Help, how much power to charge my ebikes in a camper.

[SteveSSS]

Hi, sorry if this has been asked before.
I'm just starting a camper build and looking for some advice on size of inverter, number of batteries and solar panel size I'm going to need to charge two E-bikes.
I'm looking to be off grid for two days at a time with the third day on electric hook up.
I want to charge two ebike batteries, 500wh and 700wh, run a 12v fridge, charge a couple of phones via usb, run some 12v lights and water pump.
Will 2 x 100ah lithium battries , 200wh's of solar and a 2000wh pure sine wave inverter be enough or should I go 3 x100ah batteries, 300wh solar and 3000wh inverter?
Anyone any advice or experience?
Thanks in advance.
Steve

 

[Tooks]

Hi, sorry if this has been asked before.
I'm just starting a camper build and looking for some advice on size of inverter, number of batteries and solar panel size I'm going to need to charge two E-bikes.
I'm looking to be off grid for two days at a time with the third day on electric hook up.
I want to charge two ebike batteries, 500wh and 700wh, run a 12v fridge, charge a couple of phones via usb, run some 12v lights and water pump.
Will 2 x 100ah lithium battries , 200wh's of solar and a 2000wh pure sine wave inverter be enough or should I go 3 x100ah batteries, 300wh solar and 3000wh inverter?
Anyone any advice or experience?
Thanks in advance.
Steve

I don’t have a camper, but do have a solar setup in my workshop where the E-bikes are kept.

I have a 110Ah LifePo4 battery, charged from 390w of panels via a Victron Energy MPPT 75/10, and use a 500w Victron Energy Phoenix Inverter.

My 500Wh Levo pulls about 270w when in the meat of the charging cycle, and takes around 3-4 hours to recharge from low, and uses approx 25-35% of my solar battery depending on how much energy the panels are generating at the time.

You’d need to look at how much of that other kit you’d be using and for how long, but your 12v (?) 200Ah battery IIRC contains approx 2640Wh so should charge 3x 700Wh batteries allowing for some charging losses etc. If the batteries are Leas Acid, then it’s good practice to only discharge to 50%, but LifePo4 don’t mind being fully cycled.

I think you’ll need the third battery if you’re going to be running the van as well over 2 days, and hope you get a bit of charge back into them whilst you’re out riding?

 

[yorkshire89]

Pretty much as above. How many times will you need to charge each battery off grid?
Assuming you take both batteries fully charged with you and charge them both once from your leisure battery 2 get two days riding before EHU, thats only 1200Wh (+ loses of 15-20%) = 1440Wh (110Ah @ 13.2V).
This should leave enough spare to run the other appliances in this situation.

Also find out how much draw you need from the inverter, 2000W is a lot and would probably be overkill unless you are running a coffee machine.

 

[Shorty4]

We have 1100w of solar and 400ah of lithium batteries in our campervan, we have no lpg and are mostly electric with diesel heating and HWS and camp off grid 90% + most of the time.
We have two Focus eMTB's, a Thron and a Jam and regularly recharge both through the 1800w inverter after riding rail trails etc on our travels. As we use normal 240v fridge, electric jug, toaster, induction cooktop, microwave, breadmaker, electric blankets and the plethora of chargers for electronics and tools our regular consumption is substanial but recharging the bikes usually doesn't present any problems.
The trick is that you cannot have too much solar if off grid.

 

[Charliektm400exc]

We used to have a camper with exactly the set up you are describing re fridge, led lights, two e-bikes to charge, multi day trips without power hook up. In fact camper couldn’t be connected to mains power. All battery charging was the panel and motor.

we did it fine with 270w of solar, 100Ah lithium battery and a 600w inverter. Only issue we had was inverter could only do one bike at a time.. wasn’t enough of an issue for us to swap inverters, just did one battery after the other, but if I was purchasing again I would pick 1000w inverter.

charlie