Coleman Powermate Generator

[Super Dave]

Well, that would supply 1500 watts of output, which might supply some warmers power for ten minutes or so.  You'd need a lot more and bigger solar panels to come close. 

These produce 50 watts.  http://www.cetsolar.com/ge50w.htm  at almost $500 a piece.  You either need large amounts of battery storage or lots more panels to develop 1200 to 2200 watts of energy an hour to run warmers alone.

[Super Dave]

You can add propane to most gasoline generators. 

[Super Dave]

They are sold as kits.  I looked at it a few years ago.  Really, it's just an inlet needle pushed into the boot.  Can't remember if it was on the air box side or the intake side or what.  You should be able to use Google and come up with options.  I don't rmember them being more than $250.  Might have been $150.

As for running for 24 hours?  Really depends upon the generator's efficiency and how much load they are running on, just like gasoline.

[Suzy]

Ok, I spent most of the night researching solar power stuff and found this too....

http://www.solarelectricsupply.com/systems/rv/rv-solar-inverter-kit.html#snowbird

this runs an RV ALL WEEKEND!! I would think you can mount these on the side of your trailers. 

[Super Dave]

The inverter still only puts out 1500 watts.  That won't power some warmers.

160 watts of solar isn't going to replenish the power fast enough when it's going out at 1200 to 2200 watts. 

Batteries, lots and lots of batteries.

Let's see if I can remember all this...

Let's say we need our tire warmers for four hours.  Let's assume that our warmers need 1500 watts of energy.  So, we'll need a total of 6000 watts of energy.

Forget about charging it, how many batteries are going to be necessary to have power for that period of time...

Running 1500 watts of energy off a 12v system is going to need 125 amps.  The inverter will make that 1500 watts into 110v at a lower voltage that won't destroy the AC wiring...a little more than 13v.

Batteries are rated in amp hours.  A 200 amp hour battery can sustain a 10 amp draw for 20 hours, everything being perfect.  As the amperage increases, the batteries capacity decreases, though.  Take a 200 amp hour battery to 50 amps of draw, it isn't four hours of power, it goes down to around to 2.5 hours.  The deeper a battery is discharged, the shorter its life and then it won't charge to the same level.  Most manufacturers don't recommend discharging more than 50%...So, now we're down to 1.25 hours with only 50 amp load, and we need 125 amps...

The cost on batteries...it's a lot.

You're gonna need a big solar array to charge it all.  It isn't going to charge over night.  The alternatives are to have even more batteries.  Might as well have another trailer just for the batteries. 

[Suzy]

Is there a misunderstanding here about how solar power is generated and stored by me or you??? These are two small tire warmers, not a house??? If you charge the tire warmers for average 10 minutes before the race (do you leave them on all day?), once you disconnect it's already recharging itself for the next use and at the same time storing energy to a battery for nite use.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/solar_electric.html

[Super Dave]

I'm not sure you understand how tire warmers are used. I've got my warmers on usually 30 to 50 minutes long before each time I go out.

Two morning sessions, maybe three, and then all the races.  If I have races really close together, I might have the set on the bike running, and a separate rear cooking too (more wattage) so that it will be warm for the next race.

We're talking 1200 to 2200 watts to run it, not the small wattages that run TV's, etc.  Basically, you're running a pretty good power microwave oven for a few hours each day.  Hours not minutes.

[Super Dave]

 

[Suzy]

My point with this is if there was any way to conserve some gas usage, wouldn't that make sense.
 
What are you using now? How much gas in one day do you use to do this? Let's also include the gas you would use (if you do) any appliances and stuff at night in your RV, etc., then add in the gas you use to go back and forth to the track too in your truck, etc.. Really, do you have any figures, I'm curious? 

I wonder if gas prices would ever go down again, does anyone think they will?  Would be great, and I'm not defeating the purpose of having gas for racing. Cutting back someway does you and your pocket book good as well as what commodity we have left to help conserve it. Even just to conserve the gas you use for everything else except race gas and car gas (exception if you already own a hybrid car). I sure hear alot of generators at night when camping out including RV's, that's alot of gas.

But then I see what could be of the future, possibly using all this energy saving stuff, if we were puchasing less oil from the countries that supply us, prices could then go even higher too. It's not easy to figure which way is better, but I'm sticking with whatever saves on gas so you guys have race gas, I found a solar car that goes 60mph (yes that's funny), and will go 8 hours on one charge. For practical purposes, I just think it would be really neat to drive and not spend a penny on gas.   

[Super Dave]

The cost of a good solar car is $200,000.  It's all nice, but not very attainable.  For that kind of money, you could buy a decent, comfortable car and drive it for about a million and a half miles.

[Super Dave]

How much gas in a day?  Depends on your use and on your generator.  OHV engines are more efficient than flat head engines. 

The cost of reliable, portable power is about two to four gallons a day or so.  More tire warmers, more gas.  Fewer races, less power. 

The cost of an ambulance ride is $450 to $700.  A helicopter ride is something like $4000 to $7000.  Bike costs are involved too.

[Suzy]

http://www.zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=386
You can buy a seperate solar unit to supply the recharge, this car is all electric for $8000.00, then you get a government rebate on top of that. I like it.  

I'll be back, I found more but forgot where I put the link??