Do I need to be a licensed electrician to follow this build?
No. The builder explicitly states he is self-taught and not an electrician; the video is meant to show one person's approach rather than prescribe the only correct method. That said, always check local codes and regulations for your region, especially if you plan to use AC circuits in a residence-on-wheels.
At a glance
Length
27 min
Channel
DualEx
Video from
Oct 2023
Best for
Van converters, off-grid RV builders, and DIY enthusiasts comfortable with 12V and household AC wiring
What this video answers
Do I need to be a licensed electrician to follow this build?
Can I use this same setup for a full-time van home?
What is a tandem breaker and why would I use one?
Why use crimped connectors instead of bare wire in the fuse block?
How do I know what size fuse to use for each appliance?
Reads the guide aloud in your browser — free, no account.
Building a Compact Off-Grid Electrical System for Van Life
This tutorial walks through assembling a complete 12V DC and AC electrical system for a campervan, scaled down and built on a workbench for clarity. The builder—a self-taught DIYer rather than a licensed electrician—demonstrates how to integrate a portable power station (the Anker SOLIX C1000), a 12V fuse block, and an AC distribution panel into one cohesive setup. The entire build happens outside the van, so every connection, wire run, and component placement is visible and easy to follow.
This is ideal for van dwellers, tiny home builders, or anyone converting a cargo van who wants to understand electrical systems without hiring a professional. The approach prioritizes simplicity and uses off-the-shelf components that avoid complex hardwiring. If you're planning a van electrical system and want to see the step-by-step logic before tackling your own build, this shows exactly how one person does it—no shortcuts, no assumptions that you already know the basics.
Key Moments
Key Moments in the Electrical Build Process
Building and mounting the wooden electrical cabinet with breathing vents and magnetic front door
Extending 12V and AC power lines from the Anker SOLIX C1000 through pre-drilled holes
Connecting positive and negative wires to the 12V fuse block using crimped connectors
Wiring multiple appliances (lights, fan) to separate fuse positions and testing them live
Installing one-pole and tandem breakers into the AC distribution panel
Connecting white (neutral) and green (ground) wires to their bus bars on the AC side
Running appliance wires through the back of the panel and securing them to breaker terminals
Testing 12V and AC circuits to confirm power delivery to all outlets
What to Know Before Building Your Van Electrical System
Power station specs: The Anker SOLIX C1000 holds 1,056 watt-hours, outputs 1,800W continuously, and surges to 2,400W—important for appliances like refrigerators and microwaves that draw high current at startup
Charging speed: This unit charges from 0 to 100% in 58 minutes using a standard wall outlet with the Ultra Fast Charge mode
Wire gauge matters: Always use the correct gauge wire for your appliances; too thin and you risk overheating; the tutorial uses properly sized 12V cables and standard triplex for AC
Fuse and breaker sizing: Match fuse amperage to the appliance load; the panel shown uses a main 30A breaker and tandem breakers that occupy one slot each to save space
Ventilation and access: Pre-drill holes in your cabinet for airflow and remove punch-outs on the back of panels to feed wires through; a magnetic door lets you access components without disassembly
Master switch option: The build shown lacks a dedicated master on/off between power station and panel; consider adding one for safety and easier system shutdown
Crimp connectors: Using ring or blade terminals on stranded wire prevents fraying and creates a secure, tidy connection in terminal blocks
Frequently Asked Questions About This Van Electrical Build
Do I need to be a licensed electrician to follow this build?
No. The builder explicitly states he is self-taught and not an electrician; the video is meant to show one person's approach rather than prescribe the only correct method. That said, always check local codes and regulations for your region, especially if you plan to use AC circuits in a residence-on-wheels.
Can I use this same setup for a full-time van home?
Yes, but the 1,056 watt-hour capacity of the Anker SOLIX C1000 alone will drain quickly if you run multiple AC appliances or a full household. The power station supports adding an expansion battery to grow your storage, and you can charge via solar (up to 600W), a wall outlet, or a car outlet to extend runtime.
What is a tandem breaker and why would I use one?
A tandem breaker has two independent switches in one slot, letting you protect two separate circuits while using half the space in a breaker box. This is useful in small electrical cabinets where space is premium, though availability and compatibility vary by panel type.
Why use crimped connectors instead of bare wire in the fuse block?
Stranded wire can fray and create exposed strands that may touch unintended components or create loose connections. Crimped terminals give a solid, single conductor that seats firmly in the terminal block and resists loosening over time, especially important in a moving vehicle.
How do I know what size fuse to use for each appliance?
