Electricity

There are 3 ways to charge the house (van) battery.

1. Solar. It takes about 4-6 hours on a sunny day to fully charge the battery. A cloudy day will still charge the battery but not to full charge over the course of the day.

2. Driving. When driving, the engine will recharge the house battery in about 2-3 hours.

3. Shore power. We have unlimited power if plugged into a house or at a campground. We have a 30 amp plug and a 20 amp adapter (for extension cords to houses)- to be used with the 30 amp plug.

Our electric is made up of these parts: four (4) 100 watt solar panels, solar charger box, a 3,000 watt inverter, a 12 volt/ 100 amp house battery, a dc-dc battery charger, two (2) bus terminal bars, a breaker box, breakers, dc fuse box, and fuses.

How it works:

The wiring comes from the solar panels, the shore power plug, and the car battery.

• The solar goes to a fuse, the solar charger box, another fuse, the bus terminals and the house battery.

• The car battery goes to a fuse, the dc to dc power box, another fuse, the bus terminals and the battery.

• The shore power (AC power) goes directly to the ac outlets and it also goes to the inverter to convert to dc power and then to the house battery.

When plugged into shore power, energy is always flowing- both through the inverter for AC power and to the battery, continually charging it for DC power. When not plugged in, the van gets all its energy from the house battery, which flows either directly to dc power (lights and rooftop tent) or through the inverter for ac power (outlets that power things like the fridge, microwave, laptops,... anything plugged in).

Solar Charger Box

The energy our solar panels collect from the sun goes through this box to be converted into energy stored in our house battery. It takes about 4-6 hours on a sunny day to fully charge our battery.

House Battery

We only have one house battery- firstly because batteries are so expensive and also because with the number of and capacity of solar panels we have, we likely wouldn’t be able to charge 2 batteries in a day anyway. For now, our one battery gets us through the night.

Inverter

This is both an inverter and a charger. When plugged into shore power, it charges the battery by converting the AC power coming in to DC power. When off grid, this box converts the DC power from the house battery to AC power for the van’s outlets.

We mostly keep the inverter on power saver mode while off grid so that it turns on only when a large AC power source (fridge) goes on- saving our battery life. DC power works without the inverter and takes much less energy- so our lights never go out.*

Van to House Battery Charger

This box charges our house battery with our van battery while we’re driving. It’s quicker than solar and can fully charge our house battery in 2-3 hours. Even though the hot water heater is a very large energy consumer, we can turn it on while driving because the van battery charges the house battery at around the same rate that the hot water heater uses the energy. Once the water is heated, we can turn off the switch and the water will remain hot for around 24 hours +-.

Our outlets are standard 20 amp and provide AC power. This means we can’t run anything with higher amperage than 20 (no dryers or kilns!) but even our biggest energy consumers (heaters, fridge, microwave, hot water heater, induction stove tops) are not above 20 amps. We can even run power tools if we want (and if we're plugged in and not using our battery).

Our lights and everything in the roof top tent run on DC power. For this reason, it’s better to charge phones here than on the outlets because energy is always flowing here as opposed to the outlets (because we keep the inverter on power saving mode when off grid).*

The breaker box is connected to all our ac power- all the outlets (we need to add the hot water heater). The fuse box/ fuses are for dc power. These are for safety.

The only time we can use the higher energy consuming things (ac power things) like our space heater or power tools is when we are plugged into shore power and have an unlimited energy stream coming into the van.

We initially thought we’d be able to run an on demand water heater and a small air conditioner. We realized neither of these were practical- especially in the circumstance of off-grid travel.

We ended up putting in a 4.5 gallon hot water heater that we can turn on while driving or at a campsite and plugged in. We put the tank in one of the benches and the switch to turn it on under the sink for easy access. The water stays hot for around 24+- hours depending on the outside temperature.

The air conditioning unit made no sense after we took a few trips. Our fans work well along with our window coverings, tent, and screens for temperature control and we’re thinking about installing a max air fan in the future for more air circulation.

We also bought induction stovetops and after our first trip, we replaced them with a portable gas stove.

Huge lesson experienced: heating and cooling use the most energy.

Big credits to Sean. I learned so much more than I did during the circuits lesson in high school physics! I’m glad Sean has a deeper understanding of electronics and grateful for his patience to talk through it as he was installing it.

I’ll update this post with products and tools we used in the future.