Lithium Batteries for Motorhomes- This is a GAMECHANGER for wild park-ups!!
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- Опубликовано: 3 июн 2023
- I like wild parking with my motorhome. (Or wild camping, if you prefer). I like the freedom, the solitude and not having to book 7000 weeks in advance.
But, until recently, I needed to check in to a campsite every 4 days to recharge my motorhome batteries properly.
Not any more.
I've been in Ireland for 4 weeks and haven't used an electric hookup once. I've stayed off-grid with my motorhome every single night. To say I'm impressed with this new lithium battery setup is an understatement!
Many thanks to Oaktree for gifting me the Ecotree battery and setup.
The website for Bluefix is: bluefix .co.uk/
If you have any questions, feel free to drop them below. I'm currently on a motorhome tour to Iceland so will answer when I get time and decent signal.
Have a great day :)
#motorhomes #vanlifeuk #motorhomelife
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ABOUT WANDERING BIRD
In 2018, I quit my job as an air traffic controller to travel in a van. That's adulting, right?
Since then, I've spent most of my time living in a motorhome, touring the UK and Europe, sometimes with my husband, sometimes with my daughter and sometimes enjoying solo female vanlife (well, with my dog, Mac!)
Wandering Bird was created to help motorhomers and campervanners make the most of their time on the road.
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Thanks for watching!
That’s been one of the best videos I’ve seen on solar panels and batteries I’ve seen
Well explained well presented and very informative thank you 🙏 x
Thank you. I’m glad it was helpful 😊
we recently upgraded our battery system but to save on costs we went with replacing our lead-acid battery with 2x 95ah AGMs and an external "plug-in" 200w solar panel. We have done a tour of the north of England/Scotland being off grid for 5 consecutive days and we never dipped under 84% nor did we need to break out the 200w solar panel, the 100w panel on top of the van and a 50-mile drive was enough to get us back to or near 100% every day. The total cost to my local auto-electrician was £1200. We are off to Spain in October for 30 days and booked on a site where Plug-in is charged by the KWH, last year cost us 78 euro, so that's the next big test.
That's great that you're able to do so much on such a minimal system. Kudos for your power management skills. We just found your channel and subscribed.
Five years ago we retired, sold everything, bought an older MH and hit the road full time in the US. It was the best decision we ever made. We discovered that we enjoy boondocking most of the time and it helps stretch our budget too. In fact, we wild camped for 8 months straight last year in our RV. We quickly learned the advantages of solar and decided to build our solar/battery system in 2 phases, a 12v system for our basic 12v DC needs and a 48v system for our 110v A/C needs. We started with a pair of lead acid golf cart batteries and we custom built a 620-watt liftable solar array on the side of our motorhome. We lift the array to the optimal angle to improve their output vs flat mounted panels. It serves as a nice bedroom window awning too, practically lifting itself to the desired angle with a couple gas struts, and it's easy to clean, standing safely on the ground. This set-up, while far from optimal, allowed us to boondock till we could afford to do better.
We finished the 12v part of our build last January, with the addition of a 560ah LiFePo-4 battery that we built with 8, 280ah prismatic cells. We use a Heltec 330amp BMS, and a 5a active balancer to keep the cells synched up. We typically use less than 20% of their capacity daily giving us enough reserve capacity for about a week of bad weather before we have to run our generator for charging. It cost us less than $1,500 US to build this 560ah 12v (7.1Kwh) battery, including the high amp BMS and balancer. I hear that lithium batteries are even cheaper in the UK. They've dropped here recently too. We chose these cells rather than a pre-built battery because they fit perfectly under the steps of our MH where our old pair of GC-2 golf cart batteries used to reside, saving 35lbs yet have over 5 times the capacity of our old lead acid batteries. We use an 80A Progressive Dynamics LFP converter/charger, a 1,000w Renogy Inverter, an Epever 50a MPPT charge controller and a Lnex battery monitor. This entire 12v system cost us under $3,500 (2,750 GBP) and takes care of all of our basic off-grid needs except for air conditioning and microwave use.
By mounting our solar array on the side of our RV, we left the roof free to rack 8, 550W solar panels (4,400 watts) down the length of our 35 ft. MH 15" off our roof, above our AC, vents, etc. They will cover the entire roof, providing some nice shade with plenty of cooling air underneath, increasing their output and reducing the heat load on the air conditioners too. We got them for only 51 cents/watt shipped to our door, which is a pretty good deal here. We're in the middle of this build now, but we're taking our time to get everything in and installed over the winter, as we're old, slow and doing the work ourselves. Our solar panels, racking material, wiring, breakers and our all-in-one 48V, 5,000W, Inverter/100A charge controller/battery charger arrived about a week before Christmas. Our 48v battery bank uses 16, 320ah grade A prismatic cells which only cost us $1,726 US (1,355 GBP) from EEL batteries. Together with our 560ah 12v bank, we will have a total of 23.5 kwh of batteries onboard - kept charged by over 5,000 watts of solar! We will be installing an EG4 28.5 seer-2 12k btu mini-split heat pump on the upper rear of our MH. This second phase will provide 24/7 off-grid air conditioning, warmth from the heat pump and allow occasional usage of our rooftop AC in the front of our MH to cool things down quickly during peak afternoon hours. We'll have 6,000 watts of 120v ac power too. We'll soon have total off-grid electrical independence, reserving our onboard generator for back-up use only.