The fuse amperage should match the maximum current draw of the appliance on that circuit. The tutorial doesn't go into fuse sizing in detail (referring viewers to a previous video), but the rule is: fuse rating ≥ expected load but ≤ wire gauge limit. Always check your appliance manual and wire specs.
What I'd Do Differently
My tip: Before you crimp a single terminal, trace where every wire will run physically in your van and label each one—masking tape with a marker works fine. This ten-minute step saves hours of confusion later when you're reaching behind panels in a tight space.
Why This Video Works
The real strength here is that the builder assembled everything on a workbench outside the van, so every joint, connection, and component is fully visible. You're not squinting into a cabinet or trying to infer what's happening in a cramped compartment. He also doesn't assume you know the difference between a fuse and a breaker, or why neutral and ground are separate wires—he shows and explains as he goes.
I appreciated how honestly he frames this: "I'm not telling you this is the correct way; this is just how I do it." That intellectual humility is rare in DIY content and actually makes the tutorial more useful, because it gives you permission to think critically about your own setup instead of blindly copying. If you're serious about understanding van power systems rather than just installing pre-built kits, this is worth a full watch.
A rechargeable battery unit with multiple outlets (AC and DC) that stores and distributes electrical power without a direct grid or vehicle connection.
Fuse block
A panel that holds fuses in a row, protecting individual 12V DC circuits by breaking the connection if current exceeds a safe limit.
Distribution panel
An electrical box that organizes breakers, bus bars, and terminals to manage power flow from a source to multiple circuits and outlets.
Surge capacity
The maximum wattage a power station can deliver for a short burst when an appliance first switches on, before settling into steady-state power draw.
Tandem breaker
A breaker with two independent switches occupying a single slot in a breaker box, allowing two separate circuits in the space of one.
Bus bar
A conductive rail inside a panel where multiple wires connect to share the same electrical node (positive, negative, or ground).
Triplex wire
Standard three-conductor AC power cord with black (hot), white (neutral), and green (ground) wires bundled together.
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In this video, I build an entire off grid electrical system for a van using only a portable power station, a 12v fuse block, and an AC distribution panel. I did this build outside of the van on a work bench so that you can see and understand exactly how I do everything throughout this process. I am not an electrician. I'm just a self taught guy with a camera. This video is not intended to give you any advice, or tell you that this is the correct way of doing things. This video merely exists to show you how I personally choose to build my electrical systems.
#AnkerSOLIX #LIVEINPOWER #Anker #AnkerSOLIXC1000
Keywords: van conversion, cargo van conversion, van life, tiny home, tiny house, mobile home, DIY van conversion, van dwelling, van living, van home, work van conversion, home on wheels, tiny home on wheels, tiny house on wheels, van renovation, van remodel, van home build, van home tour, van home transformation
Video transcript for “EASY CamperVan Electrical Build - Start to Finish (W/a Power Station) Anker SOLIX C1000” Accessibility
A full written transcript of this video, provided for accessibility. Select any timestamp to jump the video to that moment.
off- grid electrical systems don't have to be that complicated anymore in this last van that I made it's actually pretty simple and to show you that I'm going to build a miniature version of this electrical system outside of the van so that you can see how every single little piece comes together I won't be
going over all the basic components that go into the electrical system I've done that in a previous video so if you get lost then go back and watch that one it'll be up on the screen right here so first things first let's build the wooden box that's going to house all of the electrical
components anchor solix was kind enough to send out one of their power stations so that I would be able to use it to make this video so I'm going to talk about this product while I build the Box carcass the ankor solix c1000 is their fastest charging 1,000w portable power station this power station has all of
the typical benefits of a power station allowing you to have power wherever and whenever you need it because of the anchor mobile apps Ultra fast charge mode you can charge up this unit in 58 minutes from 0 to 100 using a wall outlet even though this power station is small and light it has 11 charging ports
with 1,800 W of total output power and the inverter in this power station can support a surge of up to 2,400 watts of appliance es simultaneously thanks to what ankor is calling surge pad basically what you need to know here is that when you first turn on an AC Appliance it goes through a short surge
period where it requires more energy at startup than it does while it's running refrigerators and microwaves are two things that really benefit from having a high surge capacity so if you're going to be using any type of AC appliances like that you're going to want to have a high amount of surge capacity this power
station can be charged up via solar power a wall outlet and also a Car Outlet and you can even hook up up to 600 watts of solar to this and if 1,56 wat hours doesn't end up being enough power for you you can increase the size of that battery Bank by adding an expansion battery because there's an
expansion battery port on the side of this unit now I did get a deal for you guys if you choose to buy this power station right here you can get $250 off this product for the October Amazon Prime Day promotion period which means you'll be able to get this unit for $750 instead of
$11,000 this promotion only lasts from October 10th to October 11th so make sure you act quickly if you want to get this deal thanks again to ankor solix for sponsoring this video and sending me out this unit so that I could make this video but now we've got the box built so let's get to putting the electrical
