Off grid Camper 1,000 dollars to spend.

[jjmcwill]

Hello, I bought a 17 foot camper for $500 and I am trying to figure out the best method for making it off grid for 1,000.

My needs are simple and can be adjusted accordingly. I want to be able to run a decent sized fan on hot days. occasionally make a cup of coffee or hot water for tea (assume the lowest amps) run a laptop/charge phone and tablets. Maybe as a luxury run a small 19 inch led tv, although this is entirely unnecessary as a tablet will suffice and draws far less power.

Originally, I thought about covering the entire roof with solar panels and getting a couple deep cycle batteries. After going through these forums a bit, I am now thinking different.


1 decent sized solar panel, large battery bank and a generator to top off the battery bank.

Tell me what you would do with 1,000. Assume economic collapse and this vehicle is your safe haven. This 1,000 dollars is going to be very important, although the situation hypothetical.

[Mike90250]

if you are expecting collapse, the generator will be useless in 6 months, sparkplugs, oil, gasoline. So load up on solar panels, which will last 20 years, or till someone takes them from you. Batteries are the 5 year weak point, when they fail, the solar will be nearly useless with out a way to store it.

Did I say the wrong thing ?

oh - use anything but electric for heating purposes, unless you have a lot of spare power. The electricity needed to boil a cup of coffee, can run an efficient light for 6 hours.

[Pensacola 10K]

Inverter Gen set

Take a look at Home Depot for a Ryobi 2200 watt inverter gen set. 1800 -2200 watts quite quite, small and sips the gas. I run a 6k btu window ac unit in my van with the gen set mounted in a trailer box, can hardly hear the gen run with the a/c on it sells for $599 in HD stores, print out the item from the HD website and its priced at $549 the store will honor it, come with a 3 year warranty.

[PNjunction]

Simplify and save some money.

Laptops and cellphones - just get a new model 13W GoalZero panel. Has a 5v usb output rated at 1amp. The 12v output has more power, and can be converted to 5v usb output with any of the newer mobile cigarette lighter USB adapters. Get one rated at least 1.5A output, and if you use the proper cabling, you'll have enough power to charge a tablet within a reasonable amount of time. I'd look into the 20w version if available and if it has the convenient built-in usb port. As always, you can convert the 12v output with a CLA usb 5v adapter.

Fans. Look into dc powered 02-Cool fans. My 10-12 inch one runs 12vdc at 500ma.

This would be a great way to figure out just what you need to run just the fan. Run for 4 hours daily? That's 4 * .5a = 2ah drawn. For most batteries, like a small agm, you'd want to *double* that 2ah for a 4ah battery requirement. Let's say you pick up a more common 5ah agm. The thing is, you don't want to draw down a battery past 50% of it's capacity, so that's part of the reason for a minimum of doubling.

Lets assume you actually get 3 hours of *real* solar insolation per day (not just sunrise to sunset). Charts will show you this solar insolation online.

So a 20 watt panel would take about 2 hours (3 to account for losses) for your typical 4 hour daily use of the fan with a 3-hour solar insolation environment. Roughly. Oh, and a simple Morningstar Sunguard 4.5A pwm solar charge controller.

It's this kind of planning and reading the stickies to calculate your actual power usage will let you get away with far LESS than $1K. If you don't want to do the math, then you can get kits, but beware that you'll be paying far MORE for not actually knowing your power needs up front, and usually of lesser quality than you can build yourself.

[Mustang65]

Dry-camping or Shore Power Hookup

I believe the first item on your agenda is that you will need to have an idea as to what your camping life-style will be.

- How much time will you be spending dry-camping (no hookup) vs connected to shore power at Camp Ground?
- If Mostly Dry-camping
- How many hours do you want to watch TV each day/night?
- How many fans for cooling/air circulation do you think you will use.
- Interior lights? Using ALL LEDS? or Regular bulbs (power suckers)?
- Radio, laptop, cell phones, tablets (only charge during day on solar or generator)
- Camper Heat (runs on LP, but its DC motor will kill your battery by morning)
- Electric Coffee pot (Not going to happen) We boil the water on the stove and pour it into the basket of the electric coffee pot, works GREAT!
- Microwave - (probably not going to happen) We only used ours 2x (to heat my coffee) and the sun was shining brightly and I watched the battery voltage dropping fast.
- AC (Not going to happen), unless you have a big enough generator to cover the starting load, else it will burn out the capacitor on the AC unit

- Doing a lot of dry-camping, then you will need to go with the higher voltage panels and an MPPT charge controller and 2 large capacity deep cycle batteries (I use (2) Trojan T145 batteries (6 VDC in series). I would recommend at least (1) 250Watt panel, but 2 would be a safe bet. A 1500 Watt PSI Inverter. I am not a fan of the larger inverters, because of the 1+amp they use just being turned on with no loads. My 1500Watt inverter uses less than 1 amp, and we really do not need a bigger one at this time (unless of course, we change our dry-camping life style.)

