FULL TOUR of My Off-Grid Van Electrical System | 800W + 640Ah

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]This is my 2003 Ford E350 box van. And for the past year, I have been building this thing into a camper. In today's video, I want to give you guys an in-depth look at the electrical system, all of the different components that went into it and how I keep my batteries recharged for off-grid use. In my van, the electrical system is kind of in the garage area, which is underneath the bed. And you can get access to that by flipping up this table.

[00:00:30]And then we have a little pass through.

[00:00:32]And on the left side of our garage is the electrical cabinet. Now, it's pretty tight back in here, so it's a little bit awkward to get back. But once you are in the garage space, these doors open up.

[00:00:48]And on the inside, we have the entire electrical system. Now, if you've never done a van electrical system before, this probably looks pretty overwhelming, but in today's video, I am going to go through all of these different components and break it down to hopefully help give you guys a better idea of what exactly is going on here.

[00:01:08]So, let's start here on the lower right side with the lithium batteries. These are the main power source for the entire van. These batteries are from Le time and they are the 320 amp hour mini batteries. Most people don't always realize how big lithium batteries can be, but Le time came out with this new line of mini batteries. And these things are awesome because they're each 320 amp hours. So, they still have a lot of capacity, but these things are tiny.

[00:01:40]They're only about 8 in wide and 10 in tall. And because these mini batteries are so small in size, I was able to fit two of them without taking up a ton of space. So, I have got two of the 320 amp hour ones. Um, these are connected in parallel. And that gives me a total of 640 amp hours of usable power in my van.

[00:02:03]And 640 amp hours is a ton. It allows me to run bigger and higher output devices like a microwave and induction cooktop without instantly draining the batteries. So, these batteries feed directly into these two things up here and these are called bus bars. And each of these are rated for 600 amps. Now, all of these devices you see in the van like my solar charge controller, DCDC charger, inverter, distribution panel, all of these require power. And these bus bars allow us to get power to all of these other components. So the power from the batteries gets fed into the bus bar. This entire block of metal becomes energized and then can feed all of the other devices. One of the most important safety features with an electrical system like this is having fuses.

[00:02:55]There's a fuse for each individual device, but also a main fuse for the entire system. So with this system I have got a fuse rated for 400 amps and it is a class T fuse and that protects the entire system. This fuse is located as closely as possible to the positive terminal because essentially the wire in between the positive terminal and the fuse is unprotected. So we want this wire to be super short. But the power comes out of the positive terminal through our main fuse and then up into this device here which is called a disconnect switch. Now this disconnect is from BlueC Systems and it's rated for a continuous 600 amps. Is it overkill?

[00:03:43]Probably. But with this entire electrical system, safety was my number one priority. This disconnect switch allows us to turn off power to the entire system. So, if I ever need to rewire anything or work on any of these devices, I can simply flip that switch and power will be completely shut off.

[00:04:03]Coming out of the disconnect switch, the wire feeds up and into our positive bus bar, which gives power to everything connected to it. Now, on the negative side of our batteries, the first thing it connects into is this device right here called a shunt. This is the lead time 500 amp hour shunt. And it comes with a little screen that displays super helpful information like how much power we're using and how much power we have left in these batteries before we run out. Coming out the other side of the shunt on the left there. That wire runs behind the batteries up and directly into our negative bus bar. For all of this wire coming from the batteries and up into our positive and negative bus bars, I am using some four welding cable from TMCO. And I believe this 4 wire is rated for around 440 amps. So, our 400 amp class T fuse will safely protect these wires. Now, I want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's video, Leon. You guys have probably noticed by now that the majority of the components in this electrical system are from Letime. And honestly, I've become a big fan of their products throughout this build. When it comes to electrical system, safety is my number one priority. But at the same time, not everyone has $10,000 to spend on a super high-end setup. I know I definitely didn't. I wanted to build something that was reliable, powerful, and still affordable for the everyday van builder like myself. And that's exactly why I went with Lee Time. For this van, I used two of their new 320 amp hour mini batteries, which I absolutely love. One thing that honestly surprised me is just how compact these batteries are.

[00:05:48]Compared to traditional lithium batteries with similar capacity, these take up way less space. Because of their smaller size, I was able to easily fit these into my electrical cabinet while still having plenty of room for all of my other components. Together, these two batteries give me 640 amp hours of usable power, which is a massive amount of energy for van life. For the past three hours, I've actually been working in my van, charging my computer, using a monitor, and running a fan and some lights. But even with all of these devices running, you can see when we check our battery monitor, we have hardly even made a dent. I am seriously so impressed by the amount of power these batteries provide. And it's so awesome because even on cloudy days with suboptimal solar conditions, I'm still able to run all of my devices without stressing about running out of power.

[00:06:39]But Leit makes way more than just lithium batteries. In this build, I'm also using their DC/DC charger, solar charge controller, and 3000 W inverter charger. And that inverter is actually one of my favorite components in this entire system because it allows me to run 120 volt appliances like a microwave and induction cooktop. All of the Lead Time components come with in-depth user manuals, which I found extremely helpful when putting my build together. This was my first time ever doing electrical work, so having Letime Time provide recommendations on wire sizes, fuse sizes, torque specs, and mounting tips was extremely helpful. I want to say thank you again to Le Time for not only sponsoring today's video, but giving me power in my entire van. If you're interested in checking out their products, there's a link in the description of this video where you can see more and even get a small discount.

