Your boondocking experience will go much smoother if you know your power needs beforehand and prepare accordingly. Enter the Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor. Use this very important tool to measure power usage of devices and appliances that you will want and/or need when boondocking. This analysis will let you know what devices to use but more importantly, what devices not to use.

Place the Kill-A-Watt between your AC power source and any device to assess the efficiency displaying Watts, Amps, and the Frequency being used all while calculating Kilowatt-hours. Plug your TV, coffee maker, computer, microwave, instant pot, whatever appliances you want into the Kill-A-Watt and it will tell you the efficiency of that device by displaying the kilowatts per hour. When you're appliance shopping, always remember to look at the yellow tags and note the KWH/Year. Divide the yellow tag number by 365 and you have an estimate for daily consumption for the device/appliance.

Use the test results to populate a Power Consumption Chart like the example below. The Power Consumption Chart and other system sizing calculations will help identify your electrical needs and the proper Battery Bank, Inverter, Solar Array, and Generator combination required for your style of RV boondocking. Whenever possible, use DC devices and appliances.

DC devices need to be close to the battery bank, like in an RV, because of the high current issues and large gauge wiring requirements for distance, especially with 12 Volt systems. No need to relearn Edison's lesson. (Nikola Tesla Rules!) DC devices do not suffer the average 10% loss converting DC to AC. Ten percent may not sound like much but when you're boondocking and making your own power, every little bit counts.