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The Fossil Status Quo Is Hard To Beat, But Worth Beating
When it comes to camping, the preferred fuel for everything from refrigerators to lanterns has long been propane. After all, the stuff comes in a variety of sizes, from the small cylinders you’d hook up to a camping stove or lantern to large cylinders that ride on the tongue of a travel trailer. High energy density means that you don’t need to take up a bunch of space or carry a bunch of weight to accomplish basically anything. Propane can run generators to get electricity, provide light, run heaters and furnaces of all sizes, keep your food cold with an absorption fridge, and provide heat to cook food or heat water for a nice shower.
In other words, propane makes it easy and relatively cheap to carry all of the comforts of home along on the road.
But, improved battery technology is starting to give propane a run for its money. For one, they’re more versatile, with batteries able to collect energy from a generator, an RV or tow vehicle’s alternator, solar panels, or the grid during charging stops or overnight campground stays. And, batteries can do a better job providing all of the same conveniences from the first paragraph, powering those conveniences from any energy source.
Batteries Aren’t Cheap
The big downside to battery storage is cost, though. While more convenient and versatile, you have to spend more money to power more things. With LED lights, even a tiny battery can keep the dark away. With a moderate battery setup (one or two deep cycles’ worth), running a small fridge and doing some basic cooking is possible. But, when you want to provide heat and air conditioning, run a water heater, and do other such tasks, you start needing multiple kilowatt-hours of storage and high-powered inverters, which can start to cost some serious bucks.
For a vehicle that only gets used on some weekends, building a serious solar+storage system starts to look penny wise and pound foolish. We all want to feel good about lowering our family’s footprint and nobody likes taking the time to fill up propane cylinders, but letting thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment sitting for over 300 days a year makes the sticker shock hurt a lot more. This means that RV manufacturers are probably going to be hesitant to build serious multi-kWh storage into all but the most luxurious travel trailers and motorhomes.
Thinking Outside The Box
Instead of trying to provide all of the energy storage from the factory, RV manufacturers should start thinking outside of the boxes they’re building for us to sleep in.
One easy solution would be to draw power from both electric and ICE tow vehicles. Currently, plugging a travel trailer into an F-150 Lightning, Silverado EV, Rivian, or Cybertruck requires a janky extension cable or rewiring the trailer to have the shore power cord come out at the tongue. Having the power cord come out of the front of the trailer instead of the sides or the back would make plugging the trailer in a lot easier.
For people who want the power and solar to be integrated into the trailer, the answer is to include a special cabinet that can accommodate a variety of off the shelf power stations. That way, instead of needing to permanently mount lithium deep cycle batteries, the trailer’s owner could simply put a Jackery, EcoFlow, or other common power station in the cabinet and plug it in. This would require pre-wiring the trailer to draw power from the cabinet, ventilating it, and providing power to charge the power station from the shore power cable or solar panels.
While counting on a BYOB (Bring Your Own Battery) arrangement saves the manufacturer money, the bigger advantage is that the owner doesn’t have to tie up battery investment in the trailer. An EV’s battery can obviously be used all year, and a power station can be used for emergency power and other things when the trailer is sitting unused.
This also gives dealers opportunities to upsell. By making deals with truck dealers, offering to bundle in a power station, and offering installation for alternator chargers to keep the trailer topped up, the opportunities for making money on batteries are still in play.
Featured image by EcoFlow.
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