12 volt generator

Any tips on efoy Im just wondering long term savings do you realy get the benefits..campsites are great wild camping maybe a bit of a adventure...

You could buy a lot of solar panels for the price and have no running costs and even less emissions.

If you put that word into the forum search, you will find a long discussion about the product:

https://www.autosleeper-ownersforum.com/t18248-efoy-system?highlight=efoy

I confess I may have been less than enthusiastic about it - probably not helped by a suspicion that the person who started the thread had more of an interest in the product than he was letting on - but in reality I'll never know one way or the other about that!

I use my Nuevo mostly away from 240v hook up, out of season and so I've toyed with the idea of an Efoy several times.   I have a 135amp battery and a 100 w solar panel.    

The basic system of a Nuevo, and I imagine all similar from AS, uses about 7amps a day when the control panel is switched on - even though nothing else in the van is switched on.    A couple of hours TV, 6 hours lighting and charging of tablets and phones probably uses another 13 amps making 20 amps a day so my 135 amp battery will just about cope with that for a couple of days without dropping the voltage too low (fridge and heating are gas).

For me to stay in one place more than 2 days without driving the van somewhere and thereby putting amps into the battery would be unusual, so I survive quite well.    The luxury of having plenty of power on demand without it 'running out' is something we've all got used to at home and the Efoy offers this.  £2500 is a lot of money but if you spend £50k on a van you'll be offered some tempting extras for £2500 - premium pack, media pack, auto gearbox etc which many would consider essential and others a waste of money, so buying an item that gives plenty of domestic power seems reasonable if it's important to you or makes you more comfortable.

I'm still thinking about fitting one but really for me it would just allow me to be more profligate with electric power and fitting another battery would be much cheaper and less space.    The same arguments about cost v benefits took place not so many years ago about solar panels.

Billy Ruffian wrote:The same arguments about cost v benefits took place not so many years ago about solar panels.

They did, but the big difference here is not just the £2.5k installation cost. The running costs are (IMO) excessive, largely because the efficiency is so low.

http://cordis.europa.eu/result/rcn/193543_en.html

Interesting reading at the link above. AS partnered in a project to produce an LPG fuelled fuel cell. It worked but is not yet cost effective and required super clean gas.

Truma produced one, it was the size of a suitcase and very heavy and expensive so they dropped it.

All the negatives of the Efoy unit are in the thread linked above.

Its solar for the time being.

-mojo- wrote:If you put that word into the forum search, you will find a long discussion about the product:

https://www.autosleeper-ownersforum.com/t18248-efoy-system?highlight=efoy

I confess I may have been less than enthusiastic about it - probably not helped by a suspicion that the person who started the thread had more of an interest in the product than he was letting on - but in reality I'll never know one way or the other about that!

Very interesting link Peter.    Pity it's not cost effective currently.

I was surprised that they didn't think the market was larger e.g. Yachts, caravans using CLs, remote buildings come to  mind.    Other surprise was that AS only produce 400 of the 70,000 new vans produced in the EU each year.    Still quite a lot of vans though!

Billy Ruffian wrote:Very interesting link Peter.    Pity it's not cost effective currently.

I was surprised that they didn't think the market was larger e.g. Yachts, caravans using CLs, remote buildings come to  mind.    Other surprise was that AS only produce 400 of the 70,000 new vans produced in the EU each year.    Still quite a lot of vans though!

At the time it was actually 700 plus a year. This year will be near 800 but they don't have space to increase more.