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This was posted in the Extra Extra thread a little bit ago



I've been thinking the EREV was my path forward, but the towing capacity limit may push me to BEV. The article got me thinking though, how much charge can a portable generator give? Say over the course of a weekend out camping?
 
This was posted in the Extra Extra thread a little bit ago



I've been thinking the EREV was my path forward, but the towing capacity limit may push me to BEV. The article got me thinking though, how much charge can a portable generator give? Say over the course of a weekend out camping?
The company hasn’t announced pricing or battery energy capacity (in kWh) for the new Velion. So hard to say with any confidence at this time.
 
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This was posted in the Extra Extra thread a little bit ago



I've been thinking the EREV was my path forward, but the towing capacity limit may push me to BEV. The article got me thinking though, how much charge can a portable generator give? Say over the course of a weekend out camping?

@SpaceEVDriver probably has some math that could give us some idea. He may have posted about this before. I just don’t pay too much attention to towing since I don’t tow.
 
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The company hasn’t announced pricing or battery energy capacity (in kWh) for the new Velion. So hard to say with any confidence at this time.
I only gave the Lincoln example because it sparked the question in my mind. I was asking more about a Honda or Generac portable.

My thinking here would be I put a portable generator and my Jeep on a trailer and tow it to my wheeling spot. The Scout would be parked for the weekend while I wheel the Jeep. Could i theoretically run the generator to charge the Scout so I can have a full charge when I get back on the road? Being able to do that would probably allow me to stop once on my drive rather than twice.
 
@SpaceEVDriver probably has some math that could give us some idea. He may have posted about this before. I just don’t pay too much attention to towing since I don’t tow.
I almost tagged him, but figured he'd probably chime in without me having to do so. I used the forum search before posting and the question was only really hit around edges on threads about making the Harvester removable.
 
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There’s a bunch of variability in the answer to such a question.

TLDR;
A tri-fuel generator will cost you about $6400 in the first year and $800 per year after, assuming you’re doing a monthly trip and you need an 80% recharge.
A big battery + solar will cost you about $8800 one time.
A big battery-only solution will cost you about $8000 one time, assuming you need no more than 48% recharge at the far reach of your trip.
A tri-fuel generator doesn’t care, too much, about location, so it will generate what you need to generate most of the places you go. But it’s noisy and gasoline is messy and dangerous in random containers (much more dangerous than a battery).
A battery + solar solution will be less effective in some areas than others.
A battery-only solution is heavy, but doesn’t care about location and is silent.

We use solar+battery to give us an extra 30-60 miles during a camping trip, not to give us a full recharge. At least not if all we're bringing is the truck. If we had a travel trailer, I’d put 4kW of solar on the trailer and a big battery in the trailer. This would be a silent, quick solution and would give us unlimited overlanding distance in the US Southwest.

----
You want an inverter generator, not a cheap open frame generator. This is because the EVSE (charger) you plug into it expects clean power. You also want an inverter generator that can charge your truck as quickly as possible because you don’t want it to have to run for 100+ hours. This means you want an inverter generator that can produce 240 V, 30+ amp (7.2 kW or more) for long periods of time, which usually means you need a generator rated for 15+ kW. You can get such a generator from a big box store for around $5k. Those can usually run on one of several fuels (gasoline, propane, or natural gas). The gasoline-fueled half-load runtime of the one I’m looking at at the big box store is 12 hours claimed, but that claim, in my experience, is usually an ideal situation claim, so I would estimate 10 hours maximum runtime, in good conditions. It claims it can do 50A, 240V, but my experience with generators is that you don’t want to pull the max amperage, so I would use the 30A output. Which is 7.2 kW.

Let’s say you've used 80% of your battery to get to your location and you need to charge to 100% so you can safely get to the nearest DCFC. On the Lightning, that’s 105 kWh. At 7.2 kW, that’s 15 hours. So you’ll need to run the generator to empty and then run it again for half a tank. The generator I’m looking at has a 13.2 gallon tank. So you’ll need about 20 gallons of gasoline (so bring four 5-gallon containers) to run your generator long enough to recharge the truck. If you run it on propane, you’ll get about 8.5 hours per 60 pounds. That’s three normal bbq-sized tanks. You would need 120 pounds, or 6 normal bbq-sized tanks of propane. But the generator manufacturer recommends a 60-lb tank minimum, so you’re likely going to use gasoline because we assumed no permanent installations at this site.

