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You have the best perspective having done it both ways.
But 5% sounds like a massive difference - half a day. How does that break down?
There is a learning curve with batteries. On TCR 2016 I made a few mistakes. I didn't take enough power banks: I only had two so I bought two more at a supermarket in France. And I used crappy little individual chargers, instead of a good one that can charge 4 things quickly from one socket, so one hotel room in Bosnia didn't have enough sockets so I couldn't charge one of my batteries properly. And a couple of my wires were shite so I could only use certain wires to charge eg my phone.
But for IndyPac I'd fixed all that, got the right kit, knew how much power I needed and had no problems doing an all-nighter and lots of other night riding on battery lights.
I reckon not using a dynamo saves me a little bit of time but nothing like as much as 5% or half a day. If it's 6W, then thats about maybe c.5% of my average power, so (cube root) 1.7% of my speed = about 0.33km/h, and I might be riding 16 hours per day, so more like 1% or 2-3 hours over the TCR.
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frank9755
@bananaskid
First year used batteries and the second year used a dynamo. Once controlling for altitude I think I approximately went 10-15% faster (more km/day, my moving speed was marginally slower). I think most of the 10% gain was experience and perhaps then next 5% is attritutable to the dynamo. But only because of my stategy which was to sleep every other night so benefited from the really powerful front light and the charging. Still carried one of those massive Anker chargers just in case.