Then, as to planning out a system;
Looks like we look at the highest requirement first, in this case, AC, at this time it's not practical to use batteries, so that's a genny thing.
No one wants to run a genny 24/7, it would also take a high quality, industrial type generator to do that, which would be big bucks. Not to mention fuel consumption that could run 10 or even 20 gal. all day. Nope!
In this case, the second big consumption function is the micro, that runs for seconds or for less than 4 minutes generally. I'm seeing the relationship of time power is needed to Ahr of storage.
An inverter twice the size you'll need seems to take care of surges when equipment starts up or kicks in for a heavy load.
Seems like the trick now is to top off the battery at the optimal time, as I understand it, some batteries can use a constant charge, some are better to draw down and then recharge, I'm not sure which s best for what......yet.
So, we can use the genny when running to provide extra juice for charging and then there is solar that seems to take up the slack.
Looks like with good power management you can live off solar, without AC, (you could do AC but that would be a very large bank and array of panels we don't have room for in a van.
Let's assume the genny has a 12v charger, I will carry another one just for grins anyway.
I'm keeping the cost of the genny under $400. There are several to choose from, including Champion, Sportsman, HF and others around the 3000 watt mark.
Wat I'm finding is that there is no better battery system for raw storage capacity at a reasonable price than 6V golf cart types. A couple issues with those, they are wet batteries requiring maintenance, they weigh more, give off gasses and if one goes bad, you have 6 volts left.
Part of that can be solved with another 12V back up house battery, now you have 3 to charge and wire up. You can get these for about $120 each, so there is $360, call it $400 with runs of wire for the battery bank.
Don't know the cost of that blue sea switch, but that leaves us either $300 for solar or $1300, depending on which budget you look at. Even a small solar battery charge/tender can help, but we'll bump the budget for more solar.
Since, in this caee we have a genny, maybe 100 watts of solar would do the trick, we can always add more later.
Now the question, what equipment do we need to put this together? Charger, relays, isolators, bus bar, connectors, fuses/holders, wire and meters?
Experts, what say you?