Thanks for that Kat. Really helpful video and although I wouldn't need to run so much tech, I hope to be off grid more often than not when I go full-time next year. I have been 'window shopping' for vans and Oaktree, has by far the best presented pre-loved 'vans that I've seen and helpful staff. Their attention to detail shows. 😍
Another job well done by Oaktree. Your video shows how good the lithium set up can be & get away from using EHU.
Really pleased it’s all working as it should - Lithium is game changing over lead acid isn’t it - like a completely different type of power source, I’ve never looked back on mine either, I got let down and damaged my lead acid batteries in my old Motorhome - sounds like the extra solar helps too.
All the best, David & Rachel 👍
Thank you so much! That was a brilliant video, and so informative. I've had to watch a lot of rubbish up to this. Hope you survived Ireland ok. Pity me living here, the weather can be awful.
Ireland is wonderful, but yes- weather wasn’t great. Still- it’s not great here in England at the moment either 😭
Outstanding.
I’m just fitting a similar system in my son’s VW Crafter, all Victron including the 2000w inverter, not yet tested, so I was very interested in your real life experience. My wife and I will be spending 2 years touring Europe from 2025 and saving all that money on campsites would definitely make a huge difference to our finances. PS. I hadn’t considered a power station until you mentioned it, but a great idea. Thank you.
We have nearly the same set up fitted by Bluefix Energy. Just done a week in Scotland and saved around £170 by not staying on campsites. We do have 460 w of solar and the victron 2kw inverter and it runs our airfryer and laptop easily and the lowest we took the battery was 70%.
Good video am looking at upgrading to lithium from agm 😊thanks sharing atb Mike
Good on ya' Kat! ☺
200W solar panel and a victron smart MPPT controller with the original 95AH AGM battery does me, very rarely use campsites/EHU but I dont use much power (most things I use are charged by USB) ,I rarely watch TV and only use my van from April to October mainly in good weather.
Absolute game changer for off grid, mine is almost the same as yours but I ended up with two 110ah from Eco Tree, same solar and charging equipment. it's saved me a small fortune going to sites etc. I'm travelling full time now and only need services for water and black waste, other than that offgrid full-time. Are you using Park4night to find your parking, Ireland is screaming out at me. Great vid as usual 🙏
Yup- P4N was all I used
We added another 200w of black solar next to our existing 190w of standard blue solar, plugged in to our 90Ah AGM battery and we've not had to plug in since we added the new solar in February. Such a great investment, haven't had to search out power for months. So happy with the extra charging capabilities. We spent about 750 EUROs to get it done. No need for lithium so far.
Victron products a world renowned for their quality, and I fid their products easy to use.
I changed over to Victron charge controller for my caravan, as the one fitted by caravan manufacturer was a piece of junk and wouldn't keep the van battery charged off grid or over winter, Same solar panel. Battery never gone flat since the change. I do have an Ecoflow product and portable solar panels as well. for charging up various other batteries & and mains appliances when off grid.
Brilliantly explained Kat. Many talk about it but many go too geek based and truth is most of us just want a professional to set it up and the magical electric ‘fairies’ do the the rest! 🤣🤣
Thank you! Glad it was helpful ☺️
Thanks Kat!
You’re welcome!
I have been off grid since march with lead batterys and soler
Hi Kat, loving the videos, keep up the great work! Crazy comment here, but I'm assuming that off grid camping has the same issues as nuclear submarines!!! you can stay out as long as you want but you're only limited by food and where to empty the chemical toilet. I'm new to motorhoming and loving it, looking to upgrade the solar system very soon, but its the age old question about dumping the tanks. do you grab a night in a campsite or are there other ways? Don't know if you can use service stations so a bit of advice on this would be great. once again, thankks for the videos, keep up the good work !x
I think Macs belly wanted a rub 🤣
New to your channel so you may know this but … you can charge most laptops from dc. For example, Mac’s and Microsoft surfaces. You just need a 12v cigarette adapter that provides sufficient power eg 100w.
Sounds great we wanted to do a mix of sites and park ups but sadly things went wrong on first park up when fridge won't work on gas 🤔 so in the hot weather can't do it
Oh no! Can you fix it?
