Introduction to Off-Grid Power
After almost 10 years of building systems for camper vans and off grid remote houses I have gone through a lot of setups. The cheap unheard of brands, mid-range and the greatness but expensive Victron gear. And I think I have finally come up with the best all-round setup. It’s perfect for van life / RV’s / motorhomes, probably overkill for most use cases, but you can never really have too much power… But this system is also great for fully off-grid homes, usually in this use case you can add more solar, and as big panels are pretty cheap these days I would recommend doubling or tripling the setup to be fully abundant and never needing to worry about the weather.
The Heart of the System: 16KWh LiFePO4 Battery
But enough of the intro… let me introduce you to the star of the show, the 16KWh LifePo4 battery pack. The brand I chose was Deligreen, but there are a lot of companies building the exact same setup. The most important is getting the brand new and latest cells. I am talking with Deligreen to come up with a deal for my audience so make sure to check back here or send me an e-mail if you are interested.
The battery pack uses the very popular JK-BMS, this is a great BMS Choice and it will talk to almost any mppt/inverter to make sure your system is running as efficiently and as safe as possible.
Hybrid Inverter Efficiency
For me I paired the 16KWh battery with a Vevor 6000W Hybrid Inverter – This is my mppt charge controller, 230v AC Pure sine wave inverter and grid hook up all in one for an amazing price. And the biggest benefit of using an all in one hybrid inverter is the efficiency. When my batteries are charging it focuses all the power to charge them ASAP, if I start using a device it will take the power from the solar to power it, assuming there is enough solar power the energy does not touch my batteries. If there is not enough solar then it will take the extra power needed from the batteries. Likewise when the batteries are full it will simply run all my devices directly from Solar, so my batteries are not overworked and electricity is not constantly being converted from DC to AC and back and forth. And the same happens if I am connected to the gird for example at a campsite, I can turn on a device and the power will bypass my entire system and deliver the AC directly from the campsite, it can also charge my batteries at the current I select while also using the solar as the primary or secondary source.
Cost-Effective Power Solutions
Now there are many systems out there that will do this, but usually using many separate devices and usually because of this the cost is drastically higher, to get the same setup with Victron as an example will cost 10x more plus the extra cables, fuses, switches and configuration.
Reliable 12V Conversion
But speaking of Victron, I rely on them for my 12v power in the camper. The 48v to 12v DC to DC step down converters from Victron are very reasonably priced and as it is something that is on 24/7 it needs to be efficient and safe. The savings you will make here trying unknown brands are just not worth it.
System Brains and Safety
But this is it… These are the main components of my system.
I have added a small AC UPS, this powers my M4 Mac mini & HDD’s as these need to be safely shutdown, with previous systems ther have been glitches where the inverter has turned off even just for a second and it can be enough to corrupt a Hard Drive. With this setup it has never missed a beat, but it has been very handy if I need to add a new plug socket for example as it allows me to shut off the inverter, safely re-wire and turn back on without having to shut down all my services.
And the Mac mini is the brain of my system, running Home Assistant it ties everything together. The Mppt/inverter is hardwired to the JK-BMS, the mppt/inverter is then connected over the network to the Mac mini running an integration that allows me me to view all the sensors and stats and display them on a nice clean dashboard.
Another addition is the bluetti charger 1 – this allows me to pull almost 600W from the alternator while we drive.