I have 400aH worth of lithium batteries and 600 watts of solar (not laid out in an ideal configuration down the sides of the roof on my airstream).
I have found I use 60-90watts AC to power my starlink.
I can easily go all day even with 2-3 laptops and external monitors (150 watts or so). The solar keeps up and even does a little charging during the day.
Every other day when it’s cloudy or rainy I will need to top up with the small generator but that is easy to do with lithium batteries since they charge at the full 120amps unlike lead acid that taper the current significantly.
The one thing that bothers me about having all that pricey gear on an RV is what keeps people from stealing your panels, starlink, etc from a remote primitive site?
I mean some people will be using the RV for work, so will be present a lot but for the folks that park and go hiking or fishing a lot, what then? Some folks will handwave this away but we've had a lot of break ins at local boat landings. I can only assume the primitive camp sites are similarly vulnerable
You would need to mount it in a way that someone couldn't just come along and pick it up and go. Any mounting solution that requires internal access to undo would be a further deterrent.
Cameras would help too, and if you have either a very strong router (like a Ruckus), or cellular service, you could even potentially get notifications from the camera, prompting you to walk back because someone is attempting to unmount your stuff. Even just talking through one of those doorbell cameras will probably make them scurry off.
Even if you just slapped a simple chain bike lock on everything before you walked away that's probably going to stop most if not all attempts at stealing your stuff.
Most new RVs these days come with panels, they're screwed into the roof. Could you steal them? Sure, but it's probably more of a pain than the panels are worth. The Starlink is a different story, perhaps. Mine will be mounted on a pole attached to the RV, and taken off for travel anyway, so if I leave the RV unattended for any length of time I'll just stow it.
Battery theft is definitely a real thing these days, too, especially with expensive lithium batteries, so mine are in a lockbox to deter casual theft.
Did you study electrical engineering? Can you recommend a laymans resource for getting smart on how you did those calcs? For example I’d struggle to figure out the battery size for a given wattage / amp of draw.
Not the commenter, but it’s fairly straightforward.
I’ve actually made a simple calculator[1] for this, but you don’t really need it.
What you want to do is get a good picture of your actual usage per day in kWh. You can use a Kill-a-Watt plug or similar (a device that kWh that pass through it).
Once you have your daily kWh use, you can multiply by however many days you want to run without charging the battery. A lot of off grid solar people go for 2-4 days.
That gives you the useable battery size in kWh you need.
LiFePo4 batteries (arguably the best for this setup) typically have 80-90% useable capacity. Lead acid (the more traditional kind) have around 50%.
Adjust for that and you know what size of battery to buy.
A lot of batteries are defined as Amp hours and voltage. Multiply them together to get watt hours.
I got my ham radio license in March and I learned a lot about practical electricity while studying. Might be worth checking out some of the YouTube videos to see if it's up your alley.
I've worked remote for 2 years in an travel trailer with a 250w solar panel and 200kwh battery and have never needed shore power. I use my phone for hotspotting and use a mac book, they both charge in about 2 hours so I run for 2-3 hours, charge it, run 2-3 hours, and then charge it before logging off.
That said, yea - no second monitor, I close a lot of apps when i'm not using them (looking at you docker and chrome), and have a setup where I ssh onto a machine or use ci-cd agents to do a lot of my work.
edit: that said, this is a lot easier in sunnier places (you don't need to use electricity for heat) which I tend to prefer. I got close to needing a campground after a week or two in WY/MT near winter.
You CAN have that much capacity, but you would basically have to build the RV out of battery cells. I'm assuming they meant 20kwh, which is still HUGE for an RV, but they did say they never needed shore power in the last 2 years of living, so I guess, its possible.
With the kind of draws described, I believe OP got the terms confused and meant "200ah". We've got a 200ah house battery in our RV, and you can run low-load stuff like a laptop and a monitor for a long time on that battery. Hell, fire up the 1100W microwave and heat some lunch. Just do it early so that the solar panels can refill before dark.
And of course 200 Ah (@12VDC) is 2.4 kWh. BTW, I have a couple of these LiFePo 100Ah batteries, and they are great. But I do get a kick out of how the capital cost is about $800 USD to store 1 kWh, or $0.15 worth of electricity (omitting solar cell cost solar charge controller cost, which are comparatively minor)! Still, the grid independence (for sustainable Tiny Electrical Living) is a wonderful thing.
I have 6kWh of LFP batteries in my RV and 990W of solar on the roof. I do bring a generator just in case but only rarely ever use it. Even at 90W I don’t think I’d have power problems, at least not during the summer months.
An M1 Macbook will draw an average of about 30W under load.
Starlink dish is about 50W.
80W * 8 hours = 640Wh
With a 100W solar panel generating 200Wh total throughout the day, you would use up 440Wh of your 1000Wh battery.
These are conservative estimates. My M1 pulls less than 20W at most times and you can get well over 200Wh from a 100W panel in a day. Tweak the numbers just a bit and you get indefinite power for a 40 hour work week.
