It was really grey this morning. Both L’s and my house batteries needed a boost and we also had to charge our computers. So I fired up the genset and then strung a couple of extension cords to his rig. He has had trouble with his converter, so his batteries can only charge with solar or a dedicated charger. So one cord and my charger went to his battery bank. The other cord went into his rig to charge his computer.

I ran the genny for a full two hours and really saw how useless my converter is for charging batteries as I had a mere 3A coming in. As a contrast, I average 10A by running the engine! It’s definitely worth pulling out the charger if I’m going to run the genny for charging. The genny uses about half the gas as the engine, but charges three times more slowly. So that means that without the dedicated charger, the engine is a more efficient and economical means of charging my batteries!

While the genny was running, I came up with a low-tech, but stylish, hour metre using my Martha Stewart chalkboard labels: