What makes the Bluetti approach simpler than traditional RV electrics?
A standard RV setup requires separate lithium or lead-acid battery banks, solar charge controllers, DC-to-AC inverters, and multiple breaker boxes.
At a glance
Length
16 min
Channel
Brian R Braxton
Video from
Jan 2022
Rating
⭐⭐ Great video · 2/2
Best for
DIY van builders overwhelmed by traditional RV electrical systems
What this video answers
What makes the Bluetti approach simpler than traditional RV electrics?
Can you really run a refrigerator and air conditioner on this system?
How long does it take to install this system?
What happens if it's cloudy for several days?
Do you need any special electrical certifications to do this?
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How to Power Your Van with Solar: The Bluetti EB240 Approach
This tutorial walks through the complete electrical setup for a DIY van conversion, focusing on a simplified solar power system using the Bluetti power bank as the central hub. Brian Braxton built a custom Chevy G20 van from the ground up with no electrical experience, then documented exactly how he wired everything to run off portable solar power. The approach deliberately avoids complex traditional RV electrical systems—no separate battery banks, solar controllers, or converters scattered throughout the build.
The video suits anyone considering a van build who feels intimidated by electrical systems, or anyone already mid-build looking for a cleaner power solution. It's practical for people who want to understand what actually draws power in a mobile home and how to route that power efficiently before walls go up.
Key Moments
Key Components and Power Loads in This Van Setup
Two 180-watt solar panels on the roof wired to plug directly into the Bluetti (no controller needed)
DC 12-volt circuits powering ceiling LED lights, a MaxAir fan, and a smaller vent fan
AC 120-volt circuits running a refrigerator, a 700-watt microwave, and a Zero Breeze portable air conditioner
A backup auxiliary battery stored underneath for emergency air conditioner use if the main power bank gets too low
A shore power inlet installed on the van's exterior to switch from solar to campground power
All wiring routed inside walls before interior panels were installed, leaving the finished van free of visible cords
What You Need to Know Before Wiring Your Own Van
The Bluetti EB240 power bank used here is rated for 1,000 watts continuous AC output—the microwave draws 1,100 watts, so everything else must be turned off while using it
Newer Bluetti models (AC200, AC200MAX) handle 2,000 watts, avoiding this limitation if you want simultaneous high-draw devices
The fridge runs around 120 watts when the compressor kicks on, but cycles on and off to maintain temperature, so it's not constantly draining power
The 12-volt circuit can comfortably handle lights and fans but would max out if the air conditioner were also on that line
All DC wiring runs through a 12-volt fuse box for organization and an extra layer of protection, though the Bluetti has built-in safety features
AC circuits use power strips rather than custom wiring, making it easier to swap between solar and shore power without rewiring
What makes the Bluetti approach simpler than traditional RV electrics?
A standard RV setup requires separate lithium or lead-acid battery banks, solar charge controllers, DC-to-AC inverters, and multiple breaker boxes. The Bluetti consolidates all of that into one plug-and-play device: solar panels connect directly to it, it manages charging automatically, and it outputs both 12-volt DC and 120-volt AC power. No controllers, no converters, no mysterious black boxes.
Can you really run a refrigerator and air conditioner on this system?
Yes, but not simultaneously at full power. The fridge stays plugged in and runs continuously (it draws minimal power most of the time). The air conditioner is a backup for hot days and gets unplugged or switched to the auxiliary battery when the main Bluetti drops below a safe level, ensuring the fridge never loses power and food doesn't spoil.
How long does it take to install this system?
The video doesn't specify a total installation time, but shows that all wiring should be run through walls before interior panels are sealed up. This means electrical work is integrated into the broader build timeline rather than a standalone task.
What happens if it's cloudy for several days?
The 180-watt solar panels will still produce some charge on cloudy days, just at a reduced rate. The Bluetti draws down, and the auxiliary backup battery is there to supply the air conditioner if needed, keeping the main power bank above zero so the fridge keeps running. The system assumes periodic access to shore power or sunnier days ahead.
Do you need any special electrical certifications to do this?
The video doesn't address certifications, but Brian emphasizes doing everything "the simplest way possible" with no prior experience. He uses fuse boxes for DC circuits (standard RV practice) and power strips for AC circuits to avoid custom wiring. This approach stays within typical DIY van-build territory rather than requiring licensed electrician work.
This video is genuinely helpful if you've been scared off by traditional RV electrical complexity. Brian breaks down what actually consumes power in a van (spoiler: the fridge is the only constant draw), shows you a real working system that doesn't require engineering knowledge, and demonstrates exactly how the wiring runs through a finished van. He's honest about the trade-offs too—the microwave limitation is annoying but manageable, and the newer Bluetti models fix it if you're willing to spend more.