Gas in Virginia Beach is about $3/gallon right now, so that’s $60 of generator fuel per trip. Let’s say you do this trip once a month. That’s $720/year. Plus the cost of the generator ($5500), plus generator maintenance ($80-$120/year).
For the first year, that’s $5500+$840 = $6340.
For every year after, it’s about $800-$900 for a monthly trip to the boondocks.
You might be able to get away with a smaller generator, but you would have to listen to it for longer each run, you would have to do more regular maintenance on it, and you would use more gasoline. Plus if it’s a cheap open-frame generator, your EVSE may not always behave.

If I wanted a similar solution that is all-battery, I would need to bring a large battery. I can get a 62 kWh whole-home backup battery for about $8k, maybe less if I shop around, but let’s use $8k. That only provides about 48% of my recharge, so I also need to recharge it. I can install 800 Watts of solar on my truck without too much trouble and I could carry more with me. But let’s keep it to 800 Watts to see if that works. The retail cost of solar is about $0.40/Watt, so that’s about $320. Add in the mounting hardware, inverter, etc, and call it $800. Total setup cost is $8800.

After expending the 62 kWh battery to charge the truck, I would need an additional 43 kWh to bring the truck to 100%.

In Virginia Beach, the average daily energy from the sun is about 4.84 kWh per square meter. An 800 Watt system in Virginia Beach can generate about 3.9 kWh per day, on average. It would take—on average—about 11 days to generate enough to recharge that last 43 kWh. Obviously it would take longer in January than in July. If you double the PV size, which is unwieldy, you could cut that down to 5-6 days. Not great for a place like Virginia Beach.

In my neck of the woods, it would take around 4 days, on average, with an 800 Watt system.

There’s no ongoing maintenance cost to the solar system—it’ll last around 30 years if it’s taken care of. For a cost comparison, if you were able to make use of solar, then the solar+battery would pay for itself in about 3 years.

This assumes you need that full 80% charge. If you don’t need that big of a recharge, then things become easier more quickly. If, for example, you only needed 62 kWh and no solar, then you’d just need to pay the $8k for the battery, charge it at home before you go, load it into the vehicle, and recharge once you’re where you’re going. No noise. The cost to charge at home would be, for me, $0.00 because I would charge from solar. Before we got solar, it would be about $3.00.

Another complicating factor for the battery solution is weight.

The generator plus fuel is about 550 pounds. You can get a couple of friends to help you load the generator into the vehicle.
The battery is 1250 pounds. You’ll need some other solution to load the battery into the vehicle.
 
There’s a bunch of variability in the answer to such a question.

TLDR;
A tri-fuel generator will cost you about $6400 in the first year and $800 per year after, assuming you’re doing a monthly trip and you need an 80% recharge.
A big battery + solar will cost you about $8800 one time.
A big battery-only solution will cost you about $8000 one time, assuming you need no more than 48% recharge at the far reach of your trip.
A tri-fuel generator doesn’t care, too much, about location, so it will generate what you need to generate most of the places you go. But it’s noisy and gasoline is messy and dangerous in random containers (much more dangerous than a battery).
A battery + solar solution will be less effective in some areas than others.
A battery-only solution is heavy, but doesn’t care about location and is silent.

We use solar+battery to give us an extra 30-60 miles during a camping trip, not to give us a full recharge. At least not if all we're bringing is the truck. If we had a travel trailer, I’d put 4kW of solar on the trailer and a big battery in the trailer. This would be a silent, quick solution and would give us unlimited overlanding distance in the US Southwest.

----
You want an inverter generator, not a cheap open frame generator. This is because the EVSE (charger) you plug into it expects clean power. You also want an inverter generator that can charge your truck as quickly as possible because you don’t want it to have to run for 100+ hours. This means you want an inverter generator that can produce 240 V, 30+ amp (7.2 kW or more) for long periods of time, which usually means you need a generator rated for 15+ kW. You can get such a generator from a big box store for around $5k. Those can usually run on one of several fuels (gasoline, propane, or natural gas). The gasoline-fueled half-load runtime of the one I’m looking at at the big box store is 12 hours claimed, but that claim, in my experience, is usually an ideal situation claim, so I would estimate 10 hours maximum runtime, in good conditions. It claims it can do 50A, 240V, but my experience with generators is that you don’t want to pull the max amperage, so I would use the 30A output. Which is 7.2 kW.

