Power Outlets in Eurovan, and Solar Panels?

[milkandrelish]

Hi All,

I just picked up my '99 Eurovan Camper, and I'm wanting to figure out the electricity/power situation.

It's my understanding that the two 3-pronged outlets in the van can only be used while connected to shore power. This is not useful to me, as I'm not planning on being near shore power. Is there any way to bring power from the Auxiliary battery to the outlets? I know next to nothing about electricity.

I want to figure out a sustainable way to supply power for a laptop, phone and camera. Solar seems to be a good way to do this - but I have a few questions:

1) If I get a solar panel, can I use the 3-pronged outlets without shore power? Is anything additional involved in making this happen? If not, how do I 'plug things into' the power generated by the solar panels?

2) Are there clever mounting techniques on the van that won't add wind resistance and be 'thief-proof'? I've seen Girl With A Van's back ladder solar panel mount and the super thin roof mounted panel. Anything else you all have seen?

Lastly, who should I speak with to deal with wiring and these types of questions? Would it be a Eurovan specialist? A VW mechanic? A general electrician?

Any help is much appreciated!

[IdeaNerd]

I don't have an EVC, so can't help you much with the 120V outlet specifics, but something else you might look into if all you are wanting to keep running are a laptop, phone, and camera:

A) For the laptop: a 12V DC adapter (I've worked out of vehicles occasionally for many years, and every laptop or laptop-replacing tablet I've ever had has had one that can be easily purchased)

B) For the phone and camera: USB chargers, plugged into one of the many available USB charging outlets that fit in standard cigarette lighter plugs


For a clueless-newbie solar setup that's also portable, relatively easy to store, and flexible with respect to placement (i.e. easy to position so that it's directly facing the sun): I bought one of these to use with our Weekender, and have been happy with it so far.

[milkandrelish]

[IdeaNerd]

[Abscate]

You can find several contrubutions of amateur solar installations in the 'burned up busses vanagons' thread

IF you arent comfortable rewiring a 12 VDC fusebox, you should get comfortable doing this first - Don Casey writes a good book on boat electrics which is really a good reference for mobile DC applications, with a marine twist.

The challenges to doing this from internet advice are threefold

- sourcing good materials(many solar controllers are cheap junk)
- Not anticipating your usage pattern (both driver and camping)
- Poor wiring practices in connecting, strain relief, shielding, grounding, and chafe relief. There are many ways to screw this up.
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.ssS!

[IdeaNerd]

@Abscate, on the books front:

I've got this book, but haven't gotten too far into it yet. Are you familiar with it? If so, any opinion on it? You're the pure-bred engineer here, so I value your take on it.

[milkandrelish]

[Abscate]

I don't know that book, but it's probably a good start.

Without being rude or judgy, your questions are pretty indicative you are starting down at the basics. Electrical stuff can't be made simple with all in one kits offered by vendors, there are a set of practices for installing, securing, and making connections that make this stuff safe. I had a house project once that had four buyer inspections before mine, and not a single one caught that the house mains were grounded to a copper pipe which visibly was coupled to a plastic pipe before it reached ground. That was an ungrounded 200 amp residential service, absolutely deadly. If you read the books, checking the ground protection involves checking the connection. An expert understands you have to follow ground path and establish sound practice, not just the connection.

I'll confess I cringe at about 90% of the pictures I see of wiring here.

I'm paranoid because I wire boats, and when you have a boat on fire it's a really bad day. Your boat is basically 300 gallons of gasoline in the form of fiberglass, and once it starts on fire you can't get away. The Casey book on wiring makes you a paranoid schizo on grounding, chafe protection, and strain relief.

You can do things safer and simpler with some engineering controls too. A simple solar panel to a battery, no integration or battery switches, under supervision , can't really go wrong.

There are a couple of Top shelf electrical workers here, I'll try to link to some of their work.
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.ssS!

[jjvincent]

^^ agree

In racing this is one of the biggest problems at the lower levels. The wiring is terrible and thus, people have problems all of the time. I see the same thing on some solar setups. People spend all of this money on nice panels and controllers then the wiring between is terrible, thus the problems or efficiency issues. Just like in racing, someone will buy a $5K data system and wire it up like some 3 year old did it.

