overvanalyzed

The astute readers among you might recognize this post is a bit late for a year-end review. Unfortunately, part of owning a new RV is dealing with problems and my rig has been out of commission for about 8 weeks now due to a failure in the electrical system.

First off, some text for the search engines. The Tellaro also goes by the name Sequence, which has different cabinetry colors. This difference is because LazyDays sells the Tellaro and CampingWorld sells the Sequence. It's silly, and also I found both of them at both brands in my searching. Of note, the version of the Tellaro/Sequence I have specifically is the 2nd half of production where the AGM + Generator system was replaced with a small 200AH Lithium system.

In 2021, I finished the conversion of a Dodge Grand Caravan into a lightweight campervan which I used to visit all 32 of Indiana's state parks and lakes. The original goal was to try out the concept and see how much I would or could use it and what improvements I'd like in a full-size build out. One big learning was that I didn't have a single trip that wasn't one way or another iterrupted by work related activity (always my choice, but sometimes it's easier to do an hour of work while you're away than it is to clean up after someone else does it for you).

I sort of already started on this project, before I really fully nailed down the goals and expectations. But that seems to be the way things go with me these days, so I'm alright with it 🙂.

Ok, I have a good idea of what I want in a final electrical solution. It needs to be reliable, flexible extensible and it needs to have enough capacity that I don't have to worry about how I use it (within reason).

Ok, so the simple setup I started with fell flat. I'm a natural-born problem solver, and this is a problem I'm fully qulified to solve!

So, what did we learn?

1. We need much more capacity
2. We need faster charging, with more options
3. Solar is unlikely to be successful as a single charging option

Great, so, get a bigger solar generator! After all, the ECOFLOW Delta has 5x the power of your current solution, and charges extremely fast.

Back in Starting Electrical, I wrote about a simple solution to getting some power deployed in my van. This was excellent, as it gave me the ability to practically measure how I really used power with some test trips.

What I discovered was what I needed wasn't necessarily a massive battery bank, but the ability to efficiently use that bank. This efficiency comes in three parts. In this post, I'll discuss the challenges that came from the portable battery solution.

You can’t sleep in it if it doesn’t have a bed…

In a minivan conversion, you really can’t do anything until you decide on the bed situation. The bed is the dominant use of space. It seems like most folks build something custom, and that’s fine — but it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

I’m not sure what size electrical system I need. Back of the napkin, and with my personality, I feel like 200W of solar, a DC-to-DC Charger, and 400Ah of usable battery banks would suit me well but… That also is an extremely expensive solution that I haven’t demonstrated I need.

When I sit down to think about what I’m going to do with the van, and what my demands are it paints a different picture. The things I want to run are:

I wanted, for both me and you, to sit down and write out what the goals in the first build out were. I talked briefly in Buying the Van about how the idea is to be a starter van to find out what I need and don’t need in a build.