"purple_stars" wrote in
oups.com:

and a 5000 watt
generator might as well be a 500 watt generator because you can't
charge the batteries any faster than using a few hundred watts anyway,
so you're just wasting energy for nothing.

Ahhh....a refreshing voice of SENSE in the background noise.....

A solution might be:
http://www.hondapowerequipment.com/M...elName=eu1000i
I love mine. We took it to sea and out on local cruises many times.
It's so quiet and so easy on fuel. With its 12V 8A internal charger
hooked to the 12V bus plus the boat's dual 10A Guest charger running off
its rock-solid 60 Hz, 120VAC inverter power, it never left its low-speed
econo mode until someone lit off the microwave. The .6 US Gallon tank
easily runs 8 hours with that kind of load. I don't know what it runs on
that lean. The fuel system is sealed tight once you've shut off the vent
in the cap to store it, too.

I used it as a shop heater inside the stepvan when it's cold in winter,
in addition to a power supply. I welded a galvanized pipe nipple to the
little nubbin of an outlet on the muffler so I could connect some copper
tubing to the exhaust. The tubing is left in a coil that radiates heat
like mad before the cold exhaust dripping with moisture is fed through a
hole in the truck's floor outside. This way, I recover nearly 100% of
the energy from the little fuel tank as heat or power. The cooling air
recycles inside the truck and doesn't set off my CO alarm, at all. Sure
makes the shop toasty warm on a cold morning for a little mechanical
noise and a tiny bit of gas...(c;

It's a Honda, so it always starts on the first easy pull..... Anchored
with it on the bow, you can hardly hear it running inside the cabin. At
sea with it running on the stern and the exhaust pointed aft, it makes
about the same noise as the waves....Just bungie the big handle to the
stern rail by the beer cooler...

I've also connected its DC charging output directly to a thermoelectric
ice chest, just to see how it will pull that load. It's not made for
this service, but the Igloo DC cooler doesn't seem to mind. If anything,
the fan runs a little faster than it does on a battery. The voltage open
circuit is around 17VDC but drops fast from its internal resistance when
the load comes on. It's not regulated or filtered, just rectified high
frequency, multiphase AC off the flywheel coil banks that run it all....