user213769

I'd say that finding someone who'd do this for you for money could be a real challenge, unless it would be someone from family or a friend. Those who can do this and are getting paid usually do this for a lot more than it's reasonably worth. I decided to install the panels myself after I got a price quote for the installation... since it would essentially cost me more than the price of the parts, bumping the total cost more than twice, almost thrice :P

obviously you'd have to take the size of the van's roof into account when selecting them.

you can get those in flavours from 245W to 260W avg power.

and yeah, I got that a bit wrong when typing the answer, I actually have 330W peak panels, so they are around 250W average power: static.trinasolar.com/sites/default/files/…

but that was about 2 years ago, I guess that now it would be more with inflation and stuff.

I was the guy, so it would be hard to say for me how much I pay myself :D

with an inverter capable of going to e.g. 1400/2000W like the one I linked in my answer, that should be about it.

it should be enough, assuming no air heating and just a simple induction stove

Small electric kettle is still about 0.5kW , amazon.com/EVATEK-Electric-Stainless-Portable-Shut-Off/dp/…

Even a travel hair dryer suitable for cars is about 120W by itself and about 0.2kWh to dry medium to long hair.

Also, it's really hard to have that without gas (especially the stove and air heating), since heating appliances consume a lot of power for long times.

It's 1kW-2kW range then (depending on whether car/campervan utilities are used or regular ones), and at least 2kWh total battery capacity.

Like, be able to use a hair dryer?

E.g., I asked this question once, I think it's a good one: do you want to be able to dry your hair using your setup?

that will give you the amount of power the setup will need to produce for you. You'll need to take time as a factor then.

otherwise, the breakers will trip, and that's not only dangerous, but just plainly annoying.

alternatively, if you expect to have a single high-powered appliance that you'll need to use from time to time, take its peak power +20% and assume that's the average power you need.

then add a percentage based on how safe you want to be (+20% is the reasonable minimum here, but no need to go higher than +100% really), and you have the actual value of peak power you need.

If you give me the list of the devices, I can throw something that'll be in the ballpark. You'd still have to do your math eventually, though. Simply add the wattages of everything, and assume everything will use the max/peak at the same time (since you have to have a pessimistic approximation here, for a variety of reasons),

the values provided in docs are notoriously invalid; sometimes they are overstated (which isn't that bad), sometimes understated (which obviously is in this case)

amazon.com/Electrical-Usage-Monitor/…

You might have better luck using something like this though:

But yes, working with any actual power requires some lifting. Typical 200W-300W panels weight about 15-20kg (and are extremely unwieldy due to size), batteries are 10-40kg/unit, depending on capacity and setup, integrated chargers/inverters like mine are about 10-20kg also.

This portable system is not any safer than a manually created one. If it has a mains output, it can kill a person easily, even with proper fusing.

And yes, it was 100% DYI, with a little help of my fiance (somebody had to pass the screwdriver to me from time to time and make the dinner in the meantime :D)

The same can be said about battery in a phone, though (lithium batteries burn very explosively in proper conditions, believe me :D)

As to being "more dangerous than wall power in home", that's not true. It's low-voltage, so it's not dangerous in the sense you can touch bare cables with a bare hand etc. It's dangerous in the sense it's still a power setup capable of generating very high currents, so you need proper fuses and basic electrical training to not burn something.

so I'm basically just using ordinary 4mm2 and 2.5mm2 cables everywhere since I realised that :D

But then I realised you can just have 4x 25A cable instead in parallel, and put them on a screw terminal :D

Still, to have 2kW peak power, I needed cables that could safely handle 100A, so basically the kind of cables you see under the hood, from your battery to starter motor.

For solars, you routinely use 4mm2 or 6mm2 cables (the voltage is usually higher than 12V, but the amperage can also easily get to 40A or higher on peaks); they are also good enough for car/van 12V installations. I went with 24V just for that reason - you can safely have thinner cables with the same power in them.

Thick cables - yes, but it depends on what you mean by "thick". The usual 2.5mm2 cables you probably have in your house are good for about 10-20A, depending on how you install them, so that's about 250W you can get from them. That's too little for some stuff, but it's more than enough for lighting, electronics etc.

creating an expanding setup for them would also require additional work for me, and that would also not be an easy job.

I physically didn't have enough space to put 4 of them in my van, also, while I had a nice spot for exactly 2.

one 100Ah AGM weights about 30-40kg and costs about $200.

as a result, if I wanted to have 4 panels, I'd have to either have a charging controller with programmable current limiting (which I don't, and it also costs premium) or to have 4 batteries.

that's about what 1 panel will give after converting to 12V.

E.g., there's a limit on how much power you can safely pump into an AGM cell, and it's around 20% of the max capacity, i.e. 20A for me (otherwise, it's easy to damage the cell permanently).

As to having more panels: I though about that, but that's when the cost/gain ratio kicks in. You have to match panels voltage and current specs to match your charging controller and batteries.

my setup is a bit more complex than this diagram, but it still shows it in a nutshell: cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0536/3390/8911/files/…

Solars need to be supplemented by batteries anyway, and good ones (with high charging cycle count and preferably deep-cycle feature) are needed - at least AGM/gel, maybe lithium etc. if you have enough money and want to prepare for zombie apocalypse :D

That might save someone's life, but I wouldn't base a 2-week camping trip through mountains and forests around it :D

200Wh source will allow me to use that laptop for 2-4h, or for two people, to use phones for two days, until it's discharged.

(yes, it says more than that, but that's the theoretical peak capacity; in reality, you'll get around 80% of that)

so let's say I get myself a jackery.com/products/explorer-240-portable-power-station , 200Wh.

Laptops will use about 50-100W on average, depending on what you do on them.

For me, it's about 3h, more or less, so I'd assume about 5W used per phone (averaged per hour).