Running two fridges, a CPAP and the telly: sizing your genset habit down

There's a bloke at the showground in Barcaldine who runs his generator from 6am to 9pm most days, and every single person in that camp knows exactly what brand of two-stroke oil he uses because he's told them, unprompted, at least twice. Denise calls him "the mayor." I mention him because he's the cautionary tale I think of every time someone asks me whether they need a generator. Short answer: probably, at some point. Long answer: not the way the mayor uses his.

We've been on the road six years now, and for the first two of those we didn't carry a generator at all. Just a decent solar setup and a fridge that behaved itself. Then we started chasing shade in the Kimberley dry season, spent four days under paperbarks near the Cape Leveque Road with barely a squeak of sun getting through, and I learned the hard way that panels don't care how expensive they were if they can't see sky. That's when the little Honda came home in the back of the ute.

Why solar alone eventually lets you down

Solar and lithium will run a well-behaved rig for weeks on end in open country. The problem isn't the gear, it's the country. Run under trees at Karijini's Dales Campground and you're fighting dappled shade all day. Sit through three overcast days on the Nullarbor edge or in Tassie winter and your 300-400 watts of panel might give you a third of what the brochure promised. Add a second fridge because you're carting meat for a month, a CPAP machine, an inverter running power tools, or kids charging four devices each, and the maths that worked fine for a simple rig stops adding up.

I'd argue most people oversize their solar and undersize their thinking about the exceptions. You don't need a generator for the sunny weeks. You need it for the four wet days in a row, the winter month in the high country, or the week you're bush mechanic-ing something and the fridge compressor's working overtime to keep up while you're not driving to top the battery up via DC-DC. If you haven't read up on how those chargers work alongside solar, it's worth doing before you go generator shopping, because the two systems need to talk to each other properly — we've covered that in DC-DC chargers explained.

Sizing it without overbuying

Most vans with a decent lithium bank and a half-competent solar array need surprisingly little generator grunt. A 2000W inverter generator will run a battery charger at 20-40 amps, keep the fridge going, charge phones and laptops, and even run a microwave briefly if you're not fussy about doing it and the kettle at the same time. Denise and I run a 2000W Honda-equivalent and it's never once been the limiting factor. The blokes running 3500W-plus units towing them on trailers are usually running air conditioners or welders, which is a different conversation entirely.

Buy for your actual battery charger's input, not for some imagined future need. If your DC-DC or inverter-charger tops out at 25 amps at 12V, that's roughly 300-400 watts of real draw once you account for charging inefficiency, well within a small 2000W unit with plenty of headroom for a fridge and a laptop charger running alongside it. I've seen fellas buy a generator that could run a small workshop because the servo bloke upsold them, and then complain about the extra 15kg in the tow bar box for the rest of the trip.

The generator etiquette nobody puts on a sign

This is the bit that actually matters more than watts. A generator at a free camp or a low-key bush pub yard is a privilege, not a right, and I reckon half the tension you see in caravan parks around Australia comes down to someone running theirs at the wrong hour. The unwritten rule most grey nomads live by is roughly 8am to 8pm, no earlier, no later, and even then you park it downwind and as far from your neighbours as your site allows. If you're camped somewhere genuinely remote and there's nobody within cooee, different story — crack on, nobody's going to mind.

Where it goes wrong is showgrounds and free camps where forty rigs are within a stone's throw of each other. We stayed one night out the back of a pub — the sort of spot we talk about in showground camping — where a bloke fired his up at 5:45am to make coffee. He wasn't malicious, just thoughtless. By 6:15 there were at least six people up making pointed comments over their own breakfasts. Don't be that bloke. If you genuinely need power at odd hours — medical equipment, say — a quick word to your neighbours the evening before goes a long way. Most people are entirely reasonable about a CPAP or a nebuliser. It's the discretionary stuff, the toaster and the telly, that needs to wait for civilised hours.

Petrol, diesel or the built-in unit

Portable inverter generators, almost universally petrol, are what you see rattling around in tow bar boxes and ute trays across the country. Light, quiet by generator standards, and if something goes wrong you can usually get parts or at least advice at any servo between here and Broome. Diesel generators exist and some vans have them built in, drawing off the same tank as the tow vehicle if it's a diesel too, which sounds efficient until you're trying to service or troubleshoot one on the side of the road with no spare parts within 400 kilometres. I lean petrol portable for exactly that reason — commonality of fuel and simplicity of repair beats theoretical efficiency every time you're actually in strife.

Noise matters more than most first-timers realise. The good inverter units run around 52-58 decibels at a few metres, which is genuinely unobtrusive; the older conventional generators can sit ten or more decibels louder, which doesn't sound like much until you're trying to sleep 20 metres from one. If you're buying new, an inverter generator is worth the extra outlay for the noise reduction alone, quite apart from the cleaner power it puts out, which your electronics and battery chargers will thank you for.

When you genuinely don't need one

Plenty of good touring doesn't require a generator at all, and I don't want to talk anyone into buying gear they don't need. If your travel style is mostly caravan parks with mains power, or you're doing shorter trips with good sun exposure and a modest fridge load, a properly sized solar and battery system will do everything you need without the extra weight, fuel, and maintenance of a generator sitting in the tow bar box for months at a time doing nothing. We know several couples doing full laps with just solar, because their route keeps them mostly in open, sunny country and their loads are modest. Horses for courses.

Where it earns its keep is the shoulder seasons and the awkward country: winter in the high country around Bright, extended stints along the Savannah Way in the build-up when cloud cover's unpredictable, or anywhere you're parked under heavy canopy for the fishing rather than the sun exposure. If that's your kind of touring, the genny isn't a luxury, it's the thing that stops you running the tow vehicle's engine for two hours a day just to keep the fridge cold, which is a worse solution on every count — fuel, noise, and wear on an engine that's not built to idle that long.

What we actually run

Our setup these days is 300 watts of roof solar, a decent lithium bank, a DC-DC charger for driving days, and the little 2000W Honda-equivalent for the exceptions. It comes out maybe fifteen times a year. That's roughly what I'd suggest most full-timers actually need once you're honest about your typical camping style rather than the worst-case scenario the sales bloke describes to sell you the biggest unit on the shelf.

Check the specific rules before you assume anything, too. Some national parks and reserves ban generators outright, some free camps have posted hours, and local council land can have noise restrictions that catch people out. It's worth a look at the current guidance for wherever you're headed, and our rundown on free camping rules by state is a reasonable starting point, though always check with the relevant land manager directly for anything current.

Anyway. The mayor at Barcaldine's probably still going, generator humming away from dawn till dusk, holding court about two-stroke oil to anyone within earshot. Good on him. Just maybe not right next to my annexe.