CAMPERVAN ELECTRICAL | The Ultimate Guide

Hey, what's up guys? Welcome to this video and welcome to my channel. In this video, I'm going to be explaining how the hell a van build electrical system works. I know, it seems super intimidating, but it's actually way simpler than it looks. So I'm gonna do my best to explain it to you. When I first started learning about van build electrical, I started watching all these videos and I was like, what the... But I just kept watching the videos and eventually I had that, ah, moment where I finally like at least thought that I understood it pretty well. And I'm telling you, it's one of those things that seems really fricking complicated, but then you just keep watching videos, you keep watching videos and you get a better understanding and eventually you have that moment where you get it. There's a lot of little details that other videos will sort of do a better job at explaining than me, but in this video, I'm going to give you a big overarching view of everything just so you have the fundamentals in order to build your own system. So without further ado, let's get into it. To start off, you have your three main systems. You have your inputs, outputs, and then storage. Your inputs are where all your energy is coming from. So this can be solar panels, this can be the van's electrical system, this can be shore power if you're plugging into an outlet, but all the energy that's coming into your system, that's your inputs. And when you get energy from whether it's solar or whether it's the front of the van, you have to have a little box that kind of converts the power from what it is into 12 volt power that your system can use. And that's what these little components do. This Victron solar charger takes energy from the solar panels and inverts it into usable energy by your system. And this box here takes energy from the front of the van, so it charges when I'm actually driving and the car is on. This takes that energy, inverts it, and then again brings it back into the system. And then in the system that I have, I can actually take power from an outlet, so I can actually plug the van into an outlet and I can take power that way. Once we have all the inputs, we need to store the energy somewhere, and that's where we get to the storage section. Let's say you're somewhere where it's like full sun, solar panels are getting energy all day. You can run all your components off that usually because the power is coming in, going straight to your system. But once it gets dark, if you didn't have a storage system, all your components would just die because there's no energy coming in. And obviously, what are we using for storage? That is batteries. These are our Battle Born batteries. There's a couple of companies that make batteries, but in our opinion, Battle Born is the best company to go with. They're just really solid. And it's not just because they're sponsoring this build, it's because their batteries are really good. The reason that I reached out to them initially was because I just heard so many good things from other van lifers. So I decided to reach out to them and then they ended up sponsoring the build, which was sick because they're such an awesome company. What batteries enable you to do is take the on-demand energy that you've stored. So imagine having a phone that needs to be plugged into the wall all the time. It's just not useful at all because you can't take it anywhere. It's the same with van builds. So if you always have to be plugged in or you're tied to always being in full sun, it's not really that capable. So you have to have batteries to store the energy so you can use it whenever you want. Getting onto the last system is the output. So the outputs are everything that you think of when you think of van life electrical. So you got your fridge, your heater, your max fan, your outlets, all of the things that you're using on a daily basis, those are your outputs. This side of the system is generally the more complicated side just because there's a lot more components and a lot of different things going on, but I promise it's a lot simpler than it seems. So this gets pretty intimidating because people are like, what gauge wire do I use? What fuse do I use? How do I not light my entire van on fire? That's fair. But if you just take it one component at a time, it gets pretty simple. And the best way to do this is just writing everything down. So once you have everything here, let's figure out the two main categories of things. This is where it gets a little confusing, but I promise it's simpler than it sounds. Just stick with me. First, you have your 12-volt stuff, and then you have your 120-volt stuff. 12-volt is the voltage your batteries normally sit at, and it's good enough to power most things in your van. Lights, max fan, fridge, water pump, stuff like that is all 12-volt. You know which things are 12-volt because it has two wires coming from it, a positive and a negative. There's no ground with 12-volt. Then on the other side of things, you have 120-volt. 120-volt energy is way more powerful. Think of 12-volt energy, and then charge it up with like 87 cups of coffee. That's what 120-volt energy is. And things that need 120-volt are things like outlets, water heaters, induction cooktops, stuff like that needs 120-volt. 12-volt stuff can take energy directly from your batteries, but for the 120-volt stuff, you need to charge it up to get it to the voltage it needs to be. And that's where your inverter comes in. This component inverts 12-volt into 120-volt energy. I use the Victron MultiPlus 3000-watt inverter. It definitely is enough for our water heater, our induction cooktop, and then all the outlets that we're gonna be using to charge drone batteries. Last year, we went out to the desert and shot off this insane laser in the middle of the desert. It was really frickin' cool. But we needed 120-volt energy to run the laser, and the van somehow powered it perfectly. We were just out in the middle of nowhere shooting this laser off. So it's really, really cool to have 120-volt energy wherever you are. So you have your system. You have all your little components. How does it all fit together? So every component in your system has a positive and negative side. Your batteries, your fridge, your outlets, everything has positive and negative. And basically, you just need to connect them all together. It's a little bit more complicated than that with bus bars and breakers, but again, take it step-by-step, and it'll make sense. So you have your solar panels. You have positive and negative. So you need that energy to go through your solar charge controller, and then from there to your system. And the best way to consolidate all of your systems together is bus bars, because it's basically like these big terminals where instead of bringing the solar stuff directly to the battery, which just wouldn't make any sense, you can extend the terminals of the battery, basically, connect your bus bar to the battery, and then you have