@@WanderingBird tried lots of things that different forums have told me but no joy .. annoying as I paid for Habitation service just before we left for France. I am not mechanical... We also had a weird thing where our fresh water tank which is electrically controlled from panel decided to let all fresh water out ..so I have temporarily fixed with piece of cork inside the tank , it's holding 🤞 ... Have you been to Dogs Bay Roundstone? We loved it there
This is amazing- you are the only one I've found sharing the actual info I need, thank you! Question: Is it possible to do a setup like this on a rental van? I'm planning on getting a subscription for 9 months, so obviously I'll need to return the vehicle like I found it. Is that possible?
Thank you 😊 Possible yes, but you’ll need to ask them for permission and check warranty & insurance is still in place.
300w solar , 20 dc to dc , 100ah lithium battery and ecoflow river mini , 40a li solar controller works for me the difference is mind blowing
Great blog &really inspiring. Being off grid looks great, but how do youmanage black water waste?
I paid to use services. Ireland have a few spots- you can find them on Park4night
Am I right in assuming that you only run lights, phone and laptop from the battery? (I assume fridge and cooking uses gas)
Maybe you can charge your laptop using the the-c port on the EF. Or install a 12v type-c port. Depending on your laptop, which might support this. My wife’s 2021 HP though not documented does charge at 45w using the type-c port. That saves the power loss of running an inverter.
We also got a 12v type-c plug so she can work on her laptop while I drive.
Great video! Quick question, was the solar panel the same size as your 100w? If not how did they secure the new panel?
No, it’s slightly bigger and they bonded it onto the roof just in front of the other one, so I have two on there now
Where do you find a club site for £25 Kat cheapest we found was 48/night.
Off grid seems the way forward. Great Vid sorry about the drone
A lot will depend on how many people you have. It’s just me so cheaper in many sites
Hi, had a look on blue fix but their not doing the Eco Tree battery ? Are Oak tree not doing fittings now? I’m wanting a similar set up to yourself, so could you tell me if you got your inverter from them, & which one you have. Would really appreciate a reply when you have time, as you say it’s a lot of money, & my technician skills are zero, so thank you for the help & advice. 😊
You sure? They’re still listed as an Ecotree supplier so give them a ring. Feel free to share the video so they can see what you want. And no, I used my existing inverter but I’m sure they can supply one if needed.
Hi Liz, BlueFix are doing the ecotree batteries, they fitted one for us last week, take a look at our latest video on here for the details of what they fitted for us and if you have any questions I will be happy to help.
Thank you
You make a good point about people saying that you haven't paid for your system but at the end of the day, you are a promotion tool and it's clearly financially viable to give you the goods so I have no problems with it and I hope when my wife and I are full timing, we get similar 😊 p.s. sorry for calling you a tool 😂
Ha! I’ve had worse 😏
Hello Kat,
How did you damage the original LA leisure battery? Did it drop to a very low voltage somehow?
How does the new Lithium battery/solar panel set up compare weight-wise to the old? Any weight saving, or about neutral?
Cheers,
Rich/MH04RMV
I used lots of heating (it was December!) and it dropped below 10v. Ouch 😣
Lithium are a lot lighter! Probably half the weight or less.
What is your fridge running on?
Engine while driving or gas
another great and informative vid Kat. Have had my WildAx 😂camper 6 months now and im so glad i ordered a Lithium battery & 120w Solar panel upgrade, It really came up trumps during my recent 12 day trip to the Highlands. A quick question on electrics Kat, i was low on gas so while wildcamping so wanted to use my Dometic Fridge on 12v but it wouldnt work. Whilst im aware the 12v works while the van is being driven but thought it would also work while parked up. anyone shed light on this?
Did you charge the fridge of the battery?
It runs off the engine while driving or gas
ive been living 10 years without using shore power. just ordered lithium batteries and live full-time and already have all led lights, and everything else is low consumption. you learn to manage the solar. its silly when people run a coffee maker or electric stovetop, thats such a waste of energy. i use butane stove for hot coffee and hardly ever use microwave,
OMG that is amazing technology using a extra solar panel + a new lithium battery!! 😱As someone who is looking at buying a new motorhome how would this work with wanting this for a new motorhome especially as we will be doing wild camping?? Great review & would very much appreciate your help & thoughts?? 👌🏻👍🏻😁
It shouldn’t make any difference if it’s new or not- but you’ll need to get a spec for your specific system
@@WanderingBird Oh OK so you are saying it depends on what motorhome I buy? And thanks for replying very much appreciated!! Your very knowledgeable!! 👍🏻😁
Is your fridge a 3-way using gas?
Yes.
@@WanderingBird Thank you. I'm thinking of going to a compressor fridge as my Leisure battery doesn't seem to have much to do and been staying on sites mostly to hook up the fridge but would a compressor fridge kill the battery even with solar?
2 100w panels 2 varta gel 80w 6 years never below 12v and run everything including a CPAP Darth Vader mask😊 btw, what's a campsite, they are things for caravans aren't they