What stands out is that he shows both the installed system and old footage of the raw wiring before drywall, so you can actually trace how power flows from the roof panels to the fuse box to the lights. That visual clarity plus the straightforward "plug solar straight in, plug appliances into power strips" philosophy makes this one of the most approachable van electrical tutorials out there. If you're building or upgrading a van and want to avoid a rats' nest of cords and mystery boxes, this is worth watching.
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Explanation of how everything electrical works in our van! One of the most daunting tasks of a van build is the electrical side of everything. I tried to do everything in the simplest way possible, hope this video is helpful!
If you haven't watched it yet, here is our VAN TOUR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu48nTuJoY8&t=6s
Below are links to almost everything I used to hook all this up. If you purchase on Amazon through my links, I get a small kickback from that. So that's an easy way to support my channel if you find it helpful!
BLUETTI EB240 POWER BANK - This is the exact model I have:
https://amzn.to/3HricM3
BLUETTI AC200 POWER BANK - Newer model, can handle a draw of 2000w at once, but storage capacity of the battery is slightly smaller than the EB240.
https://amzn.to/3qJH2jL
BLUETTI AC200MAX POWER BANK - Similar to the AC200, but you can link it to additional batteries to expand the capacity. If you have a lot of money to spend, this is your best option.
https://amzn.to/31fdHom
BOUGE RV 180W SOLAR PANELS - Exact panels that I have.
https://amzn.to/3HxYm1X
RENOGY 200W SOLAR PANELS - Same width as my panels but slightly longer. this could be an option for getting a little more power.
https://amzn.to/3mOyCGu
SOLAR PANEL CABLES
https://amzn.to/3FPyqhQ
SHORE POWER INLET - The black inlet plug I installed on the outside of the van.
https://amzn.to/3FP8PFu
AC to DC ADAPTER
https://amzn.to/3eHqe7g
HEAVY DUTY 12V POWER SUPPLY CABLE
https://amzn.to/32GUdJZ
12V FUSE BOX
https://amzn.to/3sTf8nU
100ft of CABLE FOR 12V CIRCUITS
https://amzn.to/31feEgr
12V LED CEILING LIGHTS
https://amzn.to/3mKrATi
TOUCH PANEL LIGHT SWITCH
https://amzn.to/3sPjsEA
10FT POWER STRIP
https://amzn.to/3sUwocF
Video transcript for “HOW WE POWER OUR VAN // Solar Power The Easy Way (Bluetti EB240) Wiring and Install How To” Accessibility
A full written transcript of this video, provided for accessibility. Select any timestamp to jump the video to that moment.
finally back with another video and i'm going to be showing you how we run everything electrical inside of our van and we do all of it with one really cool device i'm brian and this is my wife sav in 2020 we bought a chevy g20 van so i bought a van this is not a crazy expensive luxurious
sprinter van it's just a cool van that we completely gutted and rebuilt ourselves with no experience we hope that these videos will inspire and motivate others who want to do the same [Music] so when i first started looking into doing the van build i knew that i wanted to have solar power so i started
watching youtube videos and research and how to hook all that up how it works and it was like super overwhelming you needed massive batteries you needed converters you needed controllers and i just felt like it was way too much for me to figure out in hindsight i probably could have but i found a much easier solution
which was getting a blue eddy power bank uh the one i have is the max oak 2400 watt hour but i'll put a link in the description to that one and other ones that do the same thing pretty much basically it's a massive power like the little power banks that you use to charge your phone it's kind of like that
except like ginormous and it powers the entire van and i charge it with the solar but the cool thing is the solar panels just plug straight into it you don't need uh converters controllers all the errors all that is inside this one device and it's really cool they're not paying me
to say that i just really like it so firstly really quick i want to show you everything in the van that we are powering off of the blue eddy and then we'll get into how it's hooked up so the blue eddy itself has two separate power sources you've got your dc power which is your 12 volt and then you have your
ac which is 120 volts which is just like your regular household plugs so just on the dc circuit on that we are running the lights in the ceiling we are running our big max air fan up front and we are running our smaller vent line fan in the back of the van and then also all of the
usb ports on the front of the blue eddy we use to charge our phones and camera batteries and all that kind of stuff those are all on the 12 volt circuit as well and that is pretty much everything that we do off of the 12 volt so then on the ac circuit the 120 volts we are running our
refrigerator our microwave and our zero breeze air conditioner so just a quick disclaimer about the microwave um all these smaller ones usually are 700 watt microwaves that's what this is and mistakenly when i bought this i thought that that meant they only pull 700 watts of power but i was wrong for
whatever reason they actually pull like 1100 watts of power and the blue id that i have is only rated for 1 000 watts of power it does actually still work because the blue eddy is able to pull like 1150 for so many minutes or something so it actually does work but i have to have everything else in
the van turned off in order to use the microwave which is a little annoying but it hasn't really been an issue we don't use the microwave super often but it is really nice to have when we need it so it works but there is you have to like shut everything off to use it so just be aware of that
