Help design my adventure van power system please

djb_rh

djb_rh

Observer
I have a new diesel Ford Transit long/tall 250 van ordered. The only side windows are one in the sliding door. I spec'ed it with the full tow package and high capacity alternator, extra fuse panel, etc. Basically went line-by-line in the ordering system and got everything that I could come up with that would help in an adventure van build. And not much else.

Plan is to build out the rear interior myself, including insulating well. Putting two Maxxair fans in the roof, some LED lighting inside, likely some water tank and pump, might end up with a 12V fridge of some sort, and the kicker is a 12V air conditioner (don't hate, I need it, I promise). It's the Autoclima U-Go as discussed in this thread:

http://forum.expeditionportal.com/t...-12v-air-conditioner-Indel-Sleeping-Well-Cube

I got it for just under $2k shipped from from www.badgeaire.com (pretty good to deal with, but you do need to call or email a rep...they didn't have one in stock, but only took about a week to get it). Yes, it takes 36A at full bore. I've received it and hooked it up temporarily to a battery...it seems like it's pushing enough cold air out that it'll do what I want. Note that this is an internal unit, not a roof mount. I'm hoping to do its exhaust through the floor near a wall, but may have to do it through a wall. Will know more about that when the van gets here in a month or so.

Anyway, I think about 400Ah of battery will get me what I want. I know, that's a lot. But I want to be able to run the AC overnight if necessary. 300Ah might be enough for that, though. I'm thinking of doing about 300-400W of solar on the roof. I want shore charging capability via a single 15A 110V plug (will carry a 2000W Honda genset to use when necessary). I want to be able to charge from the vehicle alternator when running, but otherwise do NOT want to tap the chassis battery for the house electrical.

I would also like to have about 2000W of internal 110V power from inverter for incidental things. Won't get used a ton. Just want it in case.

So my questions seem to be:

. which solar panels
. which batteries
. what solar charge controller
. what inverter
. what shore power controller

I realize the controller/inverter items *may* be one unit or may be separate. I've dealt with Xantrex and other versions of these 10 years or so ago, but in all those cases it included genset controllers and the stuff I was doing assumed a generator was a much more integral part of the system. In this case it's not as much. And products have changed in that time, I'm sure.

So what's good and what do I likely want? I'm fine with recommendations on fusing/breakers for this as well, but I am familiar with doing even high current DC wiring. Pointers to threads where this basic problem has been solved are definitely helpful, too. There's a bazillion builds out there, but digging through them all to find the ones that are similar seems a bit daunting to say the least.

Thanks for any pointers or recommendations.


--Donnie
 
R

Rando

Explorer
Building a system from scratch, I would be tempted to go with an 'ecosystem' like Victron. They make all the components you need, they are high quality, and they all work together really well. You are also investing a lot of money on a brand new vehicle, so it is worth spending a little more on your camper components not only to have a reliable system, but also with an eye to resale.
Solar panel: What ever rigid panels fit best, and with your power demands, you want lots of watts.
Batteries: 400Ah is going to be heavy and they may not like the 36A draw that much - so you may want to consider LiFePO4. If you were budgeting for 300 - 400 Ah of lead acid, you could probably get away with 200 Ah of LiFePO4.
Solar charge controller: Victron MPPT (100/50 is probably about right).
Inverter/Charger: Victron Multi
You will also want a battery monitor - Victron BMV700 would be good or go with a Venus GX or Color Control GX to monitor/control everything from one panel.
Spend some quality time on the Victron website and I am sure you can come up with an awesome system:
https://www.victronenergy.com/products
 
Roaddude

Roaddude

Long time off-grid vanlife adventurist
This fellow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUKc1TGS-bU&t=413s - talks about his system at the 34:00 min mark) has 400W of Renogy panels on his vehicle roof and over 400Ah in his two-battery bank using Odyssey's PC 1800-FT batteries: http://shop.odysseybattery.com/p/pc1800-ft, which, if you read the specs, allow for longer periods of no usage as well as more extreme cold. He runs a 2000W Pure Sine Wave inverter.

Don't know that he's running an AC, however. A lot of places I've been researching for my rooftop solar system say it's not practical to depend on solar to run AC. Saw one guy that said he'd run his AC from the house batteries, but only long enough to cool things down at the end of the day, not all night.

You already have your AC, but a lot of RV travel trailers use this, 115v, unit which sits on the tongue of the trailer, usually: https://climateright.com/air-condit...oning/climateright-5000-btu-a-c-heater-2.html

As for fridge/freezer, I don't know why some overlanders don't go for one of these, from TruckFridge: http://www.truckfridge.com/truckfridge-models/ . They have a number of configurations, including some dual power AC/DC units.

Looking forward to seeing what you do for power and interior setup with your new Transit.
 
djb_rh

djb_rh

Observer
Great answers so far. Only done some cursory looking, but the Victron stuff does look nice. I love the idea of the LiFePO4 batteries, but the 200Ah one is $3k! By contrast, the Odyssey is only 40 pounds more (90 vs 130) than the LiFePO4 and is under $700. Yikes. Will keep digging, but keep the ideas coming!


--Donnie
 
R

Rando

Explorer
djb_rh said:
Great answers so far. Only done some cursory looking, but the Victron stuff does look nice. I love the idea of the LiFePO4 batteries, but the 200Ah one is $3k! By contrast, the Odyssey is only 40 pounds more (90 vs 130) than the LiFePO4 and is under $700. Yikes. Will keep digging, but keep the ideas coming!


--Donnie
Click to expand...

I think you can get LiFePO4 for a little less than $10 an Ah if you shop around (not necessarily from Victron though). Also I think your weights are a little off - Ah for Ah LiFePO4 should be about 1/2 to 1/3 the weight of lead acid. And as you can use almost 100% of the capacity LiFePO4 without shortening their life, you can get away with 30% less capacity.
 
java

java

Expedition Leader
Im interested to see some more details on the AC unit....


