If the thought of packing up your entire life and hitting the road in a van is pulling on your heartstrings, then you really wanna check out this video. This van has got the ultimate setup to get you on the road, free camping, totally off-the-grid, not connecting to 240V power, and enjoying the #VanLife lifestyle.
So this is a Fiat Ducato 2018 that the customer’s brought into us with full cabinetry set up in it, and we’ve put in all the gadgets to keep them powered off-grid.
Let’s go take a look.
Okay, so down the back here, we have got all of the brains, or power, behind this 12 volt system. So, on the top here is gonna be a mattress. You’ve got drawers and we’ve got all of the power in here.
So firstly, we’ve got an Enerdrive. It’s an EN3DC40+ DC2DC charger. So basically, what this does, is it takes the power from the solar that’s on the roof, or the power from the alternator of the car when you’re driving, and it converts it into power. It then basically stores it into these three, 12 volt batteries, so it’s converting it into power for these batteries. We’ve got three 125 amp hour batteries in here, and we also have got the inverter in there, as well.
So this is what is keeping you completely off-the-grid. The power’s going from those two, from the alternator or the solar, into the DC-DC charger, then into the three batteries. So if you’re at night, or the sun’s not shining, you will have power for your fridge and all your gadgets, via these batteries that are stored in here.
So speaking of solar panels, we’ve installed, on the roof, three, 150 watt solar panels. This allows you to park up and not move for weeks. As long as the sun is shining, your fridge will be cold and your lights will turn on.
So in the back here, we’ve mounted quite a few little power points. These are running the lights that have been fitted in, and then also, we’ve got some fans throughout the vehicle as well. We’ve also put in a voltmeter here, so this is telling us the status of the three batteries in the back, and so the customer knows when they’re getting low and when he needs to start driving. You can also see behind me here, we’ve got a fridge. Now, this is a 12 volt fridge. Now we’ve wired that in, so that is gonna be running when the sun’s not shining or if the car’s turned off, that fridge will be running and keeping all your food cold.
So in here, we’ve got another bank of switches. This is controlling more lights and fans, I’ll just, lights on-off. We’ve got the 240V sparky here, literally installing all of that 240V power. So this customer wants some extra creature comforts of home, they’re not just happy with USB sockets and that sort of thing.
They’re actually getting your normal 240V outlets installed. So these will power devices via the inverter, which is just behind me here. So this is an Enerdrive 2000 watt inverter. Now, it’s gonna depends what device, what each of your device draws, as to what we can run here. But 2000 watts, you should be able to run a microwave, depending on the microwave, you should be able to run a toaster, kettle, coffee machine, hair straightener. I don’t know what else you wanna run, but, oh, also laptops is probably a key one in this sort of setup, is they want to power all their laptops. So this will be in here, 240 Volts, on/off, just like normal, and more powering all of your lights and fans within the car as well on these sort of switches here.
This really is a mint setup, that’s gonna keep this customer off-the-grid and out of those caravan parks for really, as long as they want to.
If you’re interested in joining in in the #VanLife movement and getting yourself the ultimate #vanlife setup we can definitely get you powered up to stay off-the-grid.
Give us a call. 1300 227 353. Email us at info@amae.net.au, or comment below.
