Planning Power Needs for One Week Trip

[bikelanta]

Just got back from 4 days of camping where i never started my truck a single time. My jackery 1000 ran my arb 50 the entire time. It was hot like 100f hot and my fridge was inside the hot truck Which was even hotter. It was down to 11% when we left and a ~3 hour drive put it back to about 50%.

Thanks jadmt. What was the charge source for the Jackery? 12v plug?

 

[jadmt]

Thanks jadmt. What was the charge source for the Jackery? 12v plug?

Yes

 

[bikelanta]

Do you run your CPAP on AC? Typically they are actually DC devices so going from DC (battery)-->AC (inverter)-->DC (device) is really inefficient. If you can get a direct DC cord for the CPAP then you might get a lot more life out of the battery.

Did an overnight this week and was amazed at the difference in power usage. The CPAP used 32 watts with the AC cord and 16 watts with the DC. Huge savings! Thanks again for this tip. @4000lbsOfGoat

 

[bikelanta]

I don't think this post got enough attention. That 400w inverter is small - almost tiny. It will almost certainly fail to simultaneously run the schumacher and charge the GZ, let alone also power the ARB during that time.

I suggest rigorous testing - and I mean actually partially discharging both the GZ and the group 31 battery and then hooking everything up. No fair just plugging everything in when the batteries are full - that won't simulate the load.

I ran with this suggestion. Drained the G31 to 50% and the Goal Zero to 60%. Then plugged both in to charge along with running the ARB and attached power monitors to each outlet for the ARB, GZ, and Schumacher. The plugged the entire power strip into a single monitor. Peak wattage was 220 while getting everything charged back up. This was with the Schumacher on the 15A quick charge setting.

The ARB was set to 33 degrees and my garage was 85 degrees, so not cool.

 

[Herbie]

Not sure I understand the setup with respect to how stuff is setup vis a vis your monitors here, but add all those up and it's 438 watts.

That seems light, though, since the Schumacher alone should be north of 180w.

I'm guessing that worst case, the inverter will just limit overall current to your loads. (I'd expect it will "brown" some too and but deliver peak voltage under that condition), but maybe you get lucky and it works, just more slowly.

 

[bikelanta]

Not sure I understand the setup with respect to how stuff is setup vis a vis your monitors here, but add all those up and it's 438 watts.

That seems light, though, since the Schumacher alone should be north of 180w.

I'm guessing that worst case, the inverter will just limit overall current to your loads. (I'd expect it will "brown" some too and but deliver peak voltage under that condition), but maybe you get lucky and it works, just more slowly.

The power strip is plugged into an energy monitoring smart plug that is plugged into a wall outlet. The three devices are plugged into individual smart plugs that are plugged into the strip. You only need to add up three to get the total. The power strip measurement is a summation of the other three outlets.

For whatever reason, the Schumacher seems to draw two specific loads on the 3A or 15A setting. 55 watts and 90 watts.

This was all done plugged into our garage outlet to first see whether it would go over 400W before testing in the truck.

 

[4000lbsOfGoat]

Unrelated question, what’s the backstory on your username? I’ve seen it on here before and wondered.

Sorry for the delay, I've been on the road with sporadic internet access...
It isn't much of a story, just an off-hand comment I made about the climbing prowess of our Taco while we were out wheeling. I said it "climbs like a 4000 pound goat". We liked the sound of it and decided to build our "brand" around it. Set up an LLC under that name, hired a tattoo artist to create a logo and away we went!

Of course, when I made that comment the Taco was still pretty well stock and within the 4000 pound range. We left that behind long ago....

I'm glad to hear that the DC cord for CPAP did you well!

 

[bikelanta]

Coming back to this thread, in the end, our battery power needs dropped slightly because we spent a few days at a campground with power. That being said, the following combination ended up working out well:

1. 5 outlet power strip connected to AC power plug in truck bed.
2. ARB fridge simultaneously plugged into power strip on AC and into G31 battery for DC (it auto switched between the two; when truck turned off, ARB ran on DC and vice versa when truck running)
3. Schumacher charger plugged into power strip and charging G31 battery (turns out the Schumacher automatically turns on after 10 minutes at the low amperage setting if you don't hit the start button before then, so it was charging more frequently than I thought.)
4. Goal zero AC charger plugged into power strip
5. Switching from AC charger to DC charger for CPAP (power usage dropped a lot with this change)

Due to the driving all over Grand Teton and Yellowstone, the batteries didn't spend multiple days running without charge. So, it was never a deep recharge and therefore this setup worked out quite well. I ended up not bringing the solar panels, which was just as well, because we were parked in the shade in GT and it rained all three days in Yellowstone.

Thanks again for the feedback on this idea.