This is the schematic of the main electrical installation. It is all based on the Victron Easysolar 12 1600, which is basically a combination of a 12v battery charger, 1600VA power inverter, MPPT 100/50 solar inverter and some fuses all in 1 big blue metal box. The following connections are made to the Easysolar:
- Power input is connected to the main in (single fase 230v input plug on the exterior of the van)
- Power output is connected to several regular 230v sockets throughout the van
- MPPT is connected with 8mm2 wires to the solar panels on the roof
- Battery Red+ is connected with 35mm2 through a main fuse and a main switch
- Battery Black- is connected with 35mm2 through a Victron shunt
To be able to charge the household battery on less sunny days, an Orion-Tr smart 30A DC DC charger is added which allows to charge the battery with more or less 30 Amps from the alternator while driving. This is connected as follows:
- Ground wire connected with Black 25mm2 to Easysolar battery ground and to the car battery ground
- V_in connected with Red 25mm2 to Red+ car battery
- V_out connected with Red 25mm2 to Red+ of the Easysolar input
The common ground is connected to a ground rail and the common +12v is connected to a small fuse box to power the 12v consumers.
The house hold battery is a 200Ah LiFePo4 battery, which is good because it weights only 21kgs and can be drained down to 20% of its capacity without reducing life expectance. (A comparable effective capacity with lead-acid would be 2 big 200Ah batteries 70kgs each.)
Most of the components used are Victron, they are all connected through USB to a raspberry Pi which runs VenusOS. This is an open-source software, supported by Victron. It makes it very easy to setup the system and to monitor the state of the system.
