Gasless LWB Transporter & power set-up

Two 175 watt Renogy flexible panels on the poptop, first picture in sunny June the other in overcast October...
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Another shot showing our 230 volt tiny travel kettle running from the Renogy 2kw inverter...
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I'd love to go purely off grid electrically but cooking with gas and using the Webasto if it's really cold out is the only way to extend the stay with solar being so variable this time of the year.
 
It's possible with available tech (and some folks around here have done it) but it's a bit specialist so I think I'm right in saying it's only been done by commited self build enthusiasts not converters.

While possible it is going to hit your wallet hard and your storage space. Do the numbers for your heating and cooking and you'll realise very quickly just how much energy those use that you don't really see when on the grid, and that turns into significant amounts of battery capacity.

I think you'd be lucky to reliably make a week with everything being driven by battery - though more likely in the sunny months especially if you can deploy something like a folding 200w solar panel in addition to a fixed one.

Not being funny but you certainly won't if you are not forking out for decent panels - you'll have a high demand and a small roof so you want decent stuff up there - even if the Anker branded ones are not the right ones.

As for the portable power packs they are probably better charged from additional panels (if you want to boost your solar on suitable days) or topped up via a hard wire feed into the solar charger from your leisure battery (if you want to use excess solar from the fixed panels). Chopping and changing the wiring for the fixed panels isn't ideal for the wear on the connectors or the confusion on the MPPT chargers. If you use the Victron MPPT chargers a potential neat way of dealing with this is to have the power pack charger from the load terminals and configure those to turn on when there is excess solar.
Hi Roadtripper do you have any recommendations for high quality solar panels? I'm willing to fork out for good ones given my requirements. Is 300 more or less the max you can get on a pop top roof? Thanks a lot.
 
I think even rigid panels aren't blindingly more efficient and the most I've seen from my two supposedly 175 watt flexy panels has been just over 300 watts but then that was showing on the shunt display as 21 Amps going into the leisure battery on top of the 3.5 A being drawn out by the fridge so near enough a 25 A charge sat parked.
This was the case at Busfest last year where the battery never went below 88% full first thing both mornings, well, when we surfaced it hadn't. :geek:
 
If you want indefinite time offgrid and you can’t rely on either lots of sunshine or long engine run times, you probably don’t want an induction hob. Gas is the standard answer, but also consider a diesel hob.
 
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