Issue is, if you're really in the sticks (and therefore no 2g/3g/4g/5g service), you're completely disconnected unless the thing is on, idling away at 50w.
Sure you're not using data while you're sleeping, but you might want to be able to get a call from someone if they really need to get in touch with you. Or other passive tasks where you want to at least take a call/message/email if required.
Even in a residential environment, I've toyed with a timer that cuts my ISP modem and router overnight (and kills smart devices from trying to phone home...) because falling back to 3g/4g saves me ~15 watts, but it's honestly dollars/year of savings.
I do a ton of backpacking/camping/overlanding/etc and most places you can reach by car have at least some kind of reception. It's not like you will always be 100% off the grid.
If you just need a way to stay in touch, one option is to use a satellite SMS service, like the Garmin inReach.
Though, if you really want to run that setup 24/7, 600W of panels and a 2kW battery should do it. Bump that up to 800W and 3kW and you won't have any worries.
You can also add a small gas generator to the mix for emergencies.
Of course someone had to make this comment, but don't you worry, I've driven plenty of remote trails.
Obviously there are many places where there isn't cell coverage, but the vast majority (of even very remote places) has some type of coverage. I've been hours from the nearest asphalt road, in the middle of the desert and still have coverage. This is more often than not the case. Use a cell booster with an antenna on a pole, and you can extend this range even further.
My point is that you will not need 24/7 satellite connection just for taking calls, the vast majority of the time you will be near a service area. If taking calls is important to you, you can almost always find a place to camp with service (or carry a satellite phone). I also don't find many people in the truly remote areas camping out for extended periods of time. Most of the time, people want to be relatively close to services, for many other reasons.
> Obviously there are many places where there isn't cell coverage, but the vast majority (of even very remote places) has some type of coverage.
And from personal experience I can tell you that this is not true. It is not hard to find remote places with no cell coverage.
So you either aren't that adventurous, or you haven't explored very widely yet.
> I also don't find many people in the truly remote areas camping out for extended periods of time.
You don't find them, because they're in places you don't seem to go yourself or are not aware of.
> If taking calls is important to you, you can almost always find a place to camp with service (or carry a satellite phone).
Yes, there are other options and people have been making it work since before star link was available.
While I agree that most people won't need starlink on 24/7, it simply isn't true to say that you can count on some sort of cell service in the vast majority of places you can reach with a car.
> So you either aren't that adventurous, or you haven't explored very widely yet.
I've explored CA, NV, UT, and CO very thoroughly, and WA, OR, WY, and AZ but not to the same extent. I've had many rigs throughout the years (Tacos, 4Runners, ADV bikes, vans, campers, roof tents, I've tried it all), currently building out an E350 (retired ambulance). I've done week long moto-camping trips through-out CA and OR (week is my limit for moto). I've been at it for about 15 years now and have camped many hundreds of nights, mostly outside of developed campgrounds. My Google maps is filled with hundreds of markers for great boondocking spots that I've found over the years. You're not talking to someone that goes out to Moab once a year and stays in a yurt.
> While I agree that most people won't need starlink on 24/7, it simply isn't true to say that you can count on some sort of cell service in the vast majority of places you can reach with a car.
It is factually correct since just Verizon's cell coverage is something like 70% of the US land area. But of course, I can get in my 4Runner right now and find a place within a 30-mile radius that doesn't have cell coverage.
> It is factually correct since just Verizon's cell coverage is something like 70% of the US land area.
2/3rds isn't what I would call a vast majority and the coverage for the western states is much lower than that. If you only include places where boondocking is legal, I think the coverage drops significantly below 50%.
It is certainly feasible and can be satifying to only boondock in areas where you can get cell coverage, which I think was the point you were trying to make.
I'm not talking about hiking paths. National Forests publish MVUM maps that tell you where you are allowed to take a vehicle and drive/camp. These forest roads can be in rough shape, but many of them are easily possible with competent driving and a bit of clearance. Large swathes of these areas have no cell coverage at all.
Then add in all the amazing places you can camp in northern BC, the Yukon Territory and Alaska and the list of coverage-less camping destimations grows even longer, though many of those areas are outside the latitudes where Starlink works right now.
There are also quite a few established , non-dispersed campgrounds in the weat that I've been to that had no cell service. The other Crater Lake (the one in northern California) is one example I can remember off the top of my head.
I think you're missing the context of this discussion. Of course there are many places without coverage, but the idea that you will be in these places for extended periods of time, working and taking calls, is nowhere close to reality for even the most adventurous (and that's not because you can't get cell coverage).
But yes, if you're talking about Alaska/Canada, that's a whole other story. I am mainly referring to the US, especially the Western part of the US.
> I think you're missing the context of this discussion.
I live in my vehicle full time and work remotely while driving around the West Coast and prefer unpopulated areas. I understand the context completely. You are simply wrong and unwilling to admit it.
> the idea that you will be in these places for extended periods of time, working and taking calls, is nowhere close to reality for even the most adventurous
I can say from personal experience that you are wrong here. I would not even class myself as the "most adventurous" and my rig doesn't have 4wd.
