RV FEATURE
POWERING OUR CARAVAN
It’s 1am and suddenly you’re woken by an
alarm in your caravan.
Groggily, you search for the source of the
alarm and realise it’s coming from your
battery management system. It’s telling you
that your battery voltage is low, yet the meter
still reads them at 68 per cent.
How can that be? The batteries were almost
full when you went to sleep a few hours ago!
You fumble around, half asleep, trying to
determine what caused this to happen and
how to shut it off.
Then… blackness.
Your entire van goes dark. Your power source
shuts off. No fridge. No lights. Given that
you’re in a donation camp, with no power and
strict rules about generators, what do you do?
When we decided on our caravan setup for
our travels, one of our stipulations due to
travelling with kids was to have a battery
system that would allow us to run the
microwave when we were free-camping (not
plugged into a power source) as hungry little
bellies don’t like to wait for their dinner, and
we knew that would ease some of the evening
rush that can sometimes take away from the
enjoyment of that sunset or campfire.
We debated the cost of lithium batteries along
with their benefits for ages before we made
the decision to go with three 100Ah batteries.
Wanting to mostly free-camp, we had two
200W solar panels put on the roof of our
caravan and also purchased a further 400W
worth of portable solar blankets which we felt
would be more than enough.
Basically, our decision came down to wanting
to know we could run those few ‘convenient’
appliances like the microwave and kettle
straight from the batteries, regardless of
where we pulled up to camp. The reduced
weight and longer life span (and charge hold)
of the lithium over the lead-acid option was
just icing on the cake for us.
/ 49