Van Life Power Systems: Pros and Cons and COSTS Compared!

we are going to be talking about three different types of power sources because a lot of you as you're thinking about your uh your new life and living in the van you have a lot of choices most of you have more choices than you think you do so I just want to lay them all out with their strengths and their weaknesses and that way you can make a more informed decision generator creating just carrying just a gen a generator producing your own electricity with it solar power which is I've got a solar panel here and a solar controller going into a battery so that's a you know you can mount this on your roof or you can have it out going in and out so that's you can do this two ways but this is a a mounted system inside your rig or solar panels going outside and then finally the third one is a a power station with an external solar panel you sit outside so they each have their own really strong points and they're only really weak points so the key thing is that you decide what's most important to you so for a lot of you you can't install it you can't afford to pay someone to install it so that would eliminate a mounted system in your roof you're not going to go up you're not going to cut a hole in your roof you don't want to cut a hole in your roof and so this would work really well for you because it's Plug and Play No installation or this would work because it's Plug and Play No install installation I'm actually going to show you a fourth system which requires virtually no money and so maybe that will be the one you work with you ultimately decide to buy so get stay to the end of the video and I'll show you the fourth system which is very very cheap so the your first thing you're going to want to know is how much do they cost to get into so I'll try to give you a wide range I'll show you what I've got here but I'll give you an idea of the different prices so if you're going to buy a generator uh this one was five hundred dollars this is a 2000 watt dual fuel I mean it'll run on propane on gas I would recommend this to you buy dual fuel you have to have a battery charger again this is just a battery charger it's all plug and play and then you have to have a battery for both of these systems you have to buy your own battery with of course with the power station it comes with it's in battery internal this happened to be a battery I have on hand the cheapest you can get a battery for on Amazon is about two hundred dollars so figure 500 for the generator uh 200 for the battery and 200 and again the the size the quality huge range but I'm going to say 200 so you've got five six seven eight nine you've got about nine hundred dollars here and it does not come with an inverter of course this is an inverter generator so you can plug all your 110 appliances directly in so I'm going to suggest that you buy a if you want to run larger appliances uh then like a microwave then you're going to want to buy an inverter and I'm going to give you 200 to buy a 2000 watt inverter so that's this system it's going to end up costing you about a thousand bucks 100 200 and a lot of variables you can spend a lot more you can't spend a whole lot less but you can spend less next we have a you build it yourself and mount it on the roof solar power system what will you need you'll need a solar panel this was the only solar panel I happen to have lying around so this is a folding external one but you can mount you can when you build your own solar system you can buy these portable panels and Lay It Outside a lot of people do that that really diminishes the difficulty of installation if you're not going up on the roof and mounting it and cutting holes and running drilling wires so you can run wires that really makes it a whole lot easier but there are a lot of disadvantages to that and we're going to talk about many of the disadvantages there are a lot of huge advantages to just mounting on your roof never thinking about it again you'll need a solar controller you need a solar panel solar controller and then you need a battery so the battery will be a couple hundred bucks the controller will be a couple hundred bucks 100 to 200 depending on the quality you buy and you're going to need a solar panel so I figured on all of that you can buy a 200 watt hard panel kit for 300 that will include your controller the two panels the controller and mounting brackets so for about 300 bucks you can get your solar and your controller and then your battery will be 200 and now you don't have an inverter so you can buy and I'm giving you 300 to buy a good quality 2000 watt pure sign inverter so all together this is going to cost you eight hundred dollars that's your initial cost you'll have some cabling some fuses it's going to run up a little bit more but that's usually true of nearly all of them so that one's going to be about a thousand this one's going to be about 800. and then finally let's talk about the power stations that's what a lot of you are going to want by far the easiest of them all you uh you get by a solar panel this is the only one I had but this was a 200 water uh so you buy a solar panel you buy the power station of the size you want and can afford you can buy a very small one uh most of the small ones are not going to run a fridge that's what most of you are concerned about I'm going to build these systems here that can run fridges so that's the prices I'm giving you uh if you don't want to run fridge then you can save a lot of a lot of money by buying a smaller system this is a truly all-in-one kit plug and play and that's why so many of you are buying them you can get a 200 watt solar panel either two 100s or or one 200 for about two hundred dollars this will run