From my book: RVing For Newbies, Second Edition (not yet published) as of March 27, 2026.
Chapter 11: Section 11.2 – Solar Generator
On a post on Facebook, someone asked me to cover this “What exactly is a solar generator”, the short answer is it is a solar panel(maybe more than 1) and a battery(usually Lithium) that can take the output of the solar panel and charge a battery.
Now the long answer is that most solar setups have at a minimum one solar panel, wiring to a solar controller(which might have a battery management system (BMS) built into it) and at a minimum a battery. In a solar generator setup, the solar controller and BMS are usually built into the battery itself, so it becomes very simply a solar panel and a battery.
Let’s look at one that I have by Generark, which was bought by Geneverse and now it is owned by Jackery.
Solar Panel (this setup comes with two that can be wired together to produce more amps to the battery, all the wiring to run one panel (or two panels) were included. The panels are portable and can be leaned in various angles as well as laid flat.
Battery has two inputs, one for single panel and one for multiple panels. As you can see in the picture below, I am using the single panel input. It is tough to read but on this nice sunny day, the panel is putting out 90 watts to the battery.
That is all there is to the setup for solar generator, the battery itself has 12v DC out, a built-in inverter which produces 120v AC out and various USB type ports. So now the question that still needs to be answered is what is the capacity of the battery?
This battery is capable of 1000 watt/hour, which at this point means it can output 1000 watts for up to 1 hour at 12 Volts DC, 500 watts for 2 hours. Later in this chapter will discuss inverters to be able to get 120v AC power from batteries.
That is the RV101 on what is a solar generator.