This is your friendly vanlife neighborhood. Talk about everything vanlife from tech to shitdump.
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Everyone’s welcome. The Hippie and the Hipster. The Vanagon driver, the Sprinter dweller. No matter where you from.
Happy to share that I test mounted everything and it all works! Getting over 400W charging from b2b + solar! Have it charging on shore power right now for the initial charge.
Looking forward to not having to wonder if the battery will die over the weekend any more.
Clean setup 👌
Nice. But is there anything wrong with Jackery? I got a solar charger from them recently and so far my experience has been very positive.
Jackery's fine for casual use but they're super limited for full-time vanlife - most models have low continuous output and the propriatary charging system means you're stuck with their ecosystem forever.
It's simply not enough power for the money, especially with a refrigerator running. Mine is a refurb and has been less than reliable with charging to simply shutting itself down overnight. The 12V outlet on mine is also limited to 10A, so if fridge, lights, and fan are on, the sink pump will shut it down.
It got me started, but it's time to do it right.
is there anything wrong with Jackery?
There is nothing inherently wrong with Jackery in particular or "power stations" in general. They will perform to spec and as designed. Here's my copypasta on the topic of power setups:
== begin ==
In general the process is:
== end ==
IME, anyone who does the legwork will get good results with either approach, whether DIY or a "power station".
The problem is they are marketed as Magic Solutions to folks who don't/won't/can't do the legwork. "If I just spend a lot of money on it I'm sure it will be fine". And maybe it will. Often it won't, because the buyer didn't know what they needed or what they actually bought. I help owners of power stations frequently over on reddit; such help mainly consists of quoting relevant sections of their own device's manual to explain why it's doing what it's doing.
I understand it can be an onslaught of information at first so I try to help with overviews like: choosing solar panels for your power station.
I’ve never seen a WeBoost before (I don’t think they sell them over here in Europe), I’d be intrigued to know how well they work. It’s a nice clean setup, I love Victron gear, it makes for an easy setup and it’s great to be able to monitor everything remotely. What batteries are you using?
LiTime 200Ah. The weboost works so long as you have some signal. I've been places where I had no data to getting 8Mbps with the booster on.