you uh depends on what size you want at the cheap end 300 a little better one is going to be up to 700 so you are in a price range and size range that you have to decide for yourself do you want to buy a better brand name and those are all decisions you have to make if you just want the cheapest possible thing then this can be pretty pretty cheap I have a table I'm going to put up on the screen and we're going to go through it uh so we're going to talk about the initial cost I have the initial costs wildly placed at a thousand for the generator 800 for the uh the initial the amount your own panels and about the same for a panel you you carry out but it's everything is mounted inside you have to buy the battery and then I'm figuring about 900 for this to be able to run a fridge again that's the standard I'm setting here I'm talking about systems that can run a fridge you can't buy one of the little tiny ones and plan to run a fridge so uh you need at least 200 watts of solar to run a fridge you need at least 1200 Watt hours of battery so the cost per watt of this is 66 cents you've bought 1500 watts it costs you a thousand dollars at 66 cents a watt the cost of this is four dollars cost uh what is that nearly eight times as much per watt that you're getting so if you look at it that way these are terrible deals this is a fantastic deal and this is four dollars and fifty cents a watt because it's just a little bit more expensive now the first category we'll consider is cost to operate ongoing expenses and I'm going to give each one a scale of 1 0 to 10 and 10 is the best off the charts so at the end of this list we want if you got all tens well you're perfect but they won't get all tens so the cost to operate on this is zero meaning the lowest the worst because man you're going to keep buying gas or propane you're going to keep buying oil and changing oil it's going to need more many more repairs than the others so the ongoing costs of this are very high so it gets zero the ongoing costs of this are non-existent if you put the panels on the roof it's you install it once and you never think about it again with a little luck you can never think about again for 5 10 30 years if you buy quality components so extremely high this gets a 10. um the one reason I would give if you put your panels outside you're probably going to buy them more you're going to carry them around more these break easier these these soft uh uh these break they won't last as long so you're going to have to replace them sooner I'm giving it a seven I'm knocking off three points same thing with this uh the ongoing cost to operate which are zero of course but this panel will fail much sooner so I'm only going to give this system a seven as well okay storms the big reason I just bought this generator was because uh we had some a long series of Storms and of course these don't produce any power because they're solar panels but this creates power on all time this gets a 10 for weather impact the storms these two because they're dependent on solar because uh the external system uh isn't going to uh is going you can't have it out in the storm these things will have control words and the panels aren't waterproof and it has to come in so it Crea storm not only creates the hassle of uh you have to bring it in but it's not producing any power and so these get zeros for how they handle storms that gets a 10. the mounted system metal mounted on the roof you don't have to do anything so there's no inconvenience but you're not getting any power either and so it still gets a zero uh I think the next most important factor is can you park in the shade because it's going to get hot in the Summer Wherever You Go in this country it gets hot in the Summer with the generator you can park in the shade no problem it gets a 10. with a mounted system on the roof you get I'm giving you zero because the the whole van for that to work the whole van has to be outside in the sun and there's zero shade there and it's going to be really really hot with the mounted partly mounted the hybrid the partly mounted system and solar panels then yes you can get a long enough cable you can park in the shade so the hybrid system where most of the part of the system is mounted inside and the solar panels go outside I gave that a 10 because you can park in the shade and run a long cord out to the portable solar panel this one of course gets a 10 because you can just carry the whole thing out you can find the sun you can carry the whole thing out park it in there while your van's in the shade it also gets a 10. one more thing to consider when uh talking about shade and being hot because that's very important when you think about solar this can run an AC so even if you have to in your somewhere there is no shade and that happens you can run an air conditioner you can run it with that and not with the others that's a pretty big deal okay next for a lot of you this is one of the most important factors is it plug and play the ease of installation and again this is Plug and Play you just plug it all together I gave this a 10 because it's always pretty easy to use it's all plug and play and a good you know if you buy Honda for example this should start first pull every poll every time forever on a mounted system inside I'm going to give that a 10 because uh from there on in you don't do anything you just you don't even do anything but watch the Power roll in it's it's the the true king of a mounted system on your roof uh you've got you do nothing you know think about it again it just always works and again this is for ease of installation this is a plug and play it gets 10. you just plug it all together run your panel outside and Away you go plug and play 10. okay now I have