You couldnt pry my inverter generator out of my cold dead hands. I would take it over solar panels, battery banks and inverters any day of the week. Its small, its quiet, it sips the fuel, I can use it anywhere. Single point of failure. It breaks, I get a new one. No troubleshooting, no extra wiring, no extra batteries and charge controllers.
I dry camp for up to two weeks at a time in the sand dunes and that little genset is a trooper. I chain it to the axle of the trailer, fill it up, and let it run all night until it runs out of fuel. Keeps my fridge going, the furnace, all the chargers for phones and computers and tablets. Hands down best bang for your buck.
Your looking at a ton of weight and cost in those batteries. Good inverters are not small or light either. Im just not a fan of them anymore if your stationary. I do keep small inverters in my rigs for occasional use like oddball phone charger or keeping the laptop juiced while driving down the road, but thats it.
In fact, as I was getting out of the marine repair work, I saw a lot of customers removing their batteries and inverters and just sitting a honda genset on the swim step. They gained a ton of storage space, and never any worry about replacing the battery bank every 5 years, or acid fumes in the bilge, and the cost was comparable.
