Van Life Solar Setup at Life

Van Life Solar Setup. How to attach solar panels to your van roof in our opinion the best way to attach solar panels to your roof is mounting them to a roof rack or roof rail system. Thanks to our roof rack we could do the two panels lengthwise along the van, which optimized our space.

A typical campervan solar power system is comprised of four main electrical items. A boot or ‘garage’ area. To have a complete solar setup you need solar panels for your van, batteries, a charge controller, and an optional (but recommended) automatic charging relay (acr).

Victron VW Van Electrics Install Schematic Drawings

For our system, we are using a 150 watt monocrystalline solar panel from renogy (**we added a second one later on so the wiring diagram shows the two solar panels.see updates below).in a nutshell, polycrystalline is cheaper but monocrystalline is more efficient. Solar panel cables (or solar wires)are rated to handle the current from the panels, connecting them to the charge controller. This garage is a great area to store any outdoor equipment you may have, whether its climbing or beach gear. These cables will be used to connect your solar panels down through the entry gland to your solar charge controller.