but there are newer power banks from blue eddy or other places that you can pull more than a thousand watts so if you get one of those that wouldn't be an issue our fridge is pretty much the only thing that's always on the air conditioner and the microwave we just use occasionally when we really
need them but the fridge has to keep all our food cold so obviously it's always running when it is on it uses right around 120 watts i want to say that's when the compressor is running though so even if the fridge is on the compressor shuts on and off to regulate the temperature so a lot of times the compressor is
turned off and it's actually not drawing any power but when the compressor is on it's constantly drawing 120 watts and that's pretty much the only thing in the whole van that's constantly pulling power so we have our zero breeze run to the ac 120 volt power it actually goes through an adapter that runs it back
down to 24 volts and it i got really confused hooking this up i think it is possible to run it off of the 12 volt circuit but we needed another something or another that i didn't have so i just the plug it comes with is made to plug it into an ac plug so we just went with that also i'm pretty sure if we did have
it on the 12 volt circuit it would probably max it out because it it uses like 240 watts when it's turned all the way up uh which will be about the most our 12 but circuit could take so it's probably best to leave it on the ac where it has no problems since our ac can take a thousand watts and then also we have
this extra battery underneath that we try to keep topped off and this is like our backup say if our blue eddy is running low on power because it's been cloudy or for whatever reason we will run the air conditioner if we need it off of this so that we don't completely drain our blue eddy because we never want the
blue id to hit zero because then our fridge won't run and our food will go bad so it's kind of like a balancing game you have to play but this is our backup air conditioner power in case we need that so that is everything in the van that is drawing power at any given time now i want to get into how we hooked all
this up and made it all work without having wires and extension cords thrown all over the place so to start with on the top of the van we have two 180 watt solar panels i got mine from boujarvi but basically you just want to find the biggest solar panels you can fit on top of your rig
and also still leave room for your fans obviously but i'll put some links in the description if you need solar panels so the cool thing about the blue eddy is uh it comes with an adapter cord that your solar panel cords hook into and that goes straight into your blue eddy and that's it you don't have to go through a
solar controller or anything like that just plug straight into your blue eddy and it does the rest so whenever there's sunlight as long as that's plugged up your blue eddy is charging topping off and it's able to charge while you're using it which is obviously the most important thing you want to be
able to be running stuff in your van while it's charging so we've got power going into the blue eddy and then we need power coming out of the blue eddy to power everything in the van so obviously i didn't want extension cords running all over the van to get to this one spot on the blue eddy to power
everything so all of this i ran inside of the walls before the van was finished so i'm going to show you an old video i shot when you could still see all the cords and everything just so you can kind of see how i ran everything before all these walls were covering it up so finishing up the wiring in the van
just wanted to go over exactly how i did everything before i button all this up because you're not going to be able to see it but if we step outside on top we've got 280 watt solar panels they are wired together going to the van here they drop down through here
come down to here and they're wired into the adapter that came with the blue eddy here that comes right over here that'll be all the underneath the box and pokes out right here so that is where we will get the solar panel solar power which plugs straight into the blue eddy there
then our 12 volt circuit coming out of the blue eddy is here so this is what will power most of the van um but this i just drilled it straight into there so it's nice and neat that goes back through here and that is this big black and white cord that goes straight into uh the negative and positive on my fuse
box and then from the fuse box i have um everything that's on a 12-volt circuit so i've got my max fan uh my interior lighting and then the smaller vent fan which is this thing right here and then i just did an extra circuit just in case i come come up with something else i need after i button all
this up and then lastly i've got my ac plugs on the blue eddy so i just got a nice big power strip with a 10-foot cord that plugs into here we'll run back through here it'll all be hidden under here and this is going to run all the way up and be mounted on the wall here which is where
the uh kitchen counter and sink and stove microwave mini fridge and all that will be because my mini fridge and microwave will be ac power because the 12 volt ones are stupid expensive so i'm just gonna run those on ac but that's how that will work so yeah that's my wiring
basically we've got one cord coming out of the dc plug that goes around to the back of the van where we have a 12 volt fuse box for everything that's running on 12 volt to run through that fuse box and then to the blue eddy to get power that's not completely necessary because the the blue eddy does have safety
features in it where if something trips or whatever it'll shut itself off but i felt why not have like an extra layer of protection there to make sure there's no issues and it's really cheap and honestly easier to keep everything organized this way so everything runs into a fuse box
