Airstream 1967 off grid plan

[Sunny Eileen]

Hello All. I am new to the forum and thank you for allowing me to be here. I bought a 1967 Airstream trailer and want to make it my next home. My plan is to live off grid primarily without propane. I hope to install a small marine woodstove and have already purchased a Unique Off Grid 9 cubic foot solar fridge. I also want to purchase a small freezer, washer and possibly solar panels from the same company. The toilet will be a composting toilet, also a marine model, but I have not finalized my thoughts on which one. What I need help with is understanding the amount of solar energy I need to produce and how to do it. I am in favour of the flexible solar panels and would mount them on the outside of the trailer when it is parked. I am also thinking of a small windmill, again one that is designed for marine use and is mounted to the front of the trailer to allow it to charge when in motion as well as when there is some wind when parked. I understand that the solar system would require batteries and an inverter system. I do not plan to use propane and am also wondering how to heat water and keep it hot. Coils could be run through the tiny woodstove in the winter, but in the summer? I dunno. If anyone is living or has set up an off grid trailer without propane, I would love your input. The only purchase thus far is the solar fridge. Thank you.

[LETitROLL]

Hello All. I am new to the forum and thank you for allowing me to be here. I bought a 1967 Airstream trailer and want to make it my next home. My plan is to live off grid primarily without propane. I hope to install a small marine woodstove and have already purchased a Unique Off Grid 9 cubic foot solar fridge. I also want to purchase a small freezer, washer and possibly solar panels from the same company. The toilet will be a composting toilet, also a marine model, but I have not finalized my thoughts on which one. What I need help with is understanding the amount of solar energy I need to produce and how to do it. I am in favour of the flexible solar panels and would mount them on the outside of the trailer when it is parked. I am also thinking of a small windmill, again one that is designed for marine use and is mounted to the front of the trailer to allow it to charge when in motion as well as when there is some wind when parked. I understand that the solar system would require batteries and an inverter system. I do not plan to use propane and am also wondering how to heat water and keep it hot. Coils could be run through the tiny woodstove in the winter, but in the summer? I dunno. If anyone is living or has set up an off grid trailer without propane, I would love your input. The only purchase thus far is the solar fridge. Thank you.

Lights and low draw electronics (radio, television, charging phones, etc.) are all easy and not too expensive to do with solar. Appliances, refrigeration and or heating water become extraordinarily expensive and require large complex systems if you wish to be reliably up and running 90% of the time.

[Mike90250]

Living off grid without propane is as easy as living with a wood stove as your only heat source and an ax. Chop the trees. dice the wood to 16" logs (with ax) split with ax.

To harvest enough power for heating/cooking with electric, is going to be rough. Lots of panels. Lots of battery, I'd really advise against it,

I also would not attempt the windmill. You likely will not be able to get it high enough to be useful, you are going to need the $ for more solar panels.

[Sunny Eileen]

Thank you both for your replies. I have read that an induction cooker would take too many solar panels. The marine wood stove offers the option of an alcohol burner that drops in, but I would rather not use that. I suppose an outdoor oven and rocket stove may be options, provided I do not choose to live where winter reigns for months at a time. Mike, how many panels is lots of panels? The flexible panels come in different Watts. The wind generators also come in many different styles and outputs.https://www.emarineinc.com/categorie...-Wind-Turbines.

[J.P.M.]

Stick with propane. You'll have a lot more free time to educate yourself as to why it's better when you're not surviving on wood.

[Sunking]

Make sure you understand any thing you take off-grid is going to cost you 5 to 10 times more that what the POCO would charge for the rest of you life all paid up front in 5 years increments. Also be aware you have to give up air conditioning, and that batteries take up a lot of space and extremely heavy.

Forget about Wind Turds and Flexible Panels. Wind turds are useless and require a tower to get you 50 feet above all obstacle in around a 1/4 mile range and spend most of their time in disrepair. Flexible panels aka Thin Film like batteries have to be replaced every 50 years.