Let’s say you've used 80% of your battery to get to your location and you need to charge to 100% so you can safely get to the nearest DCFC. On the Lightning, that’s 105 kWh. At 7.2 kW, that’s 15 hours. So you’ll need to run the generator to empty and then run it again for half a tank. The generator I’m looking at has a 13.2 gallon tank. So you’ll need about 20 gallons of gasoline (so bring four 5-gallon containers) to run your generator long enough to recharge the truck. If you run it on propane, you’ll get about 8.5 hours per 60 pounds. That’s three normal bbq-sized tanks. You would need 120 pounds, or 6 normal bbq-sized tanks of propane. But the generator manufacturer recommends a 60-lb tank minimum, so you’re likely going to use gasoline because we assumed no permanent installations at this site.

Gas in Virginia Beach is about $3/gallon right now, so that’s $60 of generator fuel per trip. Let’s say you do this trip once a month. That’s $720/year. Plus the cost of the generator ($5500), plus generator maintenance ($80-$120/year).
For the first year, that’s $5500+$840 = $6340.
For every year after, it’s about $800-$900 for a monthly trip to the boondocks.
You might be able to get away with a smaller generator, but you would have to listen to it for longer each run, you would have to do more regular maintenance on it, and you would use more gasoline. Plus if it’s a cheap open-frame generator, your EVSE may not always behave.

If I wanted a similar solution that is all-battery, I would need to bring a large battery. I can get a 62 kWh whole-home backup battery for about $8k, maybe less if I shop around, but let’s use $8k. That only provides about 48% of my recharge, so I also need to recharge it. I can install 800 Watts of solar on my truck without too much trouble and I could carry more with me. But let’s keep it to 800 Watts to see if that works. The retail cost of solar is about $0.40/Watt, so that’s about $320. Add in the mounting hardware, inverter, etc, and call it $800. Total setup cost is $8800.

After expending the 62 kWh battery to charge the truck, I would need an additional 43 kWh to bring the truck to 100%.

In Virginia Beach, the average daily energy from the sun is about 4.84 kWh per square meter. An 800 Watt system in Virginia Beach can generate about 3.9 kWh per day, on average. It would take—on average—about 11 days to generate enough to recharge that last 43 kWh. Obviously it would take longer in January than in July. If you double the PV size, which is unwieldy, you could cut that down to 5-6 days. Not great for a place like Virginia Beach.

In my neck of the woods, it would take around 4 days, on average, with an 800 Watt system.

There’s no ongoing maintenance cost to the solar system—it’ll last around 30 years if it’s taken care of. For a cost comparison, if you were able to make use of solar, then the solar+battery would pay for itself in about 3 years.

This assumes you need that full 80% charge. If you don’t need that big of a recharge, then things become easier more quickly. If, for example, you only needed 62 kWh and no solar, then you’d just need to pay the $8k for the battery, charge it at home before you go, load it into the vehicle, and recharge once you’re where you’re going. No noise. The cost to charge at home would be, for me, $0.00 because I would charge from solar. Before we got solar, it would be about $3.00.

Another complicating factor for the battery solution is weight.

The generator plus fuel is about 550 pounds. You can get a couple of friends to help you load the generator into the vehicle.
The battery is 1250 pounds. You’ll need some other solution to load the battery into the vehicle.
Your TED talks are amazing. Thank you as always
 
There’s a bunch of variability in the answer to such a question.

TLDR;
A tri-fuel generator will cost you about $6400 in the first year and $800 per year after, assuming you’re doing a monthly trip and you need an 80% recharge.
A big battery + solar will cost you about $8800 one time.
A big battery-only solution will cost you about $8000 one time, assuming you need no more than 48% recharge at the far reach of your trip.
A tri-fuel generator doesn’t care, too much, about location, so it will generate what you need to generate most of the places you go. But it’s noisy and gasoline is messy and dangerous in random containers (much more dangerous than a battery).
A battery + solar solution will be less effective in some areas than others.
A battery-only solution is heavy, but doesn’t care about location and is silent.

We use solar+battery to give us an extra 30-60 miles during a camping trip, not to give us a full recharge. At least not if all we're bringing is the truck. If we had a travel trailer, I’d put 4kW of solar on the trailer and a big battery in the trailer. This would be a silent, quick solution and would give us unlimited overlanding distance in the US Southwest.

