Advice on Lithium Solar setup
Hello, I'm about to move into a conversion van full-time, 80% boondocking, and would like your advice about what I'm planning. My electrical requirements won't be much. I don't expect to use more t...
Forum Discussion
2oldman wrote:
You mentioned you could us an extension cord with AGM, but you had to take the Li in to a "wall charger"? Is that something permanently attached to a wall?
No, but the extension cord would need to be in the neighborhood of 100ft. Plus, I was thinking it would be better to have it inside so I could watch the charge meter and feel the battery to see if it was getting warm. Not big issues, just preferences.
landyacht318 wrote:
One think I wonder about is the OP's Kill a watt readings.
80 watts for a laptop is fairly high. My laptop is an older dell that requires a 90 watt adapter, but if the battery is already full, it uses about 30 watts to type this.
Turns out you're correct. The readings I took were when the laptop batteries had a nearly empty charge. As the laptop charged, it slowly tapered off on watt usage and once the battery was fully charged, the usage bounced between 32 and 20 watts...much better!
As for your other suggestions, using the alternator is something I'll definitely want to do to supplement the solar. I've seen that the alternator alone can charge house batteries only up to 80%, give or take some, so solar and possibly another source will be needed. I plan on driving every other day for 1-2 hours, and at least 2 days a week it will be 4 hours. As for mounting the panels, I'll use some kind of rack because, as you noted, heat becomes an issue otherwise. Any van should be able to hold at least 400w of panels, and some will be able to hold more. I'm keeping an eye out for extended size. I'll need to build a frame for the flexible panels but that shouldn't be difficult.