As to the power front. I went with 4 250AH 6V AGM's, Very heavy, but reasonable price and should take abuse pretty well.

An inverter charger (I went cheap here... used CL, Tripp Lite) but Magnasine and Victron both make very nice units. Mine is a 55 amp charger, so a little slow but works well. Also has a trickle charge for starting batteries which is nice.

Run BIG wires, much more efficient if there is less voltage drop.

I used a Victron BMV 700 shunt/monitor, really nice unit (good for 500A). I like their products, used their solar controller as well, and I will second the poster above that says it might be nice to use all their ecosystem.

I used a kind of old school Heart Interface combiner, good for 600A, but not all that "smart", it simply has pots for high/low disconnect settings etc.


No ac, but using water pump, two maxx fans, fridge, some lights etc for a long weekend (unplugged Friday AM, no charging while driving, system wasnt done yet..., returning late monday) my batteries were at 76.6% when i plugged back in. Nice to have a big bank.... AC will kill that in short order though
 
djb_rh

djb_rh

Observer
So it seems like the Victron ecosystem is a good idea. Products I'm thinking about are:

Victron Multiplus 2kW 12V inverter/charger ($1200ish)
Victron Color Control GX control panel ($500ish)
Victron Citrix-CT 12/24-230 battery combiner ($100ish)
Victron MPPT 100/50 charge controller ($300ish)
Renogy solar panels (400W worth, maybe 5-600W depending on what I can fit on the roof) ($175ish per 100W panel)
battery (still undecided here which way to go)

So I *think* with the Color Control GX I can tell the system whether I'm connected to my 2000W genset -or- if I'm connected to a 15A shore power plug and it will adjust its outputs accordingly, which seems very cool. For example, that means if I'm running the 2000W genset and I have 1000W of load running off the inverter, it will ONLY try to use the remaining 1000W to charge the battery. However, as soon as the 1000W internal load stops, it will then shift and use the entire 2000W to charge. Pretty neat.

The choice of the 2kW inverter is that I think that's "enough" power. The Color Control GX is overkill, but I like data.

This seem reasonable? Also, why would anyone go with the Diode or FET based battery "combiner" when something like the Citrix-CT exists? This *seems* like the smarter way to go, but maybe I'm missing something? I think the Citrix-CT solution is limited to a single battery to work properly whereas the FET or Diode solutions can handle multiples (and in this case, the FET solution seems like the much smarter way to go). Thoughts here?


--Donnie
 
djb_rh

djb_rh

Observer
It appears that if I were to go with LifePo batteries, then something like the BMS 12/200 would take the place of the Citrix-CT and let me add on LifePo batteries easily if my first battery choice isn't enough. Sort of thinking about trying a 200Ah in the hopes that the AC won't need to run at 100% duty cycle at night.

Looks like one small downside to LifePo is that you're not supposed to let current back-flow to the vehicle battery system, so you can't use it in the event the vehicle battery is dead. That's...weird. But probably not a big deal for me.

Even at the huge cost, the fact that the LifePo does 2500 cycles at 80% discharge whereas something like the Odyssey posted above can only do 400 cycles means the LifePo is actually a pretty decent value.


--Donnie
 
Darwin

Darwin

Explorer
I think you are going to need the LifePo batteries, if for no other reason than to mitigate the large voltage drop you will see with the AC running from lead acid batteries. I don't think you are going to get your overnight run time though with just 200 amp lithium batteries. Personally I would spend the money and go for 400 with the components you have. As far as price, you just bought a new van, if the AC is that important, I would swing the cash for more amp hours, you can never have TOO much.
 
djb_rh

djb_rh

Observer
Darwin said:
I think you are going to need the LifePo batteries, if for no other reason than to mitigate the large voltage drop you will see with the AC running from lead acid batteries. I don't think you are going to get your overnight run time though with just 200 amp lithium batteries. Personally I would spend the money and go for 400 with the components you have. As far as price, you just bought a new van, if the AC is that important, I would swing the cash for more amp hours, you can never have TOO much.
Click to expand...

I'm thinking you're right on all counts. I've got an email out to the folks at PKYS to see exactly what components they recommend.

I'm going to have a front and rear Maxxair fan. I'm thinking hard about positioning things so I can span the width of the van with panels and maybe even tipping one at a very soft angle at the front and have it be OVER the fan. I know that potentially reduces it's effectiveness (and occasionally improves it), but it adds some amount of sun insulation. Might do it in the rear, too. So I'd have a "wind deflector" up front and a "spoiler" in the back. It'll look a little funny from afar, but I'm not sure I'll care. But basically that way I could cover the entire roof in panels. They're really not terribly expensive in the grand scheme and that will help with the sun-created heat load quite a bit. And then it's probably enough power to actually fully support the AC unit at the time the AC unit will need to run the hardest.


--Donnie
 
djb_rh

djb_rh

Observer
So Peter Kennedy is out of the country this week and doesn't have access to his complete design tools, but said he'd get on that on Monday. In the meantime he did already say that the Multi Plus 3000 is actually physically smaller than the 2000 and not much more money, so people wish serious space constraints usually use that. So that sounds good.

He also said that the BMS12/200 will work, but won't intelligently control everything I'd like. There are VE Bus BMS products that will, though, so I'll do that. Then you use a Cyrix-LI-CT combiner to charge from the vehicle battery. Surprisingly, he says you also need a BMV700 even with the Color Control GX because battery monitoring is the one thing the CCGX doesn't do.

Anyway, we're headed down this path. Hopefully nothing ends up not available that I really need in time. Otherwise I feel good about this.


--Donnie
 
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