Originally Posted by
MikeyMK
I considered this myself and couldn't see a legal issue. There is no law against carrying a generator. There is no law stating how your e-bike get's it's electricity. The law states the bike must be powered by the electric motor, it must be 250watts, pedal assisted, and restricted to 15.5mph in the UK. The generator is not propelling the vehicle itself.
Generators are quite weighty, given the amps you'll need, and i struggled to find one that'd put out the required wattage for that ampage. If you can find one small and light that'd do 20A at 24v then that'd probably be the best route, as finding 36v is likely to prove trickier.
I have played around with generators in the past.
I think there are some small 350 to 500W generators. 2 cycle? 4 cycle? They are light and compact.
Of course, 1 HP continuous will require somewhere between 1KW and 1.5 KW. But, intermittent with battery, it should be able to use a bit less.
One issue I ran into with small generators is that their DC output was generally very limited. Maybe 8A, 12V. One had to use 110V (or 220V) to get their full output power. And, thus more power conversion to whatever the battery bank requires.