----
You want an inverter generator, not a cheap open frame generator. This is because the EVSE (charger) you plug into it expects clean power. You also want an inverter generator that can charge your truck as quickly as possible because you don’t want it to have to run for 100+ hours. This means you want an inverter generator that can produce 240 V, 30+ amp (7.2 kW or more) for long periods of time, which usually means you need a generator rated for 15+ kW. You can get such a generator from a big box store for around $5k. Those can usually run on one of several fuels (gasoline, propane, or natural gas). The gasoline-fueled half-load runtime of the one I’m looking at at the big box store is 12 hours claimed, but that claim, in my experience, is usually an ideal situation claim, so I would estimate 10 hours maximum runtime, in good conditions. It claims it can do 50A, 240V, but my experience with generators is that you don’t want to pull the max amperage, so I would use the 30A output. Which is 7.2 kW.

Let’s say you've used 80% of your battery to get to your location and you need to charge to 100% so you can safely get to the nearest DCFC. On the Lightning, that’s 105 kWh. At 7.2 kW, that’s 15 hours. So you’ll need to run the generator to empty and then run it again for half a tank. The generator I’m looking at has a 13.2 gallon tank. So you’ll need about 20 gallons of gasoline (so bring four 5-gallon containers) to run your generator long enough to recharge the truck. If you run it on propane, you’ll get about 8.5 hours per 60 pounds. That’s three normal bbq-sized tanks. You would need 120 pounds, or 6 normal bbq-sized tanks of propane. But the generator manufacturer recommends a 60-lb tank minimum, so you’re likely going to use gasoline because we assumed no permanent installations at this site.

Gas in Virginia Beach is about $3/gallon right now, so that’s $60 of generator fuel per trip. Let’s say you do this trip once a month. That’s $720/year. Plus the cost of the generator ($5500), plus generator maintenance ($80-$120/year).
For the first year, that’s $5500+$840 = $6340.
For every year after, it’s about $800-$900 for a monthly trip to the boondocks.
You might be able to get away with a smaller generator, but you would have to listen to it for longer each run, you would have to do more regular maintenance on it, and you would use more gasoline. Plus if it’s a cheap open-frame generator, your EVSE may not always behave.

If I wanted a similar solution that is all-battery, I would need to bring a large battery. I can get a 62 kWh whole-home backup battery for about $8k, maybe less if I shop around, but let’s use $8k. That only provides about 48% of my recharge, so I also need to recharge it. I can install 800 Watts of solar on my truck without too much trouble and I could carry more with me. But let’s keep it to 800 Watts to see if that works. The retail cost of solar is about $0.40/Watt, so that’s about $320. Add in the mounting hardware, inverter, etc, and call it $800. Total setup cost is $8800.

After expending the 62 kWh battery to charge the truck, I would need an additional 43 kWh to bring the truck to 100%.

In Virginia Beach, the average daily energy from the sun is about 4.84 kWh per square meter. An 800 Watt system in Virginia Beach can generate about 3.9 kWh per day, on average. It would take—on average—about 11 days to generate enough to recharge that last 43 kWh. Obviously it would take longer in January than in July. If you double the PV size, which is unwieldy, you could cut that down to 5-6 days. Not great for a place like Virginia Beach.

In my neck of the woods, it would take around 4 days, on average, with an 800 Watt system.

There’s no ongoing maintenance cost to the solar system—it’ll last around 30 years if it’s taken care of. For a cost comparison, if you were able to make use of solar, then the solar+battery would pay for itself in about 3 years.

This assumes you need that full 80% charge. If you don’t need that big of a recharge, then things become easier more quickly. If, for example, you only needed 62 kWh and no solar, then you’d just need to pay the $8k for the battery, charge it at home before you go, load it into the vehicle, and recharge once you’re where you’re going. No noise. The cost to charge at home would be, for me, $0.00 because I would charge from solar. Before we got solar, it would be about $3.00.

Another complicating factor for the battery solution is weight.

The generator plus fuel is about 550 pounds. You can get a couple of friends to help you load the generator into the vehicle.
The battery is 1250 pounds. You’ll need some other solution to load the battery into the vehicle.
They should have a course in high school for the EV ERA, EV mathematics.
 
There’s a bunch of variability in the answer to such a question.

TLDR;
A tri-fuel generator will cost you about $6400 in the first year and $800 per year after, assuming you’re doing a monthly trip and you need an 80% recharge.
A big battery + solar will cost you about $8800 one time.
A big battery-only solution will cost you about $8000 one time, assuming you need no more than 48% recharge at the far reach of your trip.
A tri-fuel generator doesn’t care, too much, about location, so it will generate what you need to generate most of the places you go. But it’s noisy and gasoline is messy and dangerous in random containers (much more dangerous than a battery).
A battery + solar solution will be less effective in some areas than others.
A battery-only solution is heavy, but doesn’t care about location and is silent.

