Why I Updated Solar

Three weeks ago, this started with a solar panel. Now I think I've accidentally built a tiny power station inside a Volkswagen. For the last three weeks I've been experimenting with the electrical system in Vanilla, my VW T6.1 campervan. I've charged things, discharged things, run the fridge, used the heating, watched battery levels, moved electricity between different systems and spent an arguably ridiculous amount of time checking the Victron app whenever the sun appears. And after all that? I finally understand what Vanilla's electrical system can actually do. The answer is considerably more than I expected.

The whole experiment began when Adam and Mark at DAPA Campervans in Stafford fitted the new roof solar setup. https://www.dapacampervans.co.uk/ At the time, this felt like another useful upgrade to Vanilla. A better solar panel. A proper Victron controller. More charging potential. Simple. Except it quickly turned into something much bigger. I didn't just want to know whether the solar panel worked. I wanted to know whether solar could genuinely change the way I use Vanilla. Could I stay away from electric hook-up longer? Could solar keep up with the fridge? Could it replace energy used overnight? Could I charge my Jackery power stations from the leisure system? And ultimately: Could Vanilla become genuinely energy independent for normal campervan use? There was only one sensible way to find out. Use it.

For about three weeks I've essentially treated Vanilla as a rolling electrical laboratory. The system centres around my 110Ah AGM leisure battery, with a Victron SmartSolar MPPT 75/15, Victron SmartShunt and Victron Orion Smart 30A DC-DC charger doing the clever stuff. The solar controller is particularly important. https://www.victronenergy.com/solar-charge-controllers/smartsolar-mppt-75-10-75-15-100-15-100-20 Rather than simply connecting the solar panel to the battery and hoping for the best, the MPPT constantly manages the solar input and tries to extract the most useful energy available from the panel. And because it's Bluetooth-connected, I can see what's happening on my phone rather than relying on the traditional campervan electrical diagnostic system of staring at the battery and saying: "That'll probably be all right."

Over the testing period I've seen solar production ranging from fairly modest numbers on poor days right through to approximately 370Wh in a day when conditions have been favourable. I've seen peak solar output at around 136 watts. Panel voltage has reached roughly 36.8 volts. Across different charging and load conditions I've seen battery voltage ranging from around 11.69V up to 14.42V. On their own, those are just numbers. Put them together over several weeks and suddenly they start telling you how the van actually behaves. And that was exactly what I wanted to know.

One of the most useful pieces of equipment in the whole experiment has been the Victron SmartShunt. https://www.victronenergy.com/battery-monitors/smart-battery-shunt It effectively turns the leisure battery into something I can properly measure. Instead of guessing whether the battery is full, I can see it. Instead of guessing whether something is drawing a lot of power, I can see it. Instead of waking up and wondering what happened overnight, there is a graph waiting for me. This is slightly dangerous territory for somebody who likes gadgets. The battery has stopped being a mysterious black box under the seat. It has become data.

The real test wasn't leaving Vanilla sitting on the drive with everything switched off. That's not camping. So I started using her. The 50-litre compressor fridge stayed running. Lights were used. The 12V system remained active. I experimented with the Webasto diesel heater, including keeping the van comfortable around 21°C. In other words, Vanilla was behaving like Vanilla. Electricity was being consumed while the solar panel was trying to replace it. And that's where things started getting genuinely interesting.

I've realised something during these tests. People often look at solar panels and concentrate entirely on maximum wattage. 200W. 300W. 400W. Big numbers look impressive. But campervan solar isn't really about seeing one spectacular number. It's about time. Twenty watts for a while. Forty watts. Eighty watts when the cloud clears. A burst of 130-plus watts around the middle of the day. All those little chunks of electricity disappear into the same battery. While I'm drinking coffee, flying the drone, riding Torque or wandering around somewhere taking photographs, Vanilla can be quietly replacing energy. The roof is effectively earning electricity. I rather like that.

This was where things went from interesting to properly NIX. I've got several Jackery power stations in Vanilla, including my Jackery Explorer 1000 v2. https://uk.jackery.com/products/explorer-1000-v2-portable-power-station Normally you'd think of the Jackery as a completely separate source of electricity. Charge it at home. Take it away. Use it. Recharge it later. But I wanted to try something different. Could Vanilla charge the Jackery? So I connected the Jackery to the camper's leisure electrical system using my Anderson connection. And yes. It could. Very nicely.

During one of the experiments, my Jackery 1000 was sitting at approximately 70% state of charge. I connected it to Vanilla's leisure system. Then watched the energy move. The Jackery charged. Eventually it was full. That little experiment changed the way I looked at the entire system. Because the leisure battery and Jackery weren't really separate anymore. They had become parts of the same energy network. SOLAR PANEL → MPPT → LEISURE BATTERY → ANDERSON CONNECTION → JACKERY And while that transfer is happening, the solar panel can still be feeding energy into the system. Suddenly I'm not just generating electricity. I'm moving it around Vanilla.

This is the bit I absolutely love. The roof panel collects sunlight. The SmartSolar controls the harvest. The leisure battery stores energy. The SmartShunt measures what's going in and what's coming out. The Jackery can receive energy from the leisure system. Then the Jackery can run the equipment better suited to a portable power station. Laptop. Projector. Camera chargers. Drone batteries. Phones. Induction hob. Other 230V equipment. It means Vanilla now has more than one reservoir of electricity.

That's much more interesting than simply sticking a bigger battery under the seat.