and then these cords run out to power everything in the van so one cord is going up through the wall and then around the back of the van and then it comes all the way around to where this light switch is and then now the light switch it goes back up and powers these led lights in
the ceiling the other two cords just come straight up this corner and then go to my fans um up like behind the ceiling and then for the ac i didn't do um a fuse box and all that so i was kind of comfortable working with the dc because it's not like a ton of power you're messing with
but with the ac um i didn't really want to be like splitting cords apart and doing all that because i'm not an electrician so for this i used power strips i've just got one power strip that plugs into the back of the blue eddy and then from there i have one plug that goes to another power strip that is underneath
the kitchen cabinet and that is where the microwave and the fridge are plugged in and then i have another plug going into the first power strip that goes through the walls around the back and goes to the air conditioner to either plug in the air conditioner or charge that extra battery that's over
there and that's the only two things i have coming off of ac so i could have just plugged this straight into the blue eddy which i did to start with but the reason i put this power strip here was to make it super easy and streamlined to switch from solar power to shore power and we'll get
into that if you're wondering what this white cord is going to it just goes to this little extension cord type thing um this stays here and i usually use that to charge my computer i am planning to put another um little cabinet probably right here that will hold this and also have other plugs in it maybe
something in that corner also so that i don't have to have that sitting there but just if you were wondering that's what that is so how we hook up to our shore power it is pretty windy out so i apologize if the audio is not the greatest uh but we're gonna take a look through the back of the van because this is
where you can get to all these wires that are down here so first step is actually to look inside our handy dandy bed compartment and get our extension cord that we use to plug up to the shore power this just plugs in on the corner of the van right here i added this plug i think in my
first video i said they were ten dollars they're actually like 20 bucks but i got it on amazon and i'll put a link to that if you need one but this is all waterproof this just opens up that plugs in there and then we take the rest of the cord and plug it into our power this like barely reaches but i'm just gonna plug
in right here now we have power going to the van and i'm going to show you how to switch everything around inside so that we're running off of that power okay so up underneath here uh it may kind of look like a mess but it's actually all pretty simple you probably notice these two big boxes
sitting here so this is the ac charger for the blue eddy and this is a converter that takes ac power to dc power these just sit here most of the time because they're not used when we're on solar power but when we switch to shore power that is when these come into play so this cord coming out right here this
black cord is what goes back um outside and is where the shore power hooks up and then it goes into the splitter this is the blue eddy charger and the ac to dc adapter so basically this is where all of our power is coming from when we're on shore power so to run everything in the van off of
it all we have to do is go to the blue eddy where the this main power strip is plugged in we just simply unplug that and then plug it into the shore power so now that power strip is being powered off of our shore power and we also have the blue eddy charger and the
ac to dc adapter and i'll show you why that's important so we are back around at the front of the bed this is the blue eddy charger that comes from that thing we just plugged in and this is the ac to dc adapter the reason this adapter is important is because all of our dc stuff is running
off of the blue eddy and i could just let it continue to run off of that while the blue id charges but it's not going to charge as fast when it's powering stuff so i like to turn off the blue eddy when i'm hooked to shore power to give it a break and let it completely charge so to do that i have to have some way to
power my dc lights and fans and all that so that's where this comes into play all we have to do is take this dc plug out of the blue eddy and plug that into the adapter so now all of our dc power is coming from the shore power and then to charge the blue eddy we're gonna unplug our solar power from it
go ahead and turn it off because nothing is running off of it anymore and then we will take that cord coming from the charger in the back and plug that into the blue eddy you'll see it instantly starts charging so now the blue eddy is charging and not powering anything it's completely turned
off and everything in the van should be running off of our shore power we can flip the lights on they're working the microwave is on fridge should be on so that is how we switch from our solar power to our shore power so i think that pretty much covers how everything electrical works in our van i know this
video is kind of long but i hope it was informative and helpful if you did like it or benefit from it give it a like and subscribe to the channel and if there's anything about the van that you have questions about or interested in knowing how we did feel free to comment those and i will try to make a video about
what you're interested in but thank you for watching
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