- Camping on Shore power with very limited dry-camping.
- If you do not plan on spending much time dry-camping, I would recommend sticking with a few low voltage solar panels (12VDC 100+watts) and a controller, and a few deep cycle batteries.
- Understand that camp grounds have designated times that you are able to run your generator (usually between 9AM and 9/10PM), and they will ask you to turn off any generator that they/camping neighbors consider noisy. Seen that happen once. "Not a happy camper", no pun intended

The one thing you need to incorporate in which ever system you decide on.... YOU WILL NEED TO KEEP A CLOSE WATCH ON YOUR BATTERY METERS!!!!

We did a lot of dry-camping last summer and eveything was fine with the system below.

Good Luck, and happy camping
Don

2013 Jayco Eagle 284BHS
250Watt Grape Solar Panel, MorningStar MPPT 60 Charge Controller
2 Trojan T145 Batteries (AH @ 20 HR Rate 260)
1500 Watt Ramsond PSI,
2 - AirSight Wireless IP Cameras (used as rear view cameras)
EnGenius WI-FI extender, D-Link wireless modem (n)
MagicJack Internet Phone
2012 Ford F150XLT, EcoBoost w/3.73
157" Wheel base, HD Towing Package

[jjmcwill]

I believe the first item on your agenda is that you will need to have an idea as to what your camping life-style will be.

- How much time will you be spending dry-camping (no hookup) vs connected to shore power at Camp Ground?
- If Mostly Dry-camping
- How many hours do you want to watch TV each day/night?
- How many fans for cooling/air circulation do you think you will use.
- Interior lights? Using ALL LEDS? or Regular bulbs (power suckers)?
- Radio, laptop, cell phones, tablets (only charge during day on solar or generator)
- Camper Heat (runs on LP, but its DC motor will kill your battery by morning)
- Electric Coffee pot (Not going to happen) We boil the water on the stove and pour it into the basket of the electric coffee pot, works GREAT!
- Microwave - (probably not going to happen) We only used ours 2x (to heat my coffee) and the sun was shining brightly and I watched the battery voltage dropping fast.
- AC (Not going to happen), unless you have a big enough generator to cover the starting load, else it will burn out the capacitor on the AC unit

- Doing a lot of dry-camping, then you will need to go with the higher voltage panels and an MPPT charge controller and 2 large capacity deep cycle batteries (I use (2) Trojan T145 batteries (6 VDC in series). I would recommend at least (1) 250Watt panel, but 2 would be a safe bet. A 1500 Watt PSI Inverter. I am not a fan of the larger inverters, because of the 1+amp they use just being turned on with no loads. My 1500Watt inverter uses less than 1 amp, and we really do not need a bigger one at this time (unless of course, we change our dry-camping life style.)

- Camping on Shore power with very limited dry-camping.
- If you do not plan on spending much time dry-camping, I would recommend sticking with a few low voltage solar panels (12VDC 100+watts) and a controller, and a few deep cycle batteries.
- Understand that camp grounds have designated times that you are able to run your generator (usually between 9AM and 9/10PM), and they will ask you to turn off any generator that they/camping neighbors consider noisy. Seen that happen once. "Not a happy camper", no pun intended

The one thing you need to incorporate in which ever system you decide on.... YOU WILL NEED TO KEEP A CLOSE WATCH ON YOUR BATTERY METERS!!!!

We did a lot of dry-camping last summer and eveything was fine with the system below.

Good Luck, and happy camping
Don

2013 Jayco Eagle 284BHS
250Watt Grape Solar Panel, MorningStar MPPT 60 Charge Controller
2 Trojan T145 Batteries (AH @ 20 HR Rate 260)
1500 Watt Ramsond PSI,
2 - AirSight Wireless IP Cameras (used as rear view cameras)
EnGenius WI-FI extender, D-Link wireless modem (n)
MagicJack Internet Phone
2012 Ford F150XLT, EcoBoost w/3.73
157" Wheel base, HD Towing Package

Thank you this has been helpful.

It would also help to know what you are able to do with your setup?

How much did it cost?

Where did you find the best deal for panels and charge controller?

[Mustang65]

Thank you this has been helpful.

It would also help to know what you are able to do with your setup?

How much did it cost?

Where did you find the best deal for panels and charge controller?

Here is a replay of what I posted for another person:

Just to give you an idea regarding usage, we were dry camping when we went out west last year in our 30' travel trailer. We stayed in sites that had plenty of sun throughout the day. With a 250Watt panel, MorningStar TSMPPT-60 Charge controller and 2 Trojan T-145 batteries, and a 1500 watt PSI inverter. We were able to camp with no issues. This is with ALL LED's for interior lights, using the exhaust fan only if needed. We used the microwave only a few times, but only for about 3 minutes each time (warm my coffee) and it was during peak sunshine, no microwave if the sun is not shining brightly. As for using a TV, old tube types are energy eaters, has to be a current LCD/LED type. Heating the RV is another issue. Yes, they run on LP gas, but the fans that circulate the air drain the batteries REAL fast. Electric motors and batteries are not the best of friends. Oh, and don't forget about those CLOUDY days. They do cut down on the amount of power from the solar panel. On cloudy days, the batteries did not get fully charged until about 3-4 pm, and that is when the sun is high in the sky and not in winter. So on average, we watched about 4 hours of TV at night, we played the radio throughout the day/night, used out laptops and by 10PM we were down to around 12.4 VDC. Charged all the electronics only during the day. If heat was needed during the night, there would not have been enough battery power left, as you do not want to take the batteries below the 12VDC point.