I've started thinking of the Jackery as an energy buffer. The leisure battery can concentrate on being the campervan battery. Fridge. Lighting. Water pump. Heating. 12V systems. Meanwhile, the Jackery can handle equipment better suited to a power station. That gives me a second store of usable electricity. During daylight, I can potentially push energy towards the Jackery. When darkness arrives, I can use that stored energy later. The electricity collected at lunchtime could still be powering something at 10pm. That's the clever bit.

Solar isn't Vanilla's only charging source. When I'm driving, the Victron Orion Smart DC-DC charger allows the vehicle charging system to replenish the leisure battery in a properly controlled way. https://www.victronenergy.com/dc-dc-converters/orion-tr-smart-non-isolated So Vanilla now has three main ways of obtaining energy.

Solar while parked.

DC-DC charging while driving.

Mains charging whenever electric hook-up is available. That's the NIX Power Triangle. SUN + ROAD + GRID = VANILLA POWER.

That's what makes this whole setup so interesting. If the weather is poor but I'm travelling, the road becomes the charging source. If I'm parked, the roof takes over. If I'm on electric hook-up, the grid is there as backup. The systems overlap. They support each other. And suddenly Vanilla feels much less dependent on any one source of electricity.

This might be the most surprising result of the whole experiment. Before all this testing I kept looking at lithium leisure batteries. More capacity. More usable energy. Faster charging. Roughly the same physical space. It seemed like the obvious next upgrade. And lithium would unquestionably give Vanilla more usable stored capacity. But the solar experiments have changed the question. Originally I was asking: “How much battery capacity can I install?” Now I'm asking: “How quickly can I replace what I've used?” That is a much more important question. Because you can fit an enormous battery. Eventually, an enormous battery still becomes an enormous empty battery. Generation changes everything.

Imagine you start with 100 units of electricity. Every day you use 30. With no charging: 100 becomes 70. 70 becomes 40. 40 becomes 10. Game over. But suppose solar replaces 20 of those 30 units every day. Now you're only losing 10. If solar replaces all 30? You've reached energy balance. If it produces more than you're consuming? You're charging. That is why I've become much more interested in the relationship between generation and consumption rather than simply chasing increasingly large battery numbers.

Perhaps the best part of all this? These experiments haven't been conducted in Spain. Or Portugal. Or southern France. They've happened in Britain. In September. In Staffordshire. Hardly the international headquarters of relentless tropical sunshine. And yet the solar panel has still produced meaningful energy. That gives me enormous confidence about what the system could potentially do during future European trips with stronger sunshine and longer daylight hours.

Ultimately, this whole project is about freedom. Electric hook-up is useful. I'm certainly not declaring war on the blue CEE plug. But I don't want where I stay to be dictated entirely by the location of an electric socket. I want to arrive somewhere magnificent, stop Vanilla and simply live. Fridge cold. Lights working. Phones charging. Camera charging. Drone batteries charging. Jackery ready. Laptop working. Maybe the projector running later. Then the following morning the roof starts quietly collecting energy all over again. No generator. No noise. No extension lead snaking across a field. Just daylight.

The funny thing is that this might be one of the least visually exciting upgrades on Vanilla. You can barely see it. Nothing flashes. Nothing makes an impressive noise. There's no enormous switch marked POWER. The panel simply sits on the roof. And whenever there's usable daylight, electrons start moving. While I'm asleep. While I'm driving. While I'm having breakfast. While I'm flying the drone. While I'm doing absolutely nothing at all. There is something wonderfully futuristic about that. A diesel VW Transporter underneath. A little renewable power station on top. Old-school mechanical engineering meeting modern energy management. Perfect.

A proper thank-you again to Adam and Mark at DAPA Campervans in Stafford for installing the new solar setup. https://www.dapacampervans.co.uk/ At the time, this was simply the next Vanilla electrical upgrade. Three weeks later I've realised it has changed the entire way I think about the van's power system. That's the mark of a worthwhile upgrade. The best modifications aren't always the ones everybody notices when you arrive at a campsite. Sometimes they're quietly sitting on the roof making everything else better.

The solar works. The Victron system works. The SmartShunt has transformed how I understand the battery. The Jackery can become part of the camper's wider energy ecosystem. The Orion gives me another significant charging source whenever I'm driving. Most importantly, I've discovered that energy generation can be every bit as important as energy storage. Three weeks ago I thought the answer was probably a bigger battery. Now I'm not so sure. Lithium may still happen one day. Knowing me, it probably will. But now it would be an upgrade I want, rather than something Vanilla desperately needs. That's a big difference.

The next test is obvious. Stop experimenting on the drive. Go somewhere. Live with it. Fridge permanently running. Heating when required. Phones. Drone batteries. Cameras. Laptop. Jackery. Lights. Several nights away from electric hook-up. Then look at the graphs afterwards and see what actually happened. That's when we'll discover Vanilla's real electrical endurance. But after these first three weeks? I'm extremely impressed.

Three weeks ago, this was a new solar panel. Now it feels like the beginning of an entirely different way of using Vanilla. She can harvest energy from the sun while parked. She can recover energy from the engine while travelling. She can store it in the leisure battery. She can move it into a Jackery. The Jackery can then power equipment elsewhere in the van. And I can watch virtually the entire process happening from my phone. That's exactly the sort of technology I love. Not technology for the sake of it. Technology that quietly creates freedom. For three weeks I've been trying to answer one question: What can Vanilla's new solar system actually do? I think I've finally got my answer. Quite a lot. And we've only just started.