Now I have been doing some calculations of what does it really cost to produce a KW - or as we use it 1,000 watts while driving , living or camping or on the road.
The two figures that I came up with is if one uses a gas powered generator it costs about $1 in gas to produce one KW in energy and I'm using a Honda 2000 as one of the most efficient generators. This does not include the cost of the Honda or how many KW it could produce since I have never seen the life of a Honda 2000 in KW produced like that anywhere.
The most efficient cost that I have seen is if one would purchase a 1,000 AH bank of Lithium batteries cost approx $4,000 and this battery could be charged at home at 15 cents per KW , to keep numbers easy lets say this bank could store 10 KW per charge and it's weight is 360 lbs. with a min 2,000 cycles = 20,000 KW total cost of home enery is $3,000 vs cost of gasoline to produce 22,000 KW would equal approx $22,000 in gas - savings of $19,000 by just using batteries & bringing your energy from home. Now remove the $4,000 in batteries and you still have net savings of $15,000 projected over 6.6 years or longer.
Now I have a 2,000 watt solar system, cost $10,000 and this I guess could produce 8,000 watts daily average 8 KW giving me a cost saving of $8 per day or rounded off $3,000 per year - so it would take 3.3 years to return my investment - in comparison to using a gas or diesel generator. In a home grid tied application the numbers would be different of course.
Assuming my trailer & solar system could last 20 years ( which I greatly doubt ) then it would produce $51,000 in free mobile energy assuming gas stays at $4 gal for the next 20 years.
Just wondering if others have made their own calculations maybe using real figures for golf cart batteries or AMG etc ?