something I'm calling the ease of use once you've bought it uh and I'm thinking kind of a babysitting do you have to babysit the system does it take thought does it take effort with the generator I gave it a 10. other than rain and you can buy tents for these things that you put in it or you can put out a tarp system where it's sitting inside rain it's it's plugging it's done you don't have to think about it again a mounted system gets a 10. uh the ease of use uh the amount of babysitting requires is zero so you get a 10. the highest uh the highest value with the external hybrid system I'm giving that a five because you've got a solar panel outside a sudden wind comes up you don't want it blowing away your neighbor's dog's over here peeing on it you got to keep your eye on it you don't want them out there peeing on it or walking on it or chewing on it if you've got to be aware that rain is coming anytime you have an external solar panel you've got a you're going to babysit it so for ease of use I gave this zero a baby uh babysitting because it has to be baby sat constantly any one of those problems you've got to get it right you got to go grab it bring it back in for the hybrid system it's just the solar panel I gave it five I gave it Five Points because all you're worried about is the solar panel our next factor is maintenance uh I gave this a zero because it requires constant maintenance again this is a mounted system and the um it's 10 because you plug it play forget it uh these break sooner so your reliability is not as good as a hard mounted panel so I'm giving this a five the hybrid system because these panels just don't don't last on the battery maintenance I'm giving it a zero as well because of course you've got out external panels and that hurts it but the big thing is with any of these other systems if one component fails you take it out you put a new one in that's it this uh one component fails you're mailing the whole thing back for service so I'm giving it a zero for long-term maintenance because of that fuss factor and the risk of being without power we're going to look next we're going to look at will it run power hungry items so like we said uh for example AC can you run an air conditioner none of the solar base systems can run air conditioner yes technically it is possible if you have the money to throw at the solar panels if you have the room to carry all the solar panels to mount them on your roof if you have the money to buy all the batteries you're going to require then technically yes solar can run air conditioning but for for nearly all of us uh who are on a tight budget no no chance you're not running an air conditioner these all get zero because you can't run those big items and this gets 10. so that's one of the big things about it you can run when you run anything essentially holes in the roof I know a lot of you are afraid to to put holes in your roof so I'm going to count that as a factor no hole in the roof 10 hole in the roof zero no hole in the roof ten no hole on the roof 10. one last factor I want to consider is when you're driving how much power do you get while you're driving or are you just going to do without well with the generator you don't do without because you're not getting any so I'm giving the generator zero for driving mounted on the roof gets a 10 you're driving you're getting power 100 of the time uh external system mounted internally but with external batteries then know that gets a zero because it has to be outside now the power station is a little bit different because it comes equipped from the box to be able to plug it in and get some power it's limited so I'm giving a power station 5 for while you're driving for those of you who have next to no money and very little power draws you don't care about running a fridge if you just want some lights your phone uh a fan I've got another solution that's by far cheaper than anything else and that is just a little USB system so you buy a battery Bank this is a small one this is pretty cheap I don't remember how much that was but it was pretty cheap and you buy these little uh folding solar panels this takes up no room in your rig if you're in a car you're going to love this this is a winner on almost every front you just can't operate much nearly all of them now come with multiple USB ports this is a really good USB lantern that I like a lot it's running on this charging it's charging it right this second you can buy these that are 60 watts for about 60 70 maybe up to a hundred dollars but then you've got 60 watt and that's pretty serious power they'll come with multiple USBS and for a lot of you that's all you're going to need this could really be a perfect solution for you you know my goal here in all that I do on this channel and on my website is to make sure you have the highest quality of life you can that you follow your dreams your dreams come true that you don't just survive and barely make it in life you live a great life of your choosing that's what I want for you so I have a couple of videos here that I think will help you do that check those out

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 36,067

Keywords: car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, camper, camp, boondock, travel, caravan, tiny, house, RTR, Bob Wells, Nomadland, CheapRVLiving, Cheap RV Living, vanlife, van life, how to live in a van, van dwelling, van tour, van conversion, living in a van, camper van, van build, diy van build, sprinter van, van living, #vanlife, van dweller, campervan, vandwelling, diy camper van, RV Life, Living in an RV, Class B, Class C, Truck Living, Living in a car, boondocking, Living in a RV

Id: SB1STBwgq6M

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 26 2023