We use solar+battery to give us an extra 30-60 miles during a camping trip, not to give us a full recharge. At least not if all we're bringing is the truck. If we had a travel trailer, I’d put 4kW of solar on the trailer and a big battery in the trailer. This would be a silent, quick solution and would give us unlimited overlanding distance in the US Southwest.

----
You want an inverter generator, not a cheap open frame generator. This is because the EVSE (charger) you plug into it expects clean power. You also want an inverter generator that can charge your truck as quickly as possible because you don’t want it to have to run for 100+ hours. This means you want an inverter generator that can produce 240 V, 30+ amp (7.2 kW or more) for long periods of time, which usually means you need a generator rated for 15+ kW. You can get such a generator from a big box store for around $5k. Those can usually run on one of several fuels (gasoline, propane, or natural gas). The gasoline-fueled half-load runtime of the one I’m looking at at the big box store is 12 hours claimed, but that claim, in my experience, is usually an ideal situation claim, so I would estimate 10 hours maximum runtime, in good conditions. It claims it can do 50A, 240V, but my experience with generators is that you don’t want to pull the max amperage, so I would use the 30A output. Which is 7.2 kW.

Let’s say you've used 80% of your battery to get to your location and you need to charge to 100% so you can safely get to the nearest DCFC. On the Lightning, that’s 105 kWh. At 7.2 kW, that’s 15 hours. So you’ll need to run the generator to empty and then run it again for half a tank. The generator I’m looking at has a 13.2 gallon tank. So you’ll need about 20 gallons of gasoline (so bring four 5-gallon containers) to run your generator long enough to recharge the truck. If you run it on propane, you’ll get about 8.5 hours per 60 pounds. That’s three normal bbq-sized tanks. You would need 120 pounds, or 6 normal bbq-sized tanks of propane. But the generator manufacturer recommends a 60-lb tank minimum, so you’re likely going to use gasoline because we assumed no permanent installations at this site.

Gas in Virginia Beach is about $3/gallon right now, so that’s $60 of generator fuel per trip. Let’s say you do this trip once a month. That’s $720/year. Plus the cost of the generator ($5500), plus generator maintenance ($80-$120/year).
For the first year, that’s $5500+$840 = $6340.
For every year after, it’s about $800-$900 for a monthly trip to the boondocks.
You might be able to get away with a smaller generator, but you would have to listen to it for longer each run, you would have to do more regular maintenance on it, and you would use more gasoline. Plus if it’s a cheap open-frame generator, your EVSE may not always behave.

If I wanted a similar solution that is all-battery, I would need to bring a large battery. I can get a 62 kWh whole-home backup battery for about $8k, maybe less if I shop around, but let’s use $8k. That only provides about 48% of my recharge, so I also need to recharge it. I can install 800 Watts of solar on my truck without too much trouble and I could carry more with me. But let’s keep it to 800 Watts to see if that works. The retail cost of solar is about $0.40/Watt, so that’s about $320. Add in the mounting hardware, inverter, etc, and call it $800. Total setup cost is $8800.

After expending the 62 kWh battery to charge the truck, I would need an additional 43 kWh to bring the truck to 100%.

In Virginia Beach, the average daily energy from the sun is about 4.84 kWh per square meter. An 800 Watt system in Virginia Beach can generate about 3.9 kWh per day, on average. It would take—on average—about 11 days to generate enough to recharge that last 43 kWh. Obviously it would take longer in January than in July. If you double the PV size, which is unwieldy, you could cut that down to 5-6 days. Not great for a place like Virginia Beach.

In my neck of the woods, it would take around 4 days, on average, with an 800 Watt system.

There’s no ongoing maintenance cost to the solar system—it’ll last around 30 years if it’s taken care of. For a cost comparison, if you were able to make use of solar, then the solar+battery would pay for itself in about 3 years.

This assumes you need that full 80% charge. If you don’t need that big of a recharge, then things become easier more quickly. If, for example, you only needed 62 kWh and no solar, then you’d just need to pay the $8k for the battery, charge it at home before you go, load it into the vehicle, and recharge once you’re where you’re going. No noise. The cost to charge at home would be, for me, $0.00 because I would charge from solar. Before we got solar, it would be about $3.00.

Another complicating factor for the battery solution is weight.