There are absolutely places that I have chosen not to stay because I couldn't get reliable service to make work calls. I have also stayed places with really dodgy cell service and had to do work calls over the phone rather than via slack.
So yes, there are absolutely many places where I and many other Boondockers want to go and stay that have no cell coverage. Boondockers that need to be reachable around the clock in those areas will need to have enough solar and batteries to leave their Starlink array running overnight. Personally, I am fine with dropping off the grid overnight, though I suspect that I would occasionally fall asleep without remembering to turn off the internet and then spend days getting my batteries back to full.
My limited solar capacity currently is why I am still hesitating on buying Starlink. While I have a 4kwh battery, I only have 200w of solar and running a Starlink for me would require some more careful power management unless I also significantly upgrade my solar capacity.
> Alaska/Canada, that's a whole other story. I am mainly referring to the US, especially the Western part of the US.
Alaska is part of the western US, but not relevant to the point I am making since it is (mostly) outside the current starlink supported latitudes.
> There are absolutely places that I have chosen not to stay because I couldn't get reliable service to make work calls. I have also stayed places with really dodgy cell service and had to do work calls over the phone rather than via slack.
That's not what we are talking about.
We are talking about running Starlink 24/7 vs just during working hours. I'm saying that you can get away with just running it during work hours. You don't need 24/7 cell access when you're boondocking. That's the discussion here. Not whether you can always get cell service at all times when you need it. You can just plan around when you will be working. Sometimes you camp in a place with cell service, great. Other times you don't, no big deal, use other solutions (Starlink, satellite phones, etc).
Yes, if you're living out of your car in remote places and need to be reachable 24/7 you are a unique case and should plan accordingly. But for the vast majority of people working on the road, that's just not the case.
> the idea that you will be in these places for extended periods of time, working and taking calls, is nowhere close to reality for even the most adventurous
Go back and re-read the thread. You gave the availability of cell coverage everywhere you can drive as an explicit reason why those who need to be reachable don't need to run Starlink 24/7. Then, when I pointed out that was factually inaccurate, you shifted to saying that those places exist, but nobody would want to stay there for extended periods. That I was also able to contradict through personal experience. I've only addressed topics you directly brought up yourself.
> Yes, if you're living out of your car in remote places and need to be reachable 24/7 you are a unique case and should plan accordingly. But for the vast majority of people working on the road, that's just not the case.
This I agree mostly agree with (except the hyperbolic "unique case"). Pager duty isn't that uncommon for software developers so it is not an unrealistic use-case and is worth discussing on a platform like HN and doesn't deserve to be dismissed out of hand.
I think you have a tendency to make hyperbolic claims, (e.g. "nowhere close to reality for even the most adventurous") when you would have been better served by just relating your extensive experience with how easy it is to find good places to boondock that do have enough cell service to not require starlink for 24/7 contactability.
Edit: I would also have been more effective if I had left out the first sentence of my original reply and instead provided examples of the areas I was talking about in the initial comment rather than in a follow up.
I don't think this is what he's referring to — there are vast areas in NM, AZ, NV that do not have cell coverage. Even when you apply all service levels (even 3G) across all cell providers, using carrier provided data (which tend to be overly optimistic), even then you can see giant no-cell-service zones on the map.
There are many places in the world that are beautiful, more or less in the countryside, yet have access to electricity and running water.
And hey, if your tech job is just typing along on your Macbook, you're actually not pretty high in energy usage! They're machines that can run on tiny batteries, after all. Same as a fridge, basically.
Dunno how much you can get out of RV solar panels on a good day though.
I have 515W on top of the roof of my sprinter. I also have a custom-built 12VDC-direct mini-ITX system that I use in the van (160W TDP). Because I do native development, not web related stuff, that means compiling a lot. The computer uses more power than the refridgerator. The 515W is enough for about 7-8 months of the year at the range of latitudes spanned by the USA. It's not enough during winter even in sunny NM or AZ.
I guess I was being a bit "greedy" on the analysis, cuz I was thinking about an M1 Macbook Pro, or just laptops in general.
An M1 Mac Mini max power draw according to Google is ~40W. Google tells me a 24 inch monitor is 20-60W. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong numbers, but that looks like a 100W thing? Perhaps that's totally off base though, or not comparable numbers. But I have to imagine that a laptop (or laptop-based infra) is gonna be better for you (even if you need the power in theory).
I have a laptop also (Lenovo Y700). Because I need the compilation power, it basically uses about the same amount of power as my custom built system. The difference is that it has its own battery, which changes (a little) the way it interacts with the van's power system.
Especially if your vehicle has battery capacity itself if some sort - you can charge the batteries on grid in the morning and head out to the lake all day.
The flush ones don't last nearly as long, either. AFAIK most manufacturers, and most aftermarket installs as well are using rigid panels mounted with z-brackets. More effort to install, but gluing flexible panels to a membrane roof wasn't what I wanted to do either.
Do you plan on using generators? Setting up solar farms (assuming you're the first one to pull into that spot and can claim the sunny area)?
Most tech-job setups seem fairly electricity intensive.