Ultimate Off-Grid Solar setup

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 we chose is BetterESS, no matter where you are in the world they have you covered. You can search for many different suppliers for these DIY kits, but the response, customer service and technical support and know how form BetterESS blew away the competition and made it an easy choice. They also have several cell type options so you can pick what works best for you, but most importantly they are grade A+ new cells, they all come perfectly balanced, ready for 8000+ cycles. To give you an idea, we are using ours heavily, Air Con all day, Airy Fryer 2-3 times per day, electric water heater everyday + 24/7 running of large house fridge freezer along with the Mac mini server… we use it a lot, and fully off grid with no electrical hookups, and we are on 23 cycles in just over 3 months… So essentially for us, 7-8 cycles per month, less than 100 per year, these batteries are likely to be the last batteries we ever need to buy.

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.

You can find our exact pack here: 48v LifePo4 Battery Pack

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 there 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.

Hi, I’m Luke.

I’ve personally renovated three camper vans from the ground up, including complete electrical systems, plumbing, solar, networking and smart automation.

This website documents my latest project: building one of Europe’s most advanced smart camper vans.

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