The generator plus fuel is about 550 pounds. You can get a couple of friends to help you load the generator into the vehicle.
The battery is 1250 pounds. You’ll need some other solution to load the battery into the vehicle.
This answers my question in the other thread! I’d started reading and pretty much come to the “batteries are real damn heavy” conclusion
 
There’s a bunch of variability in the answer to such a question.

TLDR;
A tri-fuel generator will cost you about $6400 in the first year and $800 per year after, assuming you’re doing a monthly trip and you need an 80% recharge.
A big battery + solar will cost you about $8800 one time.
A big battery-only solution will cost you about $8000 one time, assuming you need no more than 48% recharge at the far reach of your trip.
A tri-fuel generator doesn’t care, too much, about location, so it will generate what you need to generate most of the places you go. But it’s noisy and gasoline is messy and dangerous in random containers (much more dangerous than a battery).
A battery + solar solution will be less effective in some areas than others.
A battery-only solution is heavy, but doesn’t care about location and is silent.

We use solar+battery to give us an extra 30-60 miles during a camping trip, not to give us a full recharge. At least not if all we're bringing is the truck. If we had a travel trailer, I’d put 4kW of solar on the trailer and a big battery in the trailer. This would be a silent, quick solution and would give us unlimited overlanding distance in the US Southwest.

----
You want an inverter generator, not a cheap open frame generator. This is because the EVSE (charger) you plug into it expects clean power. You also want an inverter generator that can charge your truck as quickly as possible because you don’t want it to have to run for 100+ hours. This means you want an inverter generator that can produce 240 V, 30+ amp (7.2 kW or more) for long periods of time, which usually means you need a generator rated for 15+ kW. You can get such a generator from a big box store for around $5k. Those can usually run on one of several fuels (gasoline, propane, or natural gas). The gasoline-fueled half-load runtime of the one I’m looking at at the big box store is 12 hours claimed, but that claim, in my experience, is usually an ideal situation claim, so I would estimate 10 hours maximum runtime, in good conditions. It claims it can do 50A, 240V, but my experience with generators is that you don’t want to pull the max amperage, so I would use the 30A output. Which is 7.2 kW.

Let’s say you've used 80% of your battery to get to your location and you need to charge to 100% so you can safely get to the nearest DCFC. On the Lightning, that’s 105 kWh. At 7.2 kW, that’s 15 hours. So you’ll need to run the generator to empty and then run it again for half a tank. The generator I’m looking at has a 13.2 gallon tank. So you’ll need about 20 gallons of gasoline (so bring four 5-gallon containers) to run your generator long enough to recharge the truck. If you run it on propane, you’ll get about 8.5 hours per 60 pounds. That’s three normal bbq-sized tanks. You would need 120 pounds, or 6 normal bbq-sized tanks of propane. But the generator manufacturer recommends a 60-lb tank minimum, so you’re likely going to use gasoline because we assumed no permanent installations at this site.

Gas in Virginia Beach is about $3/gallon right now, so that’s $60 of generator fuel per trip. Let’s say you do this trip once a month. That’s $720/year. Plus the cost of the generator ($5500), plus generator maintenance ($80-$120/year).
For the first year, that’s $5500+$840 = $6340.
For every year after, it’s about $800-$900 for a monthly trip to the boondocks.
You might be able to get away with a smaller generator, but you would have to listen to it for longer each run, you would have to do more regular maintenance on it, and you would use more gasoline. Plus if it’s a cheap open-frame generator, your EVSE may not always behave.

If I wanted a similar solution that is all-battery, I would need to bring a large battery. I can get a 62 kWh whole-home backup battery for about $8k, maybe less if I shop around, but let’s use $8k. That only provides about 48% of my recharge, so I also need to recharge it. I can install 800 Watts of solar on my truck without too much trouble and I could carry more with me. But let’s keep it to 800 Watts to see if that works. The retail cost of solar is about $0.40/Watt, so that’s about $320. Add in the mounting hardware, inverter, etc, and call it $800. Total setup cost is $8800.

After expending the 62 kWh battery to charge the truck, I would need an additional 43 kWh to bring the truck to 100%.

In Virginia Beach, the average daily energy from the sun is about 4.84 kWh per square meter. An 800 Watt system in Virginia Beach can generate about 3.9 kWh per day, on average. It would take—on average—about 11 days to generate enough to recharge that last 43 kWh. Obviously it would take longer in January than in July. If you double the PV size, which is unwieldy, you could cut that down to 5-6 days. Not great for a place like Virginia Beach.

In my neck of the woods, it would take around 4 days, on average, with an 800 Watt system.