Honestly, wiring is not hard but with some reading and patience, you'd be amazed with what you can do. many are looking for a plug and play operation and with a EVC, that's pretty much not going to happen.

[sdunn35]

Since no one has mentioned it explicitly yet...IF you want to run 120v appliances in your EVC while not connected to shore power (e.g. plug into the standard outlets), you will need to add an Inverter to your setup. Two years ago I performed a near-complete overhaul of my EVC's coach electrical system, and I stopped before adding an inverter (designed it in, but did not purchase).

My free advice is to have a very clear idea of what you need to accomplish while off grid, and then design from there. And then my other free advice is you really don't know the answer to this until you've done a couple of trips

I'm 200% sold on the single most expensive thing I did, which was to put in a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery pack in place of the standard coach battery. The amount of *usable* energy you get in the same footprint as lead acid is a whole different ball park.

But, expect to buy a new power converter/battery charger; a fair amount of very thick and expensive cable; marine grade busses and switches, and do some soldering. With my battery pack, cabling, switches, power converter, high grade solar controller, two suitcase solar panels, (and converting all of the interior bulbs to LED) I have well over $2K invested. But I have a pretty much inexhaustible supply of electricity - much more than I really need. My write-up is in the house battery thread on Cole's site if you want to check it out.
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99 EVC
ex-03 Weekender

[milkandrelish]

Great, thank you guys. It looks like I have a lot of homework to do before I can consider doing this myself.

I have zero knowledge of this stuff as it is!

[IdeaNerd]

@milkandrelish, there isn't anything @Abscate writes above that I disagree with, and having seen boats on fire, his paranoia regarding modifying one's 12-volt system is justified (particularly in that context!). If a person doesn't understand the difference between volts, amps, and watts... or they don't have any idea what fuses are for, or they have some other similar giant gap in having a basic understanding of electrical systems, then they clearly don't have any business modifying the electrical system in their van.

That said, I'm concerned you're going to end up scared off by an impression that you have to be a rocket scientist in order to accomplish your stated goal, which was this:

[jjvincent]

Also, you could be like me. Leave the laptops and tablets home and just bring a phone. Build a fire, cook on it and live off the land. I think the only thing I really need for electric is things I can just use rechargeable batteries for. You can go to town and make up a kick butt system but in the end, isn't it really to get away from that stuff? In my mind, if I have everything depleted by the end i did a good job. So if you are looking for a project to just see what you can do, there's nothing wrong with that (trust me I've done that many times).

[IdeaNerd]

@jjvincent: I'm right there with you on that, when we're camping just to be camping. The places we usually go, our phones don't even work, so we don't even turn them on. Laptop stays home. Camera comes along... sometimes.

I think in general we could all use considerably more "unplugged" time.

Last trip, I just sat by the stream and watched trout for half the afternoon.

When I'm working from the road, it gets a bit more complicated device-wise.

[jjvincent]

I forgot, the underseat cooler in the EV holds 22 cans of beer. So, that's why I went through it and made sure it worked for a few days.

[milkandrelish]

[Abscate]

[milkandrelish]

[IdeaNerd]

@milkandrelish Glad you found it helpful! I've got another book around here that I think might prove helpful for you, but I'm having trouble finding it at the moment. If I find it and it still looks useful after flipping through it, I'll post back on this thread again for you.

Meanwhile, one more "broad-strokes guidelines" point:

3) Plan on not using electricity to generate heat, at all. It generally takes ridiculous amounts of power.

I was serious about that French press idea. A blow dryer you can probably live without, but I know for some people, coffee is its own food group. We're not that devoted, but have found a French press great for camping and van trips.

@Abscate I like your simple, useful points. Nice! Thanks for putting them out there.

[jjvincent]

As for a French Press, I've been using this for years (I can throw it on the ground and kick it around but it will still work):

As for heating the water for it, an old as dirt aluminum percolator that's heated by my tiny one burner back packing stove (which I have had for 30 years).