THREE TIMES THE CURRENT: VANILLA’S BLUE SMART CHARGER UPGRADE

The Fogstar changed my attitude to battery power. Now I’m changing how quickly I can put that power back.

There is something slightly ridiculous about becoming excited by a blue aluminium box that turns 230 volts into 12 volts.

And yet here we are.

Vanilla’s electrical system has been evolving at a fairly spectacular rate. What started as a conventional campervan leisure-battery setup has gradually become something much more capable: a 105Ah Fogstar LiFePO₄ battery, Victron SmartShunt, Victron solar controller, 200W of solar on the roof, 30A DC-DC charging from the engine and a small army of Jackery power stations waiting in reserve.

The weak link wasn’t really a weak link at all.

It was my Victron Blue Smart IP65 12/10 charger.

It has been brilliant.

But now I want more.

A lot more.

I’m going from 10 amps to 30 amps.

And that changes things.

My existing 10A Blue Smart has done exactly what I bought it to do.

Plug it into the mains, connect it to the leisure battery, open VictronConnect and there it is: voltage, charging current, charging stage and history.

Simple. Dependable. Very Victron.

It is also impressively compact. The 12/10 IP65 measures approximately 190 × 105 × 60mm and weighs about 0.9kg.

It is sealed to IP65, convection cooled and designed to cope with a far rougher life than most domestic chargers.

This is Victron’s introduction to the Blue Smart IP65 family:

For years, 10A would have been plenty.

Even with the Fogstar, it still works perfectly well.

But there is a difference between works and works the way I now use Vanilla.

My Fogstar is a 105Ah LiFePO₄ battery.

At 10A, a substantial recharge is an overnight sort of affair.

If I’ve used 80Ah, I’m looking at roughly eight hours just to replace that energy before allowing for the final charging stages.

That was completely normal to me when Vanilla had an AGM battery.

Lithium has changed my expectations.

My Orion can already throw serious current into the battery when I’m driving. My solar can quietly shovel energy back in whenever the weather cooperates.

Then I connect to 230V and…

10 amps.

It’s a little like arriving at the fire with a very good watering can.

Nothing wrong with the watering can. I just now own a fire engine.

The new candidate is the Victron Blue Smart IP22 12/30.

Thirty amps.

Three times the maximum charging current of my IP65 12/10.

Yet physically, it isn’t three times the charger.

Not even remotely.

My existing 10A unit is roughly:

190 × 105 × 60mm

The 30A IP22 is:

245 × 108 × 65mm

That’s the part I find extraordinary.

It is just 55mm longer.

The width changes by only 3mm.

The depth changes by only 5mm.

It weighs around 1.3kg.

So for a modest increase in the size of the box, I potentially get three times the charging current.

That is an excellent bit of electrical Tetris.

There is a trade-off.

The 30A IP22 isn’t the rugged sealed portable charger that the IP65 is. The 12/30 is fan-assisted and rated IP22, so this is a charger that wants to live somewhere dry and properly ventilated, not sitting outside Vanilla in the rain trying to impersonate a stepping stone.

For me that’s fine.

This is going to be part of Vanilla’s charging arsenal, not something I’m planning to leave lying in a puddle.

Here’s a particularly useful real-world look at the 30A IP22 in a campervan installation:

This is where it gets interesting.

The Fogstar holds 105Ah.

At a nominal 30A bulk charging rate, some very simple maths starts producing some very attractive numbers.

From 50% to full, there’s about 52.5Ah to replace.

52.5 ÷ 30 = 1.75 hours theoretically.

Allow for the charging process slowing as the battery approaches full and I am looking at roughly a couple of hours rather than five or six.

From 20% to full, there is around 84Ah to replace.

84 ÷ 30 = 2.8 hours theoretically.

Again, the final stage means reality takes a little longer.

But we’re now firmly in a few hours, rather than most of the day territory.

And that matters enormously to the way I actually use Vanilla.

Imagine I’ve had a proper winter night in Vanilla.

Diesel heater running.

Fridge running.

Lights.

Phones.

5G router.

Various bits of NIX electronic life quietly nibbling away at the Fogstar.

I wake up with 50 or 60% remaining.

With the old setup, I don’t particularly care because I’ve got solar, alternator charging and Jackery backup.

But suppose I’m home for two hours before heading away again.

That’s where 30A becomes useful.

Plug Vanilla in.

Connect the Blue Smart.

Make a coffee.

Unload.

Reload.

Mess around with something completely unnecessary in the campervan.

Look at VictronConnect fourteen times despite knowing perfectly well what it’s doing.

And a significant chunk of that battery is back.

That’s a fundamentally different proposition.

And this is the bit I really like.

I don’t want this charger to become another permanently wired box buried somewhere inside Vanilla.

I want it portable.

My ideal setup is a professionally made, appropriately fused heavy-duty DC lead terminating in an Anderson connector.

Then the routine becomes beautifully simple:

230V → Blue Smart 30A → Anderson → Fogstar

Click.

Plug.

Charge.

Done.

No lifting seats.

No crocodile clips hanging off battery posts.

No temporary wiring.

And provided the connection is arranged correctly within Vanilla’s existing battery/shunt architecture, the SmartShunt can continue seeing what’s happening.

