How To Install OFF-GRID SOLAR POWER In Your Camper Van

0:00 I only have a little bit of time today but my goal is to get the electronics set up in the back of the van got uh all our wires and stuff from the different things we've installed and the main components that we have are the battery and the charge controller it's got the battery there charge

0:19 controller and I just put some um I forget what it's called it's like pipe hanger plumbers use it but it works really good for just random things like that so I've got the battery secured and I'm going to get the charge controller attached to the wall so there's these little spots on the back

0:40 where it can hook onto a screw or a nail so I'm going to hold it on the wall kind of where I want it and then Mark those holes with a pen and then we should be able to set it on and kind of slide it into place so I think I want it right about there I don't know those aren't great marks

1:04 but we'll see if we can get it [Music] all right that's on there nice and snug I don't know if you can even really see that but we got the screws tucked on there on

1:30 this van I have two solar panels on the roof they're 100 watts each and so to figure out the amperage you divide Watts by the amount of volts so since it's a 12 volt system we divide 200 by 12. and that gives you I can't do the exact math in my head but I know it's less than 20 because 20

1:53 times 10 will be 200. um so to calculate the amp size you divide it by the 12 volts and then you round up to the nearest 10 because they sell charge controllers in 10 amp increments so 10 amp 20 amp 30 amp so I know the uh the minimal size I would need is a 20 amp um and then in the future if someone

2:15 wanted to add more solar panels they would have to swap out the charge controller for a higher amperage the next thing I'm going to do is connect the charge controller to the battery and there should be some juice in the battery normally they come a little charged up from whatever Warehouse

2:32 they're coming from so we'll make sure that works and then we'll get our solar panels plugged into the charge controller the battery has some terminal bolts look like that little bolts that hold everything onto the batteries and I went to the auto parts store to pick up some ring terminals

2:59 just look like that it's going on the end of all our wires to attach um to attach all the wires to the actual accessories so I have a negative wire and they were out of red so my positive wire is actually going to be blue but it's not a big deal and I'm going to take all the wires

3:23 coming off of this and kind of run them to the side so that we can run a little bit of this tubing that'll hold our wires and give it a real clean look that way this isn't just filled with wires from the end of this a little less than an inch and that's going to go into our charge

3:41 controller it's marked on the bottom it tells you which ones are the batteries and which ones are the solar panels so it'll be about there foreign it down and I'm just measuring about how long I want that wire to be

4:11 then I need to put a ring terminal on this wire and this is uh there's 10 gauge that comes on the solar panels so for these solar panels when I install them if you watch that video I splice some more wire onto them so I've got 10 gauge here from the panels that's going into the charge controller and then the 10

4:32 gauge going from the charge controller into the battery as well and you can look up some charts and do all the math for your wire size but for a setup of this size 10 gauge is going to work great so I've got a ring terminal that I'm just going to push this wire into [Music]

4:59 and then [Music] squeeze that down make sure those wires are pinched in there good nice and tight [Music] electrical tape you can buy a I don't know the actual term for it it's like shrink wrap but specifically four wires they might just call it shrink wrap

5:25 but it'll give you a really good uh water Tight Seal electrical tape will work just fine and I'm just making sure to wrap that real tight it's go same thing we just did again but now with the positive wire

5:52 long to make this cable setting up those wires because sometimes they kind of fray out hard to get into that ring clamp down on that holds it nice and good and then tape it up

6:17 I like to start at the top stretch it just a little bit and then once it gets to that wire I'll cut it off right about there and twist it on the rest of the way positive tighten down the negative from there and then be able to tighten the screw and that's nice and snug same thing for the positive

6:44 and that did just turn on so we do have power and the positive is snug solar panels not pulling anything because they're not plugged in and it should tell us our battery's at 100 percent so we'll get the solar panels plugged in and uh should be able to get a read off of that

7:10 right away because it is overcast but there's enough light that it should pull something for our solar panels I do want to install a switch to make it easy to turn them on and off to stop it from feeding power into the charge controller and the battery so um the way this works is we just put two

7:29 terminal rings on there one coming in one coming out just on the positive wire and then I'll just bolt that onto the wall and uh then plug it into the charge controller pretty straightforward I'll probably have it sitting right about there and then feeding here's our positive wire from