components into to the [Music] box I designed the box so that I'd have access to all of the ports of the power station as well as making those holes big enough that they would act as breather vents so that this system would be able to cool itself down if it ever needed to I also pre-drilled some holes
in the top compartment so that we could have wires coming in and wires going out to run throughout the inside of the van I will have the plan available for this box if you want to replicate it and just build the same exact one the front door of this box is magnetic so that way you
can take the door off pull out any of the components that you want to whenever you need to or if you want to pull out your power station and use it for something else so the first thing we need to do is make sure that we have the right plugs in the case of this power station in order to pull the 12vt I'm
going to be using this wire right here this is a very thin gauge wire if you're going to be doing this then make sure that you get the proper sized wire now for the AC power what I'm going to be using is this regular three-prong outlet and on the other end of it is just exposed Triplex wire so you just need to
basically order whatever type of plug that is supported on your power station at the maximum output so I'm take my wire that I'm using for the 12vt first and I'm going to run that through the hole that I made for the top compartment I'm going to cut down the center of this and that's going to
expose the two wires that are in there then I'm going to take my wire strippers and expose a little bit of this so I'm going to put the negative one on one the positive one on another one and I'm just going to do the same thing with my plug just put the positive with the
positive and the negative with the negative so now we've extended the length of this and if you need to do the same thing with your AC cord then go ahead but mine is pretty long so I'm just going to run this one up through the hole as well what I like to do is use a box like this now this is pretty cool
because it has a space for all of your 12vt fuses over here it has a space for all of your AC breakers on this side but you can buy these two separately and just install them in whatever orientation that you want to but for this example I'm going to be using this box I will have a link to this in my
Amazon product links if you want to use the same exact box now first thing I'm going to do is turn this box over and on the back of this box or any other similar box there's these little punch out holes and what I'm going to do is just take a screwdriver or something and just knock some of those
out actually I'm just going to knock all of them out actually so with those out of the way that's where we're going to be pushing our wire through so that we can hook everything up in here on the 12vt side you can see that up at the top here they've actually given you a little bus bar our wire
that's coming straight from our battery is going to come into one of these terminals here for the negative and one of these terminals here for the positive and then our Appliance wires are going to come through these holes here and mount to these screws on this side and then we're going to just use the proper
size fuse for whatever appliance that is and our negative wires are all going to connect to These Bars down here and it doesn't actually matter where they go on the negative side because all of the negatives are connected but in order to do that we actually need this box to be mounted so I'm going to put our front
wall thing in there and I'm going to stick this box into the hole okay now that that's mounted I'm going to take our wire for the 12vt and I'm just going to stick that through this hole right here take my cutters here and cut it and it fell back through that always
happens you can just stick these bare wires into the terminals just like this but I don't like to do that just because we are using stranded wire the wire ends up kind of going like this sometimes and just kind of fraying off and I really don't want any exposed wire touching anything that I didn't intend
it to so what I like to use is these things right here if you crimp these on to the end of your wire it just gives it a stronger Connection in terminals like this and it's just going to crimp it down and now it's just one solid piece of metal on the end here now I'm just going to take my
screwdriver and loosen up one of the terminals here and one of the terminals here it says negative on this side and it says positive on this side so that way you can't mix them up up so I'm going to put my negative one in the negative terminal and then I'm going to tighten down this
screw and that's basically just clamping that wire down and grabbing it nice and tight so if I Yank on this that's not going anywhere and I'm going to do the same thing with the positive one I can pull that back and there you go so now that we have supplied power to our fuses what we
need to do is is run a few appliances to those fuses let's say that this is your wire that you've ran all through your ceiling so that you can wire up your lights and we're just going to stick it right into this hole now that it's in there I'm going to run it through the back of our panel and we're ready to
wire this up red one I'm having come through this side right here because I'm going to be connecting this up right here to this terminal that is next to F3 now F stands for fuse and three stands for the third one down and the reason why I'm using the third one is because on this panel the first two are
for Max rating of 30 amps we don't need it all that so we're going to start on the third one down stick my red Cable in there and now I'm going to tighten that down and then I'm going to take my negative wire and I'm going to stick that one through down here you can actually pull this green panel out
by pressing down to this tab and that releases this and then you can get that out of the way and that can give you room to get back up in here and stick this in tighten that up give that one a tug and that one's good and I'm actually going to do this again for my other Appliance so for the second one same
thing I've already stripped my wire and put my little heads on the connector put my positive one through the positive hole side and put my negative one through the negative hole side and I hooked those in the same exact way as I did the first one so the only thing left to do is add