That means I retain the thing I’ve come to love about this system:

data.

Voltage.

Current.

State of charge.

History.

What went in.

What came out.

Vanilla isn’t merely powered now.

She’s instrumented.

Then there is the slightly bonkers bit.

My Jackerys.

Vanilla now carries around roughly 5kWh of combined stored energy, including the Fogstar.

The Jackery batteries remain separate portable power stations, which is exactly how I want them.

But the 30A Blue Smart gives me another potential bridge between those worlds.

Jackery AC output.

Into the Victron charger.

Victron converts that to controlled DC charging.

Into the Fogstar.

There are conversion losses, obviously. Electricity doesn’t breed in captivity, unfortunately.

But that’s not the point.

The point is flexibility.

If I ever need to transfer some of my portable stored energy into Vanilla’s main 12V system, I can.

And at 30A it becomes genuinely useful rather than painfully slow.

It turns the Jackery from simply being a separate source for 230V appliances into a potential emergency reservoir for the campervan’s core electrical system.

That is exactly what I wanted this whole system to become.

Not one enormous battery.

Several ways of solving the same problem.

This also completes a rather lovely triangle.

When Vanilla is parked:

Solar → Fogstar

When Vanilla is driving:

Alternator → Orion → Fogstar

When 230V is available:

Blue Smart 30A → Fogstar

Three completely different energy sources.

One battery.

One SmartShunt watching the lot.

Then behind that sits Forge, Kindle and the rest of the Jackery fleet acting as the deeper reserve.

It is becoming less like a campervan electrical system and more like a tiny rolling microgrid.

Which, frankly, was always where this was heading.

One reason I keep buying Victron equipment is VictronConnect.

It turns what would otherwise be anonymous electrical boxes into something I can actually understand.

The Blue Smart IP22 has Bluetooth built in, so I can see charging voltage and current, change modes and review charging history from the phone.

For lithium, Victron’s IP22 specification includes a 14.2V lithium absorption voltage and 13.5V storage voltage, and the charger can also be configured through VictronConnect.

This Victron video goes deeper into the charger history and settings inside VictronConnect:

There is something immensely satisfying about sitting inside Vanilla, hearing the heater humming, opening the phone and seeing exactly what the electrical system is doing.

Maybe I’m easily pleased.

Actually, no.

I’m definitely easily pleased by graphs.

This upgrade doesn’t suddenly make my 10A IP65 rubbish.

Quite the opposite.

It’s still an excellent charger.

It’s smaller.

It’s sealed.

It’s silent because there is no cooling fan.

It’s ideal when I don’t need 30A.

And it makes an excellent backup.

So rather than replacing one box with another and throwing the old one into the Cupboard of Forgotten Technology, I suddenly have two tools.

Small. Rugged. Quiet. Weather resistant. Easy to carry.

Much faster. Higher output. Fan cooled. Designed for dry environments. The charger I want when I need serious energy back into the Fogstar quickly.

That’s not duplication.

That’s redundancy.

And redundancy when you’re miles from anywhere in a campervan is rather comforting.

The whole upgrade can almost be reduced to four numbers:

10A → 30A

190mm → 245mm

Three times the current.

Only 55mm extra length.

That is a trade I’m very happy to make.

The 105Ah Fogstar deserves a charger that can exploit one of lithium’s great advantages: the ability to accept substantial charging current for much of the recharge cycle.

The little 10A Blue Smart introduced me to proper intelligent mains charging.

The 30A version takes the same idea and puts its boots on.

This whole Vanilla power project has gradually changed the way I think about travelling off-grid.

A year ago I thought mainly in terms of conserving electricity.

Turn that off.

Don’t use that.

Will the battery last?

How much have I got left?

Now I think much more in terms of energy movement.

Where can it come from?

Where can I store it?

How quickly can I move it?

What is the most efficient route?

Sunshine becomes battery power.

Driving becomes battery power.

A pub with EHU becomes battery power.

The Jackery can become battery power.

And once you start thinking that way, battery anxiety begins to disappear.

The answer isn’t necessarily an enormous battery.

The answer is having several good ways to refill the one you’ve got.

So this isn’t really a story about changing a 10A charger for a 30A charger.

It is another small step in turning Vanilla into the campervan I’ve always wanted.

A van I can disappear in during winter.

A van I can park at a pub without immediately thinking about hookup.

A van capable of a long festival weekend.

A van where the heater can run all night.

A van where the fridge just stays on.

A van where sunshine, diesel, alternator, mains and stored portable energy all quietly cooperate.

And if I’ve flattened the Fogstar more than planned?

Plug in the blue box.

Thirty amps.

Coffee on.

Watch the graph climb.

Vanilla Powered continues. ⚡🔋

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The figures above are checked against Victron’s current manuals: the IP65 12/10 is 190 × 105 × 60mm and 0.9kg, while the IP22 12/30 is 245 × 108 × 65mm and 1.3kg; the 30A model is fan-assisted and Victron lists 14.2V absorption for its Li-ion profile.

And I think your new transparent two-charger image is absolutely the hero for this story. It tells the entire premise before anyone reads a word.