Van Life Solar Panels

Many vanlifers have forged a path built on exploration and life off the grid to gather inspiration from.

Van life solar panels.

The complete guide to van life. Something that pops up often as an integral part of these van builds is solar power. We definitely have to start with solar panels right. When my van life dream trip was becoming more and more a reality i quickly realized that i would need a way to power my fridge batteries and inverter without paying to plug in every few days.

Renogy 100 watts 12 volts monocrystalline solar panel. And if we talk about them then renogy s renown series is the absolute way to go for setting up your own solar system. Monocrystalline solar panels mono and polycrystalline solar panels poly both serve the same function in capturing energy from the sun and turning it into electricity but there are some differences between the two that are important to be aware of while you. You collect and convert energy from the sun to electricity solar panels and store it in batteries until you need it but a battery is pretty dumb.

If you ve just stumbled on this article directly without seeing that there are likely. Do not hook up your solar panels to the charge controller until the batteries are connected. Quick note before we get started. In its most basic sense a solar system goes like this.

Remember to regularly clean your solar panels with soap and warm water to remove any build up of dirt. When shopping for solar panels for your van you ll encounter two main types. The first thing we did was mount our solar panels to our van s roof and wire them together in parallel using a signstek y branch wiring connector. Photo from zamp solar of one of their roof mount kits.

I had the general idea of where i wanted the solar panels to sit on top of my van but without dry fitting them first i would have overlooked how the mounting holes actually lined up on the contoured roof. With that said let s get started with the 10 best solar products for van life and their reviews for 2020. Fortunately the process is relatively simple and won t do a lot of damage to your rooftop. For parallel wiring all the positive wires go together and all the negative wires go together.

This is also one of the most common issues people will find when they first install solar panels on the van. Installing rigid solar panels on your camper van will require a few pieces of mounting hardware and a handful of holes. This should keep your panels as efficient as possible. This is just one part of a overarching how to install a diy camper van electrical system series.

A solar powered van in a nutshell. Solar panels take the energy from the sun and send it down through a charge controller where it will eventually recharge the batteries in your camper electrical system.