fuses these are not the correct size fuses for this but these are example fuses because this is what I have but I'm going to put the first one onto my F3 and the next one onto my F4 now now I'm going to wire up my light and my fan and we're going to test to make sure that this works so I just have the fan
hooked up directly to the positive and negative and for the light I have actually hooked it up to a switch I know it's a double switch but I only hooked up one side this is just all I had for the example where's the battery there's the battery all I'm going to do now is plug in this car socket so it's plugged
in now I'm going to hit this button right here and that's going to activate this port you just heard a beep and that was actually this just showing that power has gone to it let's test the power by hitting the power button on this fan and the fan is working and also it looks like our light is on
too because I guess I left the switch in the on position now one thing that you will notice is that our only onoff situation for this entire system is just straight through the power station I usually don't like to do that but I'm doing it for this example usually put a master onoff switch in
between the power station and the fuse panel so just something to think about but now let's wire up the AC side and I'll show you how to wire up some Outlets while we're at it now we're going to be using our AC plug that has the three wires coming out on the other end run this through the
back of our AC side of the panel and I'm just going to pull all the slack through get about 4 or 5 in of slack here and I'm going to cut this then I'll Strip This sheathing back the same way so I can get access to these three wires green white and black the front bus bar right here is
where your white wire goes and the back one right here is where your green wire goes they actually give you an example so this is an extra little outlet that they put in uh I guess in the factory before they mail this out to you and they have a white one going here and a green one going here and they have a
black one that's just kind of loose and hanging that's pretty cool that they put that in there so you can't forget what goes where here now this is our main power line so what I like to do is put our white one somewhere in the middle and then I'll put our white one in right there and then I'm going to
tighten that down our green one right behind it like I said that leaves us with our black wire hanging here and what we're going to do is attach that to our breaker so let's talk about Breakers real quick this breaker box uses um what's called a one pole breaker and that's a
breaker that looks like this and you can actually just buy these at pretty much any hardware store I have two different kinds of these one Poole Breakers here though so this one is going to be our main breaker and this is a 30 amp breaker which is probably the wrong size for this and the other breaker here this
is what's called a Tandem breaker and what's cool about this is if you look at it you can see that there's two different independent switches on it and with that you to do is take up one space in the breaker box so you're saving space which is perfect for what we need to do because well we're building a camper so
you need to have as much space on here as possible now that you understand what these are where to get them now we can install them so just above our bus bars down here we have our poles now you have two sets of poles on this but I'm going to start by using our left side ones and
I've never actually needed more than this side because we're using tandem Breakers this is a little um guard that's going to hold our Breakers in there but we need to get that out of the way first so I'm going to just use my screwdriver so what I'm going to do is take my 30 amp breaker that only has one
breaker switch on it and I'm going to take my black wire from my Supply cable and on the very bottom of this breaker there is a screw with a hole down here but what we're going to do is stick our black cable right in there and then we're going to tighten this down just the same as if it was
our bus bar or anything else that we've been doing so far in this video actually there's a little space that g has a little Ridge to it and there's an identical Ridge on here so this is going to kind of act like a French cleat system if you've ever used something like that but what we're going to do is
put this onto here so that's grabbing that way and then we're going to push it up and it's going to slide into our Pole right here we're going to push it up and then it grabs into place and now that breaker is in place and you can see now
we've used all three of our wires here we've got the green we've got the white and we've got the black they're all set up and plugged into [Music] something now we're going to need to wire off our Outlet so we're going to be using some Outlets like this but let's just say that you ran the cables for it
in your van and you're going to wire these up later so I'm going to use this Triplex wire let's say I'm running this through the walls in the van it's coming down through this cabinet and then it's going to go into this hole and then I'm going to pull it through the same hole that I had the
main power line come through I'm just going to put these in the same exact way the green goes onto the top bus bar the white goes into the front so the only thing that's going to be different is the black and it's not actually different it's really the same but it's a different type of
breaker so on the bottom of this breaker you'll see that there's two different screws and those go to each one of these breaker switches right here so what I'm going to do is just pick one so I'm going to put it on the right side and I'm going to screw this down now if you had
another outlet that you were putting on to this breaker because you can do two um you would put that other black wire on there now but for example we're only going to be doing one so I'm going to mount this the same way on here we're going to put this hooked piece down onto the ledge and press it up onto the