four extra terminals to connect everything. So negative from the negative panels goes to your negative bus bar. Positive from your panels goes to the positive bus bar. Same for the DC-DC charger that comes from the front of the van. Once that goes through the system, you put the positive to the positive bus bar and the negative to the negative. Batteries, same thing. Positive to the positive, negative to the negative. Some people put their batteries in a series, which means positive, negative, positive, negative, but I would recommend going in parallel. So connect all your positives together, and then connect all your negatives together. And then from there, like everything else, connect your negative to your negative bus bar, positive to your positive bus bar. In my system, you'll notice that all the wires go through breakers. And basically what these breakers do is protect each component. So if there's a short in this side of the system, it's not gonna make it to the bus bar, or it's not gonna make it to the inverter. I'm not gonna get into specifics of what breakers I used where, because there's a lot of really good YouTube videos out there that you can check out. Will Prowse has a bunch of really good system designs. And yeah, specifics on each breaker depends on which component you actually use. Now, we just talked about inputs. Let's go to your outputs. On the outputs, the same principles apply. So for your 12-volt side of things, what you're gonna wanna do is you're gonna wanna get a fuse panel. So basically, instead of wiring your lights, your fridge, all of that directly into the battery, you want a fuse panel so you can isolate it all. So on this fuse panel, you'll have one breaker that's for your lights, one breaker that's for your water pump, and in each one, you have positive and negative. So same thing applies. This fuse panel basically just takes one cord of power and breaks it up into a bunch of different ones that go to different components. So you got your positive stuff here, negative stuff here, and honestly, it's as simple as that. You just have to find now what fuse you should use for each component. All right, so real quick, I'm gonna go over the actual components that I use in my system so you guys can get an understanding of at least what I used. Starting off, we have the batteries. I talked about the batteries a little bit before, but we use Battleborn batteries. Like I said, they are a sponsor for this build, but we wanted to use them well before that. And like I said, I reached out to them specifically because I heard nothing but great things. So I would recommend Battleborn. They're priced super competitively and we've had nothing but great experiences with them. As far as the rest of the components, here's what we are rocking. So first off is the MultiPlus 3000 watt inverter. Then we have a Victron solar charge controller, a Victron DC to DC charger from the front. And then on top of the van, we have Renogy solar panels. Now I'm gonna go into the actual van and show you how everything fits together in the actual van. All right guys, so here I am. I'm gonna give you a rough run through of my electric system. I already talked about the different inputs, but this is what it actually looks like in the van. I know it looks super complicated, but I promise you it's not. So remember when I was talking about inputs, I talked about solar and I talked about the front of the van, just the starter battery. So those are our two inputs. That right there is a solar charge controller. So that takes energy from the solar panels, converts it to 12 volts and brings it into the system. Over here, we have our Orion 12 volts to 12 volts, 30 amp charger. That is what's getting power from the front of the van and bringing it back to the battery system. As you can see, there's a lot of wires and stuff. These two components aren't directly plugged into the battery, but with electricity, essentially everything that's connected to the positive side is positive. So this terminal, which is called a bus bar and this right here, this is just as good as hooking up to the battery itself because everything is connected. As with this, this is my negative circuit. So when energy comes in from these two systems, it goes to the positive. And then if there's any extra, it goes to the battery. So there's four 100 amp hour Battle Born lithium batteries in here. This is more than enough to charge the induction cooktop over here, as well as the water heater and everything else in the van. So I've talked about inputs. So we got our solar and then also this input. The multi-plus inverter that I have is also really cool because it's not only an inverter, but it's also a shore power hookup. So as you can see right here, this is connected to an electric extension cord and I can also charge the van in the house. But usually when I'm on the road, obviously those are the two main inputs. Before you get too confused, I'm gonna go back to what I was saying before about outputs. So there are two outputs, this input, you don't really have to worry about it because most systems don't have it. But if you do want shore power, the multi-plus is a great option. So moving on, we have our outputs and what kind of outputs do we have? So there's two main ones. Right over here is our 12 volt stuff. 12 volt stuff is usually a little bit low energy. For example, the fridge is 12 volt, the lights are 12 volt. The WeBoost down there that's boosting our cell signal, that is also 12 volt. So this is pretty low energy stuff. But for these babies right here, these 120 volt outlets, you have to amplify the energy. So that's where the multi-plus comes in handy. So basically this cord right here is running from our 12 volt power, running through a fuse all the way to the multi-plus. And the multi-plus is charging that energy super, super intense. And then it's going back out to our outlet. So we got an outlet here, we got an outlet here, and it runs all the way up there. Then also I have one up at the front of the van that you can't see. And that's where all the drones, laptops, water heater, induction stove, all of the super high intense energy systems work off of. Anyways, I hope that gives you a better idea of van build electrical. I appreciate you guys for watching. I really hope that helps simplify things. I promise it's one of those things that is really fricking complicated until it clicks. And then finally when it clicks, it just, you understand the whole thing. And all of the days spent watching YouTube videos will pay off. We'll be doing a van tour soon, I promise. We're insanely excited to show you guys our second build. But other than that, that's it for this video. I will see you guys on the next one. ♪ I dreamt we spoke, I dreamt we spoke again ♪ ♪ It had been so long, it had been so long ♪ ♪ My mind fell in the blinds ♪ ♪ I dreamt we spoke, I dreamt we spoke again ♪ ♪ It had been so long, it had been so long ♪ ♪ Your voice was like a ghost in my head ♪ ♪ I dreamt we spoke, I dreamt we spoke again ♪