There’s no ongoing maintenance cost to the solar system—it’ll last around 30 years if it’s taken care of. For a cost comparison, if you were able to make use of solar, then the solar+battery would pay for itself in about 3 years.

This assumes you need that full 80% charge. If you don’t need that big of a recharge, then things become easier more quickly. If, for example, you only needed 62 kWh and no solar, then you’d just need to pay the $8k for the battery, charge it at home before you go, load it into the vehicle, and recharge once you’re where you’re going. No noise. The cost to charge at home would be, for me, $0.00 because I would charge from solar. Before we got solar, it would be about $3.00.

Another complicating factor for the battery solution is weight.

The generator plus fuel is about 550 pounds. You can get a couple of friends to help you load the generator into the vehicle.
The battery is 1250 pounds. You’ll need some other solution to load the battery into the vehicle.
I really appreciate the in depth reply. I guess simple answer says probably not worth it. I'm only talking about 1-3 trips per year and then the generator could have worked as a backup for the house.

That reply also puts in to perspective just how big the batteries in these vehicles are.
 
I really appreciate the in depth reply. I guess simple answer says probably not worth it. I'm only talking about 1-3 trips per year and then the generator could have worked as a backup for the house.

That reply also puts in to perspective just how big the batteries in these vehicles are.
Probably not worth it if that’s all you’re using the backup energy for.

But, note:

The 62 kWh battery can also act as a backup for the house. On the battery I priced, the typical household could run continuously for about 2.25 to 2.5 days without conserving. The big box generator I priced can only give you that half-load time of about 10-12 hours, maybe more if you reduce to 25% load. But you do have to be careful about running for that long. These kinds of generators are not continuous duty machines.

The battery can provide 100A at 240V, or 25.6 kW continuous duty discharge rate (enough to accommodate the wattage of a combination of HVAC, electric water heater, stove, etc.) and its surge (5 second) wattage is 30.7 kW. The generator has a max 15kW surge for a short period before trouble sets in—you don’t want to have a combination of devices that can pull the surge wattage from a generator.

Finally, the battery can be charged from the grid for very cheap during low-demand times and can then put that back into the house during peak billing rates. Our peak charge rate is $0.344/kWh and our off-peak is $0.124/kWh; super-off-peak is $0.035/kWh. If we charge the 62 kWh battery from 0% to 100% during super-off-peak, it’ll cost us $2.17. If we then use it during on-peak, we save $21.33, for a net savings of $19.16 per day or $6993.40/year (if we were using the full 62 kWh, which is nonsense). But before we installed solar and battery backup for peak shaving, our on-peak demand could run up to $100-$300/month easily, just for the on-peak useage. That’s between $1200-$3600/year saved, just for peak-demand. We’re down to 0 kWh used during peak. So an $8k battery that I plug into the house when I’m not hauling it around for travel can pay for itself within a few years, without even investing in solar.

You can’t realistically save money on grid peak shaving with a gas/propane generator. And a 25 kW generator is more like $15k-$20k before installation.
 
Probably not worth it if that’s all you’re using the backup energy for.

But, note:

The 62 kWh battery can also act as a backup for the house. On the battery I priced, the typical household could run continuously for about 2.25 to 2.5 days without conserving. The big box generator I priced can only give you that half-load time of about 10-12 hours, maybe more if you reduce to 25% load. But you do have to be careful about running for that long. These kinds of generators are not continuous duty machines.

The battery can provide 100A at 240V, or 25.6 kW continuous duty discharge rate (enough to accommodate the wattage of a combination of HVAC, electric water heater, stove, etc.) and its surge (5 second) wattage is 30.7 kW. The generator has a max 15kW surge for a short period before trouble sets in—you don’t want to have a combination of devices that can pull the surge wattage from a generator.

Finally, the battery can be charged from the grid for very cheap during low-demand times and can then put that back into the house during peak billing rates. Our peak charge rate is $0.344/kWh and our off-peak is $0.124/kWh; super-off-peak is $0.035/kWh. If we charge the 62 kWh battery from 0% to 100% during super-off-peak, it’ll cost us $2.17. If we then use it during on-peak, we save $21.33, for a net savings of $19.16 per day or $6993.40/year (if we were using the full 62 kWh, which is nonsense). But before we installed solar and battery backup for peak shaving, our on-peak demand could run up to $100-$300/month easily, just for the on-peak useage. That’s between $1200-$3600/year saved, just for peak-demand. We’re down to 0 kWh used during peak. So an $8k battery that I plug into the house when I’m not hauling it around for travel can pay for itself within a few years, without even investing in solar.