pole and let it snap up into place and now we've got our Breakers mounted and I'm not going to add any more so I'm going to take my little guard piece and screw that back on you can kind of see how this works that this is actually holding the breakers in so that way they can't accidentally get knocked
off the pole or something like that so now we're going to go wire up the outlet that's on the other end of this breaker that we just wired up and I've already gone ahead and put some Fork connectors on the ends of all of these this is your outlet box so what I'm going to do is go
behind here and there's more punch outs these wires through into here so when you look at an outlet there are a bunch of screws on the sides here the way that I always remember where the wires go is that my green screw goes with my green wire so let's hook that
one up first what goes right above that is going to be our White and the reason for that is that your black is always by itself because that is the hot and the neutral and ground always go together just like in our breaker box so that just leaves our other side over here and on this side this is where our
black goes so I'm just going to put this Black Fork connector on on there and tighten this one down and then once those are tightened down I like to just tighten down the two screws that I'm not going to use just so they're not rattling around and making noise like this all the time and then you're going
to line up these screws with the holes on the top and bottom of your box here and then you're just going to tighten those down as well and there we go our Outlet is wired up now obviously this box will be inside of your wall I have an outlet cover right here that doesn't match cuz it's black
but I'll put it on there to show you that that is how that will look when it's all hooked up and you have your nice clean wall behind there all right so I'm going to pull my wall off here just get that out of the way for a
second my power station back into the box then I got my 120 and my 12vt plugged in now I'm just going to make this look a little bit more pretty by putting a nice cover on it so this box comes with this cover right here and this is going to go over this and it's going to allow us to label all of these
Breakers and these fuses now if I hold that up that should fit scw these in you can use a pen or something or uh I I actually like to use a label printer and print out some labels for these so I'm just going to say Outlet on this one cuz that's what that one is uh and I'm also going to fill
this out and say what was our top one that was our light and the next one was our fan in and so these are labeled like 1 2 3 4 and remember we put them on to three and four and it also has a line for the amps so you can actually label um how big these fuses are supposed to be this is
not supposed to be 10 and 15 so I'm not going to write that in there the last thing that we do is put this door on so this little door just has these knobs on it on both sides and there's a slot on this so we just stick the knobs into those slots now that door is connected and we just push it up and
it's a little pushed to close so now it's covered up and it looks nice and uh professional so now we're going to turn the power station on and make sure that everything works so if we look at the screen we know that that's turned on so we're going to turn on our 12vt just like before we already know that that
works cuz we tested it out but we have not tested this down here so I'm going to hit our button right right here and that's going to turn on all of these outlets right here but we need to turn on our breaker as well so if we turn on our main breaker that means that that bar up there remember where we put the poles in
that whole metal bar is now energized so if I hit this breaker up that means that now this Outlet is live these are the batteries for my camera that I'm filming on right now and my batteries are always dead so let's plug them in and see if they will charge up so that's plugged in and looks like
they are charging so this Outlet works because we've got our Breakers turned on let's just double check our 12vt stuff over here we've got the light is still on the switch still works and our fan is here I heard it beep earlier so let's hit the power and that's running so look at that
we've got 12vt stuff running and 120 volt stuff running at the same time and that's basically how the whole thing works oh last thing I almost forgot we were going to put the top onto this box so there you go that's the whole Be Wondering like hey you know the 12vt
setup that I did is all good because there's only just that cigarette lighter plug right on the front of the power station but why would you run your own wires for Outlets if there's all of these Outlets sitting right on the front of the power station and you know what that is a good question you totally can
just run Outlets straight from the front of the power station out to different areas of your van in fact if you want to do that hold on let me find it these are these little things that are used for like conference rooms and basically they're just got an outlet on one side that you just plug in and on the other
side it just gives you these ports on here like an outlet it just doesn't look as professional like being put in your wall um and also if you don't know how to hard wire real Outlets then um if you choose to be on the internet like me doing builds then people will make fun of you
if you use something like this or if you just run extension cords all around your van for different appliances you want to use there's nothing wrong with doing it people will just think it's a little bit crude and also I literally spent um 80 cents on this Outlet they're extremely
cheap so the only thing you really have to pay for is the wires for all of this stuff so I would just go ahead and do it it only takes you like a couple extra hours when you're doing the wiring and stuff but if you don't want to you don't have to that's why I designed this box so that you have access to the chords on
the front of it anyway I want to say again a big thank you to anchor solx for sponsoring this little project so that I could teach you guys how I do this so thank you guys for watching this all the way to the end hopefully you learn something if not go ahead and tell me everything that I did wrong if you know
everything and I'll see you in the next one [Music] yeah
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