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electrical:12v:intro

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Powering your vanlife

Making, storing, and using power wisely is important for happy vandwelling. Power issues can seem overwhelming and confusing; this article intends to lay out the basics.

Before you spend money on making/storing power in your vehicle, be sure to leverage other sources:

  • plugs at your work, church, or anywhere else you visit regularly
  • plugs at cafes and restaurants – ask for a table near an outlet
  • look for outlets at bus stops, park pavilions, etc.

It may be useful to carry a gym bag with a power strip, extension cord, and any items that need to be charged. The power strips allows you to charge many things at once, and the extension cord helps you reach faraway outlets or outlets in inconvenient places (on a wall, behind furniture).

The Big Picture

There are two generally-separate electrical systems in your vehicle1):

  • House power (coach power, leisure power) is the (usually 12v) electrical system in the living area. It runs fans, lights, etc. It's what we are discussing here.
  • chassis power is the electrical system in the vehicle itself. Starter, alternator, headlights, etc. The two are usually separate systems, except when actively charging from the alternator.2)

How much power do I need?

Only you will know that, because only you will know what kinds of electrical loads you need (or want) to run. Unlike a wall socket in a house where you can run pretty much anything you want, using power you make off-grid is a series of choices and compromises. Some things are easy to run off-grid; some things are harder and require more infrastructure, planning, and money. Some things are impractical in campervans. Car-dwelling presents additional power challenges due to limited space and charging methods.

Daily power requirements

There is no way around it: you must come to grips with how much power you need each day.

  1. be honest about what you want/need to run and how long you plan to run them
  2. do the math, or use a calculator to do it for you

Here are some very general ideas to get you thinking:

  • Trivial to run off the cigarette lighter port while driving
  • Easy to run off a portable power pack3)
    • fan
    • CPAP - especially with humidification turned off
  • Average loads - small ($) house power system: Example: 200w of solar and 100Ah of battery.
    • 12v compressor fridges – they use little power and run intermittently
    • laptop charging/use during the day
    • swamp coolers (due to high power fan motors)
    • gaming laptops run off solar during the day
    • 120v refrigerators off inverter
    • charging e-bikes, etc during the day
  • Harder and more expensive to run - substantial ($$$) house power system - 400w of solar, 200Ah+ of battery
    • charging/ussing laptops at night
    • gaming consoles|laptops|PCs
    • charging e-bikes, etc at night
    • Small microwaves when used for <3 minutes per day
      • Power draw is high, but duration is short. Needs a beefy inverter.
  • Difficult and very expensive to run - Massive ($$$$$) house power system - 600w+ of solar, 400ah of lithium battery, alternator charging.
  • Completely Impossible unless you're on shore power
    • Heating the van. Tens of thousands of dollars in lithium batteries will barely last a day of running an electric heater. Which is why we use propane or diesel.

Note: devices that have "wall wart adapters" may not require an inverter.

sources of house power

Most campervans use solar combined with another charging source, usually the van's alternator. This combination can be both cheap and highly effective5)

Pro Con
shore power (outlet) cheapest per watt
simple
abundant power
often not available
if available you are tied to the outlet by your cord/adapter
campgrounds with outlets are more expensive
solar automatically makes power when the sun shines
makes high voltages needed to fully charge lead-acid batteries
silent
lasts for decades
most expensive per watt
can be complex
panels are large
output drops dramatically when shaded
alternator automatically makes power when driving
about 1/10th the cost of solar for the same current output
relatively low charging voltage6)
can result in chronic undercharging
should not idle to charge
most people don't drive enough to fully charge lead-acid
generator can make 1000w+ of 120v
can run for days
inverter models are quieter
can be expensive ($1000+)
maintenance
needs to be stored when not in use
noisy
not allowed in some areas/times

Alternator & solar charging enhance each other when used together. Adding alternator charging to solar can significantly reduce the amount of solar required to meet your needs.

Note: So-called solar generators do not generate power: they are battery banks, usually AGM or lithium. See below. Wind power is generally impractical for van use.

use patterns

  • People who can camp in driveways can cheaply run shore power to the van with an extension cord.
  • people who weekend camp can charge the batteries from shore power on their return, augmenting with alternator, solar, or generator if needed
  • people who drive hours each day (delivery, trucking, etc) may be fine with DC-DC charging alone. This also applies to lithium chemistry batteries
  • people who spend long periods off-grid will probably want a robust solar install
  • people who want to run big loads off-grid can do it cheapest with a generator.

storing power

Power production tends to be heaviest during the day while power use tends to be heaviest overnight. This means power needs to be stored when power is abundant so it can be used later. The most common storage for power is in a deep cycle battery bank.

Pro Con
Flooded lead-acid (FLA) cheapest per Ah
most tolerant of abuse
lowest current throughput
maintenance (“watering”) required
can only use 50% of rated capacity7)
Sealed lead-acid (SLA, AGM) able to charge/discharge more current than FLA
no maintenance required
more expensive per Ah8)
cannot check or replace electrolyte
LiFePO4 (LFP) lithium very close to normal 12v ranges
available as “drop-in” replacements for lead-acid
current throughput
can be more deeply discharged than lead-acid
most expensive upfront per Ah
cannot be charged in freezing temperatures
Non-LFP lithium cheaper than LFP per Ah
current throughput
thermal runaway
voltage not well-suited for 12v systems

The battery bank is sized to meet your daily power needs and as well as any extra margin you might like.

using power

Using power is the simplest part. It's so simple the newbie may find themselves overdrawing from the available power. A low voltage disconnect (LVD) is one way to keep from overdischarging the bank.

1)
trailers don't have chassis power
2)
or doing something exotic like shallow cycling
3)
which you will have to recharge somehow
4)
see the pattern?
5)
Isolators are inexpensive, and the combination allows one to run much smaller solar configurations than if one were charging by solar alone
6)
unless b2b
7)
or longevity suffers
8)
~2x the price of FLA
electrical/12v/intro.1654356690.txt.gz · Last modified: 2022/06/04 11:31 by frater_secessus