chadat23
New Member
I have a new to me, stock, shell of a van that I want to build out for camping. Short term I see mostly using it for little weekend trips either solo or with my wife but I have hopes of doing much longer trips with the two of us. Short term I want to be able to run a fridge, a fan, and a few lights so I think a 200W panel and a 12V, 100Ah battery would suffice but long term it's easy to imagine having the equivalent of 600Ah at 12V system with 1000W+ of solar powering a laptop and starlink during workdays, a water heater, cooktop, maybe a bit of AC, etc. If money was no object I suppose I'd build a 24V, 300Ah system but being new to some of this, that sounds like an expensive way to start, but if I start with the minimal system then it'll leave an upgrade path that'll likely be much more expensive both with regards to money and space. Thoughts? Clearly I need to think more about my budget and priorities, but I was wondering if people had any general advice on where to start for systems that have a somewhat yet-to-be-defined use case. I'm assuming that in time I'll be surprised by my power usage, I just don't know if it'll be to the up-side, or down. Also, if it matters, since I seem to be allergic to spending a buck in the name of saving a headache, I'll presumably be doing all my own work, building my own roof rack, and building a LiFePO4 pack from cells. Thanks!