Our First Step To Off Grid Living | Solar Panels

Installing the solar panels felt like the first big mile stone of the van build. That may sound silly as we have achieved so much in the 6 weeks of owning the minibus- we have removed the minibus seats in the back, treated all of the rust, completely cleaned her top to bottom, painted the floor and fitted the fan. But, solar panels, these MASSIVE panels mark our first step to off grid living.... it might also feel like a big step as it was a lot of hard work to get them up there and a lot of money to buy them...

When trying to decide on the size of panels we wanted to go for, we thought about what we would be running off them. The hob, oven and heater will all be running off LPG which means that we only need to run the lights, chargers and the fridge from the solar. We wouldn’t need to generate that much energy to run those appliances.

As we were ready to hit buy on some conservative small panels, we decided that we could not and would not build a tiny home that wont be able to run an espresso machine… and you need a far bit of power to run a coffee machine! We appreciate that a coffee machine doesn’t fall within the life necessities category but we are making a custom built home on wheels to our personal specification, if it can’t make coffee then it has not been tailored to us very well…

So back to the drawing board, Rob drew up an electrical load calculation spreadsheet and we decided to go with two panels that would generate 500W combined. The panels will charge three 12v 110 AH lead acid batteries (because lithium batteries are not in the budget!)

Our two 250W solid panels slightly overhang the roof- this wasn’t intentional but as we learnt fitting the fan, Robs measuring skills could use some work! The panels we chose were purchased from Midsummer Energy, a Cambridge based company. They take up 110% of our roof real estate and they look pretty awesome.

We have a fibre glass roof which can only be described as wobbly... when we were driving the roof would hit against the metal struts, making us hold our breath over every speed bump. It was decided that the only way we could attach the solar panels to the roof without fearing that the roof would cave in would be to reinforce the ceiling!

A scrap yard in Rugby was breaking an LDV Convoy, so we went and salvaged two additional roof support, with the additions we now had six metal struts in place. We bolted through the roof to plywood with big penny washers and nuts to spread the weight, then bolted through the roof supports with big washers and nylock nuts again to support the weight on the roof and spread it evenly.

On top of the roof we used flashing tape along the whole ridge in the roof to seal the brackets and stop the aluminium scratching/cracking the fibre glass. We then used M6x60 roofing bolts with tap washers to seal them to the brackets.

After a long weekend of hanging off of a ladder in some bizarre positions, lifting the panels on and off the roof and a few trips to screwfix we have two very secure panels that aren’t going anywhere... seriously, you’d have to cut the roof off to get them off!