This is my first post so hello to all from Arkansas, I am a retired electronic tech so I'm old and remember when things where repaired rather than thrown away. I'm a gearhead at heart my hobbies are cars, planes, and boats and have built some pretty cool stuff over the years including an experimental airplane that I flew for years all over the country. On the solar side I was familiar but not educated with all the products available on the market so my hat is off to Will Prowse's videos which are excellent and my great niece who works for AltE solar.
We bought a 2012 class B Airstream Interstate in 2015 as it fits our needs for 2 person 1 dog camping except I found the vans electrical components to be cheap additions to the van just to say "it has solar" which means everything is way undersized. It came with a 100W panel on the roof, 750W inverter charger with PWM charging, 128AH glass mat batteries, so other than watching the TV you had to be on shore power or run the propane powered generator to run anything but the led TVs and refrigerator. There are a thousands of complaints about the Airstreams vans and its systems so I will not go there but reflect on what we've done to make its electrical system more useable for travel and boondocking.
BEFORE solar electrical upgrade we to add 450AH to the 128AH glass mat batteries using T105 golf cart batteries and this did well for camping for a few days without shore power but we needed run the AC, water heater or microwave which was not possible with the 750W inverter. The next major change was removing the roof top AC unit and replacing it with a 12,000 BTU inverter technology mini split heat pump which sparked a great deal of controversy in the Airstream community but that was 1.5 years ago and can tell you its a key part of electrical system and has worked flawlessly for over 1.5 years, its quite as a whisper and will freeze you out compared to its old 15,000 BTU counterpart and runs on 1044 watts full power and yes the door still works as I used flexible refrigerant lines. After that we needed to upscale everything else to meet the needs of the van, I had 578AH (289 usable) and we decided on victron for the inverter charger and controllers per my niece recommendations. We added 750W of solar panels to the roof and a 3000 watt inverter charger, solar charge controller, DC to DC converter (to charge from engine alternator), victron color panel, and a victron BVM 712 battery monitor.
After I installed all the above and found out just how usable everything was and having the ability to run (not all at one time) the AC heat pump, microwave, water heater, coffee pot and more off batteries and sun so we took the plunge and bought 600AH of Calb lifepo4 batteries from China and a Daly BMS to monitor them. Now we can run our AC at quite mode in the garage (no solar) which only draws 480W for almost 9 hours before we hit the 25% of the capacity of the batteries, I also have it programed to only charge to 85-90% of the full potential as Wills advice. The AC will run off the solar on quite mode without even touching the batteries capacity if parked in sunny area or driving down the road. We run the heat pump when we go shopping or hikes to keep the pup cool or warm till we get back and when I pull over for a nap.
Please note the picture with the 100A fuses between the cells is no longer like that, it was an idea and not that good of one, not sure what I was thinking, now just copper buss bars between the series and parallel cells.
We are very happy and money well spent on this van and enjoy it immensely. Now I just received another 700AH of the same batteries I plan on building a small enclosed boondocking trailer to pull behind the RV, the small trailer will have additional solar and 700AH capacity of lifepo4 with the ability to haul bikes and our blow up boat, this will also be a back up at our home in case we ever need power for critical items.
We bought a 2012 class B Airstream Interstate in 2015 as it fits our needs for 2 person 1 dog camping except I found the vans electrical components to be cheap additions to the van just to say "it has solar" which means everything is way undersized. It came with a 100W panel on the roof, 750W inverter charger with PWM charging, 128AH glass mat batteries, so other than watching the TV you had to be on shore power or run the propane powered generator to run anything but the led TVs and refrigerator. There are a thousands of complaints about the Airstreams vans and its systems so I will not go there but reflect on what we've done to make its electrical system more useable for travel and boondocking.
BEFORE solar electrical upgrade we to add 450AH to the 128AH glass mat batteries using T105 golf cart batteries and this did well for camping for a few days without shore power but we needed run the AC, water heater or microwave which was not possible with the 750W inverter. The next major change was removing the roof top AC unit and replacing it with a 12,000 BTU inverter technology mini split heat pump which sparked a great deal of controversy in the Airstream community but that was 1.5 years ago and can tell you its a key part of electrical system and has worked flawlessly for over 1.5 years, its quite as a whisper and will freeze you out compared to its old 15,000 BTU counterpart and runs on 1044 watts full power and yes the door still works as I used flexible refrigerant lines. After that we needed to upscale everything else to meet the needs of the van, I had 578AH (289 usable) and we decided on victron for the inverter charger and controllers per my niece recommendations. We added 750W of solar panels to the roof and a 3000 watt inverter charger, solar charge controller, DC to DC converter (to charge from engine alternator), victron color panel, and a victron BVM 712 battery monitor.
After I installed all the above and found out just how usable everything was and having the ability to run (not all at one time) the AC heat pump, microwave, water heater, coffee pot and more off batteries and sun so we took the plunge and bought 600AH of Calb lifepo4 batteries from China and a Daly BMS to monitor them. Now we can run our AC at quite mode in the garage (no solar) which only draws 480W for almost 9 hours before we hit the 25% of the capacity of the batteries, I also have it programed to only charge to 85-90% of the full potential as Wills advice. The AC will run off the solar on quite mode without even touching the batteries capacity if parked in sunny area or driving down the road. We run the heat pump when we go shopping or hikes to keep the pup cool or warm till we get back and when I pull over for a nap.
Please note the picture with the 100A fuses between the cells is no longer like that, it was an idea and not that good of one, not sure what I was thinking, now just copper buss bars between the series and parallel cells.We are very happy and money well spent on this van and enjoy it immensely. Now I just received another 700AH of the same batteries I plan on building a small enclosed boondocking trailer to pull behind the RV, the small trailer will have additional solar and 700AH capacity of lifepo4 with the ability to haul bikes and our blow up boat, this will also be a back up at our home in case we ever need power for critical items.
