<Bob wrote: And wouldn't using a shore-to-charger-to-battery-to-inverter system let you use European shore power without a lot of appliance conversions?> Shore power is often less than optimal. If it is out of frequency the inverters we drop it. Same with low or high voltage. We are looking for a good all voltage 50/60 cycle battery charger in the 3.5-4 kw range to do just what you propose. However they are not easy to find at a reasonable number of BU's :-( Funny as many inverter chargers have the charger capacity but lack the 50/60 capability and are reasonably priced....hmmmmm someone is missing a market here I think! We really would need a 5KW unit to use everything as we do now but we can live with a 30 amp 120 cord if we are careful with the AC units. If not then the genset autostarts at the 24 volt level as the batteries would be used to augment the limited shore power. Perhaps every day or two I suspect. Our distribution 24 volt system is setup waiting for this charger to appear...perhaps Santa has ones that he needs to unload ;-) We also have an input ready for a DC "genset". Perhaps a Polarpower or some other very tightly integrated high efficiency engine/alternator package. So though I'm happy with what I've developed I'm always tinkering with the setting and thinking about other nice ways to smooth out the generation of power for Swan Song. As always YMMV.... Dave & Nancy Swan Song Roughwater 58 Caribbean Cruise '07