep things going. Although it might be able to keep up with lighting & some computer use, the MacBookPro draws around 85 watts. At that rate, every hour on the computer and a realistic estimate of what a 95 watt solar system can produce, will take at least 2 hours of good sunlight to replace. Add the router, cell phone amp, general housekeeping, etc & a few cloudy days will likely put me in the dark.
I am looking at adding a small inverter generator. According to Escape, a 2000w inverter generator does not have quite enough output to run the A/C they supply with the Escape 17. That's too bad since the larger generators get much heavier. One possibility is to go with two Honda 2K generators & a paralleling kit. The advantage is you only need one when you are doing anything but the A/C, however the disadvantage is the storage volume of two generators & the cost. Storing the generator(s) is also a consideration. I am towing with a Toyota RAV4. With a truck throwing the generator in the back is no problem. Putting a gas filled generator in the enclosed RAV4 is something I'd rather not do.
One possible solution is to purchase a generator(s) converted to run on propane. They run much cleaner, and I already have a dual tank system planned. Still, they use quite a bit of propane - a gallon of gasoline contains more energy than a gallon of propane. Something to think about!
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