You can’t realistically save money on grid peak shaving with a gas/propane generator. And a 25 kW generator is more like $15k-$20k before installation.
You said " And a 25 kW generator is more like $15k-$20k before installation." This is what my neighbors are now complaining about with their monster generator installations. Plus they are only using them when the power goes out, and only until the 250 gal underground propane tank runs out, no natural gas in the area. I have a good sized kWh credit every month from our utility with our Solar panels and backup batteries that after federal rebates on both panels and batteries were only a few thousand more than the generator installations; and if power does go out without conserving and a little bit of Sun we could run theoretically forever.
 
You said " And a 25 kW generator is more like $15k-$20k before installation." This is what my neighbors are now complaining about with their monster generator installations. Plus they are only using them when the power goes out, and only until the 250 gal underground propane tank runs out, no natural gas in the area. I have a good sized kWh credit every month from our utility with our Solar panels and backup batteries that after federal rebates on both panels and batteries were only a few thousand more than the generator installations; and if power does go out without conserving and a little bit of Sun we could run theoretically forever.
Seriously.

Even without the truck battery, we rarely pull from the grid (except, ironically when we charge the truck on the 25 kW charger instead of the smaller charger). If we were ever in a situation where the grid was down for a week or more, we *might* need to plug in the truck. Fortunately, with the power outlets in the bed and the charger in the front, our system would manage the truck charging for us and we’d be off-grid indefinitely.

If we picked up the 62 kWh battery, we could cut the tether from the power company.
 
Seriously.

Even without the truck battery, we rarely pull from the grid (except, ironically when we charge the truck on the 25 kW charger instead of the smaller charger). If we were ever in a situation where the grid was down for a week or more, we *might* need to plug in the truck. Fortunately, with the power outlets in the bed and the charger in the front, our system would manage the truck charging for us and we’d be off-grid indefinitely.

If we picked up the 62 kWh battery, we could cut the tether from the power company.
Yes. It didn't make sense for us to add to our 27 kWh of battery because we can't disconnect completely from our utility.
 
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Well, I joined the EV club yesterday!

2023 F150 Lightning with 24k miles. Bought it in NH and took my two older daughters on a road trip to pick it up.
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The dealer was only about 10 minutes from Hampton Beach, so we got up there a couple hours before the appointment to pick up the truck and we went to the beach for a while.
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The dealer was about 160 miles from my house. He charged it to 100% before I picked it up. It was showing 324 miles of range. I got home with 78 miles left. I was doing the newbie thing and mashing the accelerator a number of times and driving at 75 on the highway, with what might have been a short burst up to 90 when a guy in a diesel wanted to race, so I take full responsibility for the not-so-great average of 1.9 miles per kWh.

I LOVE this truck! Scout is going to have to live up to our lofty expectations in order to pry this thing out of my hands. I'm sure they will, just saying.
 
Well, I joined the EV club yesterday!

2023 F150 Lightning with 24k miles. Bought it in NH and took my two older daughters on a road trip to pick it up.
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The dealer was only about 10 minutes from Hampton Beach, so we got up there a couple hours before the appointment to pick up the truck and we went to the beach for a while.
View attachment 9460

The dealer was about 160 miles from my house. He charged it to 100% before I picked it up. It was showing 324 miles of range. I got home with 78 miles left. I was doing the newbie thing and mashing the accelerator a number of times and driving at 75 on the highway, with what might have been a short burst up to 90 when a guy in a diesel wanted to race, so I take full responsibility for the not-so-great average of 1.9 miles per kWh.

I LOVE this truck! Scout is going to have to live up to our lofty expectations in order to pry this thing out of my hands. I'm sure they will, just saying.
Yay! That’s awesome! Could you please start a thread for your newbie EV experience. It’s been very helpful for us who are considering switching from the Harvester to the EV to see the stories from new EV owners. And congrats again!
 
Well, I joined the EV club yesterday!

2023 F150 Lightning with 24k miles. Bought it in NH and took my two older daughters on a road trip to pick it up.


I LOVE this truck! Scout is going to have to live up to our lofty expectations in order to pry this thing out of my hands. I'm sure they will, just saying.

Fantastic!

I sometimes feel like a fanboi about the Lightning. But I’m not a brand loyalist. It’s just difficult not to love the Lightning. I know it’s imperfect, but it’s still the best vehicle I’ve ever owned.