I’ve recently moved my fridge and power station to the bed from my cab and looking for a simple approach to charging my battery whilst driving. Here is a summary of my set up:
Iceco JP30 with BLUETTI eb70s. I can get about 2.5 days in eco mode with this set up.
Ideally I’d like to keep my fridge running 24/7 during summer months.
The two paths I have found are either solar or the bluetti charger one.
If I use the charger I would be able to get about 5 days run time.
Fridge wh per week: 2450wh
Battery capacity: 760wh with 200w/hr max charge
Total Capacity with bluetti charger 1 (based on 4 hours driving per week at 200wh): 1560
If I go solar wondering if this will yield more power. I park outside and estimate I could get around 2500wh (assuming average 30w/h for 12 hours with a 200w panel)
If I go bluetti charger 1 it’s recommended to mount in the cab. Is anyone doing this and running the solar charging cables to the bed?
For solar I would likely go for an adhesive panel and run the cables through the truck bed with some sort of disconnect. How do the panels fair in winter under heavy rain and snow?
For what it’s worth, I have 2x 100W panels on my GFC. I have a Goal Zero Yeti 1500 hooked up to a Dometic CFX35 and to solar.
For two years, in Southern California, it’s been “infinite fridge”. I only ever take it out or turn it off when it’s either crazy stupid hot, or when I need the space. It’s been awesome for me.
I have a Dometic CFX55IM that I run of an EcoFlow Delta 2. I wired up a cigarette lighter port with a kill switch in the back of my taco I can plug the battery pack to so it charges while driving, then I flip the switch and isolate the truck from it when not driving. Works well.
I also added 1x 100w flexible solar panel to the roof to charge the battery pack. It works great if I have good sun, so essentially I can run my fridge indefinitely.
Everything in my setup is modular too, so I can remove the fridge and battery and use it in our other car or in the house if needed.
I’m not super up on the Bluetti offerings and how they work, but here is a link to a post we made here about our solar setup.
its super similar to what’s mentioned above, three 100w flexible panels, a 1500x, and we are running a CFX 35, even with running Starlink, lights, charging cameras, drones, computers and so much more (we live full time in our truck) we never have an issue with power.
The only thing that we have changed really since we made that is that we have added the YetiLink Vehicle Integration Kit which allows us to charge the 1500x quickly from the alternator; however, it doesn’t allow simultaneous charging from the alternator and the panels, it picks what ever is delivering the most power input.
Thanks I read your blog post and liked how you ran your cables without drilling into the gfc. Assuming setting up in parallel means you would only be pulling up to efficiency of one panel. Any issues with snow and rain on these panels in fall and winter? I get a lot of rain where I am
There are advantages and disadvantages to parallel vs series, but I think for the vast majority of vehicular-based solar systems, it’s much better to go with parallel, especially when or where a singular panel may become shaded. Zero issues so far with rain or moisture. I’ll be honest, we usually do our very best to avoid snow, so we haven’t had much input as far as snow goes.
Short answer is go with hard panels. Long answer is read the saga in my super long build thread to get all kinds of extreme detail on how flexible panels failed me.