7:50 our solar panel and I'm going to run it down this wall and then into the battery cut off so again I just have to kind of eyeball how long or how much I want to cut off the wire and something to also know is that you never want your solar panels plugged into the charge controller

8:15 while it's not plugged into the battery so this will make it easy to shut those solar panels off if you ever need to uh you know unplug or plug things back in to the battery otherwise it'll just fry your charge controller and you uh definitely don't want that to happen get a ring on there

8:41 and pinch it down this tape wrapping wasn't as pretty but it'll be hidden inside the Box so that is just fine still functional just not as smooth as I did the other ones it's got a little washer on there

9:08 move those back on and this can be tightened down nice and good because I'm not going to pull it off at all it's just ready to go a lot of times you can get it pretty tight just with your fingers but reaching in the Box this makes it difficult to grab so a little wrench did the problem or

9:28 excuse me a little wrench did the uh solve the problem what I'm trying to say since we're out of the red wire I'm going to do the same thing with a blue wire and run that from the other bolt onto the positive input for the solar panels into the charge controller

9:59 all right secure that right about there [Music] now that's on there I'm going to trim the end of it and get that plugged in

10:29 I'm gonna match up the negative on that along the same wall the same uh same corner and I'll go ahead and plug in the negative

10:54 and then the positive there we go positive in there all right the solar is plugged in charge controller is plugged into the battery so I should be able to turn this on and we should see the light come on for our solar panels there and the light came on

11:20 so I know they're plugged in but it's not pulling anything so we'll have to try that out um just double check it tomorrow to make sure oh actually it's gonna rain tomorrow we'll see how much sunlight we get but that should be good to go I'm going to turn it off for now because I'm going to uh be moving some

11:41 things around with the battery terminals and like I was saying you don't want to have your charge your solar panels plugged into your charge controller if your charge controller is not connected to the battery so I'm just going to leave it off for now and uh we'll get the fuse box wired

12:01 I didn't have a lot of time yesterday but I'm back in the van and it is raining today so I'm doing everything from the inside so we are working on the electrical next thing we need to do is get the fuse box attached so I'm thinking I'm gonna want it probably right about there so I'll go ahead and screw that in

12:24 and then we can get everything attached to it [Music]

12:52 so we have uh two bolts on here this is the post for the positive this is the post for the negative and we need to run a wire to each terminal on the battery so the positive line is going to get an inline fuse and this has a 30 amp fuse in it which is perfect because that's the side size we need

13:13 and you'll just have to figure out you know how much power you're going to be pulling from yours and I'll talk about that in a minute but I need to get a ring terminal I think that's what they're called that's what they say on the box anyways a little ring put on it so that we can

13:29 attach it to the battery and then I'll run um some more of our blue wire because that's we're using as a positive and attach that to the fuse box so when they're nice and tight

13:59 there we go and then we'll get like I said some of that blue wire spliced on the other end because I have access to both ends of this and I can freely twist it I'm going to intertwine the wires just like that twist them together really good and then tape it up nice and tight

14:25 there we go so now I need to uh run that from the positive terminal on the battery or the positive post and figure out how long I need to make it to run it to the top or excuse me to the bottom of the fuse box

14:50 foreign I did notice a problem that I have is the posts on the fuse box are smaller than the posts on the battery so I have two different size rings

15:15 but they're also made for two different size wires so what I did is I used one of the smaller rings and I cut that little plastic trim off so that I could open up the bottom of it to fit a larger wire because I need the larger wire size but the smaller ring

15:43 type and that's not going anywhere and there it is the wire for the negative post a little more straightforward just run it straight from the top to the battery so I just need to cut a wire of that size and then get those attached

16:12 all right now that I've got both of those ready I can go ahead and bolt them on so make sure my solar panels are disconnected which they are because I don't want any power running to the charge controller from the solar panels when I unhook the battery oh actually while I'm doing this I do

16:32 have um I don't even know what you call these they're just like cigarette ports but they're they have the inline fuses built into them and then you just plug them directly into the battery so rather than having to wire my own into the fuse box I'm going to plug a couple of these in

