Molly Electrical Upgrade Part One

It's something I have been thinking about for a while; off grid or wild camping abity.

Currently Molly is fitted with a single 100 watt solar panel on the roof between the front window and the first (and largest) roof light. It's connected up so that it can charge the leisure battery and contribute to the engine battery. 

After a few weeks of non use both were showing on the battery levels at around 12 volts. The sun came out for a few days and the leisure battery went up to the max on the Malibu display, equating to about 13.5 volts. The engine battery pretty much unchanged.

The problem we find is, that even with the power banks, we simply don't have enough power to stay in aires that don't have access to electricity for more than a day or two. We have just about managed when away on rallies with our motor caravanners' club.

All the full time vanlifers have gone over to lithium batteries and far more solar. Plus the addition of an inverter to make 240 volts from the 12 volt lithium battery.

So that's the plan. To have a specialist workshop fit a lot of equipment into the van....

We have opted for the Fogstar Drift 300ah lithium battery that they suggested. It has plenty of power and can give plenty of tome off grid.

This needs some upgrades to the existing electrical system to accommodate the different technology. It's not cheap either.

Nearly everything is blue and made by Victron!

I am reading what it is all for as I currently have no idea! 

Currently it's looking like a solo trip across to Oxfordshire in April. At the moment we have not much idea where to sleep and what would we do with Reggie all day the van is being worked on?  

I will use the label "Molly Electrical Upgrade" each time.