For each Kwh of usable electricity per day expect to spend around $2000. $1000 of that $2000 is a 270 pound battery needing 3 square feet of floor space you replace every 3 to 5 years depending on quality and level of care given to it.. FWIW a utility charges 10 to 15-cents per Kwh. In 4 years if you use 1 Kwh per day the utility charges you $146 to $218, or you can pay $1000 today for the battery. No one can live off 1 Kwh/day. So if you need say 5 Kwh/day multiply by 5.

So the first thing you must do before you spend a dime is determine how many Watt Hours you require in a day, and how many Sun Hours you have in December and January. You MUST know that to design a system. Once you know that, READ THIS and EVERY STICKY in the Off-Grid Section as it will tell you how to do the basic design.

[karrak]

I would recommend you look at posts by reed cundiff to see what can be done.

We have an off grid system with 1.2kW of panels and 10kWh of battery storage and use electricity for all our cooking in summer and a wood stove for the majority of cooking in winter.

Simon

Off grid 24V system, 6x190W Solar Panels, 32x90ah Winston LiFeYPO4 batteries installed April 2013
BMS - Homemade Battery logger github.com/simat/BatteryMonitor
Latronics 4kW Inverter, homemade MPPT controller

[LETitROLL]

Thank you both for your replies. I have read that an induction cooker would take too many solar panels. The marine wood stove offers the option of an alcohol burner that drops in, but I would rather not use that. I suppose an outdoor oven and rocket stove may be options, provided I do not choose to live where winter reigns for months at a time. Mike, how many panels is lots of panels? The flexible panels come in different Watts. The wind generators also come in many different styles and outputs.https://www.emarineinc.com/categorie...-Wind-Turbines.

The outdoor oven/rocket stove are good options if they don't cause you any other problems, The flexible panels are handy, but not as good in any other way, and will cost more over time, wind is only practical in a very, very few special situations, photovoltaic panels are so cheap now and so trouble free, that it would not make sense unless you are in a wind only area (very cloudy, very windy all the time, etc.). You mentioned the wind turbine being in front and charging while you drive, there is the much better, much less expensive option of recharging your batteries directly from your vehicle while driving. Lastly Gas, or Wood, or solar thermal are really the only efficient ways to heat water in this situation.

[Mike90250]

An induction hot plate is most efficient use of electricity, followed by microwave. But you must have banked enough power beforehand to be able to run it without your fridge and patio lights running out of power at 4AM.
Flexible panels are expensive, half as efficient, and have short lifetimes (10-15 years, show me a 10 year old flex panel maker that has not gone bankrupt)

[Sunking]

You mentioned the wind turbine being in front and charging while you drive, there is the much better, much less expensive option of recharging your batteries directly from your vehicle while driving.

I wished I had a dollar for every time I have heard this. It would pay so sew my ass back on from laughing so hard. Comes from the same kind of people that buy into the Water 4 Gas scam. Here it almost every day on Electric Vehicle forums. Guess they quit teaching math and science in public schools. Any it violates the Law of Conservation of Energy. In a nutshell it means in this application the energy generated by the Wind Turd is significantly less than then the extra energy required for the motor or engine to overcome the weight and wind resistance the Wind Trud adds.

Anyway to your point LetitRoll you are correct using the vehicle alternator is a way better idea. The alternator can generate a lot more power and adds no wind resistance.Thus much more efficient and actually works.

[Sunny Eileen]

Ok, no wind turbine while driving. But I still want to try one when parked. This one interests me:https://www.emarineinc.com/Typmar-Ma...e-Wind-Turbine. I do not need air conditioning, have never owned television, have lived an entire winter in northeastern Alberta heating with a wood stove only and cooked on it. It could have provided my hot water, but it was not plumbed for that. Of course the wood stove was much larger than would be in the Airstream. Perhaps a porch addition with a kitchen, woodstove, hot water coil. Currently I have a 60 am service in my house and am a very low power user. I think it is doable with solar and wood heat, maybe the turbine in addition. I just need to focus on how much power I will require and how to get it. I am thinking of moving to Creston, BC. I am trying to find the sun hours for Dec and Jan as suggested, but have not yet.

