More than once, I got to wait a whole weekend and got traveling orders on Monday afternoon. That unit works "up to 10 hours". In places like southern Texas, it could be interesting to stretch that "10 hours" without idling. But, it would certainly be better than having nothing at all. I was never happy about going through a quarter tank of fuel from idling.
That's similar to the setup that International uses on the ProStars. Celadon's trucks are equipped with them. The system will run for 10hrs without a problem, but not when running the A/C. After 2-3 hours sitting in Laredo on a hot day, the truck will set off the low battery alarm. The truck has 8 batteries all tied together instead of the normal 4. One good thing with theirs is that you can use the Auto-Start feature, which will start the truck to recharge the batteries when it senses that they're getting low. On a hot day, it'll go 2-3 hours without the engine, start the engine to run 1-1.5hrs to recharge, shut down and the cycle continues.
In an area with 'normal' summer temps, where the outside temperature will drop to the low 70's at night, the truck easily went 10-14hrs without needing to restart itself.
It definitely helped with the idling, that's for sure. In fact, their trucks are set up so that they won't idle for more than 5 minutes unless the outside temperature is below 20 or above 150. The downside to their idle setup is that all it took was for the truck to be stopped for that amount of time - the brakes didn't have to be set for it to shut itself down - just stopped.
I've got an electric APU Not that brand name, I can't think of the name off hand, but they went out of business right after we got it. The batteries never charged from the start with the truck running. Spent 2500 for a part to fix it. Now they charge.
I've got the upgraded batteries and running the A/C runs the batteries down after 5-6 hours. And it wasn't that hot out.
If the temps are above 0 I'd say they'd run down in 3-4 hours. And you have to have the center curtain pulled to make the area as small as possible. I found out it cost over 10K so why not get a diesel fired APU with all the benefits of household current and battery charging and warming your engine coolant.
i hate mine, couldn't talk the fleet guy into something that was proven. Had to try Green. What a waste. I'd rather a TriPac
Just my experience.
my dad's truck has the nite system.. i guess its ok. i'd never give up my tripack though. if i had to do a economical one though.. honda generator and a ac/heater.
Thank you all for the responses. I have this idea that an all electric system would be pretty nice. It comes with a shore power outlet that you can use to plug the truck in when at home or your yard and keep things like refrigerator on. I also like to sleep without noise of even the little pony motor on a traditional APU. They want $9,000 for the "4 season system" plus installation. I'm thinking I could get used to the sound of that little motor the more I think about it.