So what does it cost?
You would need (rounding off the prices)
2 - ($700) 250 Watt Solar Panels
1 - ($500) MPPT Charge Controller (converts 30+ panel volts to 12VDC RV system)
1 - ($300) PSI - Inverter (at least 1000 Watts)
4 - ($800) Trojan T145 6volt batteries

And you would still have to watch your battery usage close.

As for where the best deals are, it is like buying airline tickets... it changes by the day/week
I found the best solar panel price (at that point in time) with shipping (believe it or not) at HomeDepot, but they have since raised their prices.
The MPPT 60 charge controller I purchased from Northern Arizona Wind & Sun (GREAT place to do business with)
Inverter was purchased from Ramsond (needs to be a PSI inverter)
Batteries were purchased locally here in FL.

- Is this enough power for us, well yes, if we keep a close watch on our usage and do not change our dry-camping lifestyle.
- Am I going to upgrade the system, yes, I will be adding 1 more panel and 2 more batteries. This should give us enough reserve power to ease up on the battery monitoring A LITTLE.
- The LED lights were probably the biggest energy saving upgrade.

Don

2013 Jayco Eagle 284BHS
250Watt Grape Solar Panel, MorningStar MPPT 60 Charge Controller
2 Trojan T145 Batteries (AH @ 20 HR Rate 260)
1500 Watt Ramsond PSI,
2 - AirSight Wireless IP Cameras (used as rear view cameras)
EnGenius WI-FI extender, D-Link wireless modem (n)
MagicJack Internet Phone
2012 Ford F150XLT, EcoBoost w/3.73
157" Wheel base, HD Towing Package

RV Wiring diagram
Eagle Solar Wiring Diagram - 5.jpg

[thastinger]

You won't be able to do very much with 1000 bones. If I were worried about TEOTWAWKI and had 1000 to spend, I'd buy my panels, charge controller and wiring first, then save some more money and buy the inverter. I'd wait on the batteries because you will be able to find batteries lots of places once SHTF.

Once I had saved up enough to get it all up and running, I'd hook it up with a couple of old car batteries just to get an idea of what it was capable of providing.

I was in the same mindset as you and had an 800 budget...I spent 6500

[SunEagle]

You won't be able to do very much with 1000 bones. If I were worried about TEOTWAWKI and had 1000 to spend, I'd buy my panels, charge controller and wiring first, then save some more money and buy the inverter. I'd wait on the batteries because you will be able to find batteries lots of places once SHTF.

Really!!!. If either of those events happen batteries will be next to impossible to find and there will be no way to make more.

[thastinger]

Really!!!. If either of those events happen batteries will be next to impossible to find and there will be no way to make more.

I disagree, every abandoned car and abandoned golf course will have them, every nursing home with the electric huver rounds, every walmart with the disabled shopping carts etc. You may have to harvest 20 to get 4 that are useable, but if 75% of the population is dead, they'll be everywhere.
There is a road down here about 3 miles long that has solar powered street lights, 2 panels and batteries on top of each pole, literally hundreds of them.

Making more I agree on, buy a pallet of dry charged ones if that concerns you.

[Sunking]

I disagree, every abandoned car and abandoned golf course will have them,

And in a year they will be boat anchors.

[SunEagle]

I disagree, every abandoned car and abandoned golf course will have them, every nursing home with the electric huver rounds, every walmart with the disabled shopping carts etc. You may have to harvest 20 to get 4 that are useable, but if 75% of the population is dead, they'll be everywhere.
There is a road down here about 3 miles long that has solar powered street lights, 2 panels and batteries on top of each pole, literally hundreds of them.

Making more I agree on, buy a pallet of dry charged ones if that concerns you.

I'm not concerned with surviving a SHTF event. Most of my family will not be able to survive without medicine so why should I care to live.

What I am trying to explain is that everyone that understands that once the lights go out the only source of stored power will be batteries. You will be among many going through those cars and scooters looking for those "blocks of gold" and you won't be able to outrun a gang with those heavy things.

If there is a concern for survival then buy now not later. If you don't care like me then live your life the best you can and why worry.

[Sunking]

I'm not concerned with surviving a SHTF event. Most of my family will not be able to survive without medicine so why should I care to live.

Well if you believe like me, and I know you do, we will be spared that event and not have to suffer with it. Or if we are wrong, we have guns.

[SunEagle]

Well if you believe like me, and I know you do, we will be spared that event and not have to suffer with it.

10-4 on that.

[thastinger]

And in a year they will be boat anchors.

You only need to wait 6 weeks to go get them and start maintenance charges on them.
If it were to go dark, 20% of the population would be dead in a week (nursing homes/hospitals/insulin/med dependant)
by 6 weeks, you only have to deal with the half the people that are remaining

I don't want to argue hypotheticals, the OP indicated he didn't have the money to buy it all now. He should get the batteries last so they are fresh when he is ready to commission the system.