16:52 that way I can plug my fridge into one and then the other can be used to um charge you can put an adapter in there for USB ports to charge your phone or I don't know whatever you need so I'm going to go ahead and plug these in the same time that I attach the other wires that way we don't

17:13 have to keep pulling the um the bolts out of the battery so we're wiring all the negatives first and I'm going to be intentional about the way that these wires are facing because I do want them tucked into the corner as much as possible and then same thing with the Positive wires

17:42 there we go now I just need to attach them to the actual fuse box so I've got both on there and now we can start wiring all the different accessories I've got all these wires here and luckily they are

18:09 I've labeled them so I know what they're coming from but we've got the fan we've got three different lights and uh I think that's it actually the fridge will plug into um one of those cigarette adapters or cigarette Outlets one of the things I just wired in there that should uh just plug in no problem I

18:30 do need to check the few sizes um to make sure it's the right size for the fridge and then once we get all these things wired we'll throw some fuses in here and then uh everything's just start right up no problem this next part will be a little bit of um repetitiveness I guess but I'll explain

18:51 here so this is our the fuse box I got off Amazon this top is that's all the negative Terminals and that's you know tied into the negative and then the positives are going to go in these individual spots and then of course the fuses will go here so I'll go ahead and just get all these

19:12 wires attached just because it's the same thing I've been doing is just putting those ring terminals on and screwing them in and then show you how it looks once I've got them all on there it looks a little bit messy but it's good to go and a lot of these we can kind of just pull out of the way

19:33 that's what we're looking at right there so I've got I decided to put all of the lights just on the right side and then the fan is attached on the left side so I've got all the negatives up top and the positives uh next to the slots for the fuses so this light means that the fuse is either broken or not there of

19:53 course the reason the lights aren't on on this side is because the switches are actually turned off so if I hit the switch on the light oh that shouldn't have gone on because it shows the light for the fuse came on

20:18 huh that's interesting came on on that one too it is pretty dim though that's interesting so I guess it feeds just a very small amount of power to know that the circuit is not on I didn't know that so that's interesting but we're gonna get some fuses in there let's see for the fan I've got some

20:41 notes Here the fan needs a 10 amp fuse if you know the Watts you can divide the Watts by the amount of volts so in this case it'd be 12 for our 12 volt system and that'll give you the amps and then you multiply the amps by 1.25 and that'll give you your fuse size so I've already calculated it so I'm going to

21:05 put this 10 amp fuse into here and now we should be able to pop this open and use our fan there it is

21:33 and of course the light went off because the fuse is in there now so I'm going to drop some fuses into the slots for the lights and they actually only need like a one amp fuse they pull so little power but I don't have any of those so I'm gonna throw some fives in there and it'll be just fine

21:56 slight oh much brighter that time see so this is the one that had a small bit of power going through it without the fuse compared to the one that has the fuse that is good to go throw some fuses in the other ones and then uh I'm gonna use this wire I think it's just called wire conduit

22:20 and uh get some of these wires kind of cleaned up and then I'll show you how that looks real quick I actually forgot one thing for our charge controller it comes with this uh thermometer for the battery so it just plugs into the bottom of it and then this is the sensor and you don't actually want it touching the

22:45 battery you just want it uh very close to it so I'll just uh probably screw it into the wall probably about there that way it can just read the temperature around that and it helps to not overpower the battery when it's hot out because you don't want uh overheating issues

23:10 came out pretty good it's uh still a little messy here in the middle but can only do so much to hide the wires but as far as like being an open electrical setup I don't think that's too bad a lot of people do like to put inverters in their vents um but that is that's as simple as just

23:31 bolting it right onto the battery so that wouldn't be difficult to just you know add it right onto the positive and negative if someone wanted to do that but that conduit worked out great and uh we've got power to the lights power to the fridge of course the sink runs on its own battery but as far as the

23:52 electrical goes uh pretty straightforward just make sure to check your few sizes you can go on Google just go to Google images and search um 12 volt wire sizing chart and you can figure out what size wire you need for whatever you're adding you know whatever appliances or things you're putting in your camper and

24:14 it's it's pretty straightforward it can seem intimidating at first um but you just check your wire sizes check your few sizes make sure you have solid connections between everything and works out just fine so let me know if you have any questions and uh see in the next one