MORE POWA!

I need some way to power my van while living off the grid. (This is not an ad)

Cost:

Jackery 500 - $798.99

Barrel plug - $13.50

Considerations:

• How much power will I be using?

• Can I use less power?

• How many days will I be off the grid at a time?

• Will it create more drag on my van?

• What if something goes wrong?

Doing My Own Electrical Work vs. Buying A Premade Power Bank

My main concern about doing my own electrical work was the fact that I am not an electrician, or electrical engineer. I took one intro course on electrical engineering. I was worried that I would do something wrong. Maybe I'd shock myself or I would fry one of the elements and have to buy a new one.

What's the worse that could happen? ... Well... my van could set on fire.

I started in on my research for how to DIY the electrical system for my van (see helpful websites at the end of this post). It seemed like a lot of work, and I will admit I was scared. I am scared of doing electrical work (which is ironic for someone who works a lot with robots), mostly just about shocking myself. I don't know what I am going to do when I inevitably need to jump my car.

Since google tracks your every move, I started getting adds for camping power banks. This seemed like a good option since all the electrical work was already done inside, and I would not have to worry about lose connections and possible fire hazards.

Ultimate Decision: I bought a power bank.

Power bank

Now that I decided I would be buying a power bank instead of doing my own electrical, I had to do research to determine which brand/how big of a power bank to buy. I ended up going with Jackery. According to cnet and the NYtimes, it was the best power bank of the year. It had the most options (in terms of sizes) and was fairly priced. The Jackery 500 (the one I got) cost the same as it would have to buy all the parts separately.

Pros

• All contained

• No extra work needed

• Can charge from solar, car, generator or wall

• Relatively light (~13 lbs)

• Foldable solar panel

Cons

• Max 500 Watt draw (no oven, hair straighteners, big space heaters (another post later))

• If one part breaks, I have to replace the whole thing

• No direct positive/negative terminals like a battery (it will become a problem later)

I decided to go with the power bank for 3 main reasons:

1. Charge from anywhere. That was the main draw. If I was going to do my own electrical work I would make it solar. I think that I would be able to muster enough courage to be able to do that myself, however, I would not want to try to hook it up to my car battery. Particularly since it is an older car and it might drain the battery, leaving me in the lurk in the middle of a national park. Being able to charge from solar, or plug it into my cigarette port, or plug it in at a friends house would be clutch. Plus, I could sneak it into a Starbucks or library and charge up there.

2. The foldable solar panel. By not having a permanently mounted solar panel on the roof, I could keep my MPG as high as possible (which was still extremely low). I can easily store inside the van, and not worry about it getting damaged by things falling on it. Also, the less holes you put in the roof, the les likely you are to have leaks.

3. Cost the same. Buying separate solar panels, connectors, sine wave inverters, a battery and so on would have cost about the same as buying the Jackery, but with the Jackery it was already ready to go, no need to do the extra work.

I went with the 500 instead of the 1000, mostly because of cost. The Jackery 500 plus solar panel was ~$800, where as the Jackery 1000 was $1,600, which would have been way over my budget. It might have been worth it, but thinking about the electronics I would be having, laptop, phone, lights, fan, electric heater (maybe), electric fridge (maybe), I thought that I would be able to live (all be it maybe not luxuriously) off the Jackery 500. I will update, and let you know later if my decision was worth it.

Too bad that I bought it in October, because the price dropped for black Friday a few weeks later.

Wiring

The Jackery 500 is awesome because it has so many options of how to get power from it. It has 3 USB plugs, 2 1.4mm x 6.5 mm dc barrel jacks, 1 cigarette lighter, and 1 wall outlet. The downside is that it doesn't have a positive/negative terminal like a normal battery would. This made connecting the roof vent, which just had two leads, a bit more difficult. Honestly, it should not have been that hard. Just buy the plug and connect the wires.

The standard barrel plug size is 5.5mm not 6.5. That was my first mistake. I ordered the wrong size. Now I have 10 5.5 dc barrel jacks that I don't need. Also, you can only order them in bulk. Once I realized it was the size, I went back online to try to find the correct size. Since it is not the standard size, amazon did not sell them, so I had to go to special electronics websites (ok, that's fine). I shopped around looking for the cheapest one. The biggest problem was shipping. The part itself would cost $2-3 but then the shipping was $10-20. I found a site where the shipping was only $3 so I bought it, but within the hour, they returned my money and told me it wasn't in stock. Would have been nice to know before I bought it, but whatever. I ended up buying it from InterTex, but I had to buy more than $5 worth for them to ship it, so I ended up buying 2.

It slowly came through USPS, but then got lost, when it was only 5 miles from my house. I had to reorder it, and luckily did not have to pay again. After 4 weeks of waiting, and multiple customer service calls, I finally got the wire. This time it was the right size. During the time of waiting, I was not able to finish the ceiling because I wanted the wiring to go behind the walls and ceiling.

Websites

Here are a few helpful websites

GnomadHome (Their blog has a lot of good information for a van build)

WanderRedFox (She did a really go job of listing the different types of solar panels and batteries, so you could make your own choices)

Far Out Ride (Also makes comparisons, has good diagrams)

Anna's Analysis (Her blog has a step by step for each thing she did. Real easy to follow)