Powering caravan off grid

[SteveB69]

Hi, can anyone advise me on the following, I suffer number dyslexia and find the amps, wattages etc confusing...

I want to be able to run my caravans electrics off grid.
I use my caravan as an office also & my electricle requirements are along the lines of
2 x 22" monitors, laptop, running around 6 - 8 hrs per day. Then kettle boil around 12 times per day, 1 shower per day, caravan lights, phone charger & fridge 24/7.

For that kind of power usage should I be looking into petrol generators, which I imagine I would just start, plug into my caravans mains socket & have electric for as long as I have petrol to run it.

Or would I be better of looking into solar and leisure batteries, but how many leisure batteries would I need to run the above and how long would it take them to charge back up each day?

Any help or links to products would be freatly appreciated..

 

[Damian]

Your question is almost impossible to answer without knowing exactly what power is drawn by the various items you want to power.
However just talking of the fridge, it will not run on 12v and even thinking about running a generator 24/7 is ridiculous as well as very dangerous, and it is noisy, even more so in the dead of night, so run the fridge on gas.

A suitable type of generator will be very expensive as it must be a pure sine wave generator and even then if you run out of fuel you stand a very good chance of a high level spike which will fry your van electrics.

As for other items, again the water heater will have to be run by gas but other than that I cannot advise without knowing the power consumption of the other items.

 

[Anseo]

For that sort of power usage you will need a pretty big solar set-up, but it is do-able.

https://www.parkedinparadise.com/solar-calculator/
This site could be worth investigating or even signing up to:
https://www.solarpaneltalk.com/

With a generator it is much simpler to set up though relatively costly and you will face other problems such as where to site your caravan with permission to run a generator most of the day.

I guess that as a minimum a 3Kva generator would be preferred (you don't mention heating or cooking - are you going to use bottled gas also ?)

 

[waffler]

Off grid forget the kettle. The laptop will be a problem. Mine charges at 19.5 volt so only mains will do. If you use a generator it must be pure sine or it will wreck your laptop. An alternative could be a pure sine inverter which would power the laptop and use your battery. You would need a big solar panel for that. Could you work on a tablet? They can be charged from the battery. The monitors would almost certainly run on 12 volt if you can get the right connections. If you need more help shout.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Caravans are designed to be flexible living units, so trying to use one as an office is likely to be difficult especially off grid.

My suggestion would be to use gas for running the fridge, and any other heating appliance, including using the gas hob to heat a kettle. This will dramatically reduce the mount of electrical power you might need, and makes it more likely you can run your other appliances by a combination of battery (using an inverter to produce 230V ac) and solar panels - but even so you would need extra batteries and a large array of panels to produce enough energy to run the appliances during the day and to charge the batteries ready for night time.

If you were only using the computer during the day, then perhaps a generator may be an answer for day time use only, but it really is not a very economic way of producing power, and it is also highly anti social.

Perhaps a change to your business plan is necessary.

 

[SteveB69]

Thanks for the advice from all who've answered, yes of course I can use gas for the kettle, didn't think of that. Also didn't think about heating