[J.P.M.]

Ok, no wind turbine while driving. But I still want to try one when parked. This one interests me:https://www.emarineinc.com/Typmar-Ma...e-Wind-Turbine. I do not need air conditioning, have never owned television, have lived an entire winter in northeastern Alberta heating with a wood stove only and cooked on it. It could have provided my hot water, but it was not plumbed for that. Of course the wood stove was much larger than would be in the Airstream. Perhaps a porch addition with a kitchen, woodstove, hot water coil. Currently I have a 60 am service in my house and am a very low power user. I think it is doable with solar and wood heat, maybe the turbine in addition. I just need to focus on how much power I will require and how to get it. I am thinking of moving to Creston, BC. I am trying to find the sun hours for Dec and Jan as suggested, but have not yet.

There's a more than small probability that any wind energy conversion device that generates enough power to be noticeable will also be a PITA to set up from site/site, not to mention the strong likelihood it will overturn the vehicle in a strong wind.

Do as you wish, even to the point of being Don Quixote, but the smart and experienced money will tell you to forget the idea of wind as a small scale electrical generating source most anywhere and that's when everything is fixed in place, much less on the road.

[LETitROLL]

Ok, no wind turbine while driving. But I still want to try one when parked. I am thinking of moving to Creston, BC. I am trying to find the sun hours for Dec and Jan as suggested, but have not yet.

I live 4 1/2 hours south of Creston, and my father has a piece of property near the lake 40 minutes North of Creston that we park a camper on in the summer, so I go through there often, That whole area i believe is in the 1.8 to 2.2 sun hour range for the Dec-Jan, depending on exact local area and cloud patterns, etc. Great little town with lots of small orchards. I have wood heat only for the last 28 years, and grid electricity for everything else, cheap per KWH prices here, but you can't beat wood heat and i have my own never ending supply of trees. Otherwise most of my neighbors have some form of Oil, or Gas heat. I have a cabin 1 hour from my house that i use limited Solar at, just for lights, radio, charge phones, pump water from spring, etc.

[Sunking]

i believe is in the 1.8 to 2.2 sun hour range for the Dec-Jan,

That makes things real damn expensive. It means you must use very expensive AGM panels and way over sized panel wattage and controller.

Example say in Phoenix AZ if you designed a system to generate 1 usable Kwh per day requires a 12 volt 400 AH FLA battery. 250 watt solar panel, and a 20 amp MPPT controller.

In the OP area now requires the same 12 volt 400 AH battery, but it must me an AGM battery to handle the very high charge current. With only 2 Sun hours is going to require 750 watt panel and a 60 amp Charge Controller. AGM batteries cost twice as much as FLA and only last half as long making them 400% more expensive to implement

The Phoenix system will cost around $1000. In the OP's area will cost around $3000+. Kwh cost from the AGM battery at roughly $2.50 Kwh vs 75-cents for FLA. POCO's charge 10 to 15 cents.

[reed cundiff]

Karrak mentioned our system (s)

We have two RV's with solar

1. 34' fifth wheel with 1400 W of panels: two sets of three x 235 W panels which are then parallel at 90 V to MPPT controller. We have gotten 1420 W at 10,400' on clear day in July. 9.5 kW-hrs of LFP are at 48 V nominal. Power goes to cabin via 508 W 48V to 12V Mean-Well converter and 4.5 kW PSWI. Have had problems in Mexico with dirty power as well as in US so system just takes line power via 1.5 kW of battery charger utilizing a 1.5 kW extension cord. We have seldom used this.

2. 19' Roadtrek with 415 W of panels. One at 315 W and another at 100 W. This is dictated by real estate of Roadtrek. This necessitated two different converters. Battery suite is 4.8 kW-hrs of LFP at 12 V nominal. Power goes to cabin at 12 V and through a 2 kW PSWI. Again, we use an extension cord through battery charger to battery suite. We did not use line power during 14 week in Newfoundland/Labrador and only for four weeks during 15 weeks in Mexico. We were on beach in Yucatan, it was hot, and power was paid for.

Reed and Elaine