[00:07:29]Thanks again to Le Time. And now, let's get back to the video. Now, like I mentioned earlier, all of these devices connect and get power from our positive and negative bus bars. So, next, let's go through these different devices, what they are, and how they work. So, starting down here with this massive unit. This is called an inverter charger. And this is the 3000 W inverter charger from Le time. But what even is an inverter? Well, an inverter takes the lower 12 volts coming out of these lithium batteries and converts them from 12 Vts up to 120 volts. This gives us power to run some of the higher output devices that need it, like a microwave or induction cooktop. All of the 120 volt outlets in my van are connected to and made possible by this inverter. Now, with an inverter, it takes a decent amount of energy to convert the lower 12 volts into a higher 120 volts. So, you don't want to leave this thing on all of the time. You can turn the inverter on and off with this switch here. But thankfully, with the lead time inverter, they also include a control unit which I have mounted up in the cabin of the van.

[00:08:38]And this allows me to turn the inverter on and off remotely without having to come down here to flip the switch every time. One other quick thing to mention is that this is the inverter charger. Le time also makes just inverters without the charger piece. The main difference between the two is that with the inverter charger, it gives us the option to use this inverter through shore power. I have a shore power hookup on the side of my van. So, if I'm ever at an RV campground with hookups, I can plug in that sends the power through the hookup through our breaker right here into the inverter and then out to our distribution panel with all of our circuit breakers. The benefit to that is like I mentioned earlier, this inverter charger takes a decent amount of power to convert the lower 12 volts into higher 120 volts. With the shore power hookup, however, the inverter does not need to be turned on. We're taking the power from the hookup. And by doing that, we're not draining any of the power out of our 12volt batteries. If you buy an inverter instead of an inverter charger, there's no way to connect it to shore power hookup. And that means every time you want to use your outlets, you're going to have to turn the inverter on. And in doing so, you will be draining your batteries.

[00:09:53]This inverter charger is connected into the positive and negative bus bars using the exact same 4 welding cable from TMCO. All of the devices here have a fuse. And for this inverter charger, we have got a 350 amp class T fuse. Moving on from the inverter charger, the next system we have here is the Letime 60 amp MPPPT solar charge controller. This solar charge controller takes all of the energy from the solar panels on the roof and allows me to safely recharge my two lithium batteries. But what exactly is going on here? So, up in the top left, we have a positive and negative wire.

[00:10:38]And these two wires are coming directly from the solar panels on the roof. Now, they feed into this device here, which is a solar disconnect switch. And this disconnect switch works pretty much the same as our main disconnect that we talked about earlier. This disconnect switch allows us to essentially shut off all the power coming from the solar panels. So if we ever need to do any work on this solar charge controller, we can easily turn the solar panels off because otherwise these wires would still be hot. So the power goes through the disconnect switch and then out and feeds into the left side here which is the solar panel hookup. We've got a positive side and a negative side. Now, just to the right of it, we have the battery side of our charge controller.

[00:11:21]We have one positive and one negative wire, and these get connected into our positive and negative bus bars. On the far left here, we have our Leime 60 amp DCDC charger. This is going to be another way to charge our van batteries.

[00:11:37]And this device will generate power when we're driving using the van's alternator. I haven't finished hooking this up yet because first I am going to need to upgrade my van's alternator to a high output alternator to make sure we don't drain and ruin the starter battery of the van. But once we do that, this device will give us an additional way to charge our batteries. On the input side here, we'll have a positive and negative wire and this will get connected into our starter battery. And then on the right side we have output. And those two wires get connected, you guessed it, into the positive and negative bus bar.

[00:12:12]Both the DC/DC charger and the charge controller are using 80 amp mega fuses from a company called Little Fuse. And that's pretty much it for this left half of the electrical cabinet. Now, let's talk about everything on the right side.

[00:12:27]Up top here, we have this super awesome distribution panel from this company.

[00:12:32]I'm not sure if you pronounce that WFCO WCO. I am not sure, but that is the brand that makes this. This panel is so awesome because it allows us to power 12vt devices and also the 120 volt outlets. Let's start on the right side here where we have all of our 12vt devices in the van. Everything like a heater, water pump, fridge, puck lights, ambient lights, uh Starlink, Max fan.

[00:13:00]These are all of the 12vt devices. Now, to get power to the 12vt side of our distribution panel, we have a positive and negative wire coming from our main bus bars. The positive wire goes through a 50 amp meggafuse and then it connects into this little terminal connector up top there. I do have a full build video on this entire electrical system on my channel. I'll link it in the description of this video. So, if you're curious in learning more about how this is all assembled, uh you can check out that video and I go way more in depth on how to put this together. But the idea is the same for this distribution panel as it is for the charge controller, DC/DC charger, and inverter charger. We are getting power from the bus bars. All of the wires connected to these devices run through the walls of the van, and they all feed and connect into this fuse panel here. On the left side of this distribution panel, we have the AC breakers and these are for all of the outlets in the van. The power coming to these breakers is 120 volt and it comes from the lead time inverter. I know it's hard to see, but on the back side of our inverter, we have an input and output for the 120 volt connections. And on the output side, we have a neutral, hot, and ground wire. And these wires run back behind the electrical cabinet and up to the AC breakers. So unlike all of the other devices so far which get power from the bus bars for the AC side of our distribution panel, we are getting power from the inverter. And that is because all of these breakers are 120 volts. If we got power from the bus bars, it would only be 12 volts. This distribution panel is awesome though. I really love it and it's just such a great way to organize everything. Now, we have one more device that's mounted on the back of the van, a 12vt minlit air conditioning unit. That unit since it's 12vt also has a positive and negative wire. The negative connects directly into our negative bus bar and the positive runs through this 100 amp meggafuse and then into the positive bus bar. I think that pretty much sums it up for all of the different components and fuses for this electrical system. So, now let's talk about how this is grounded. Coming out of the negative bus bar, I have a four wire that runs down along the back and then drops through the floor. And this wire connects into the frame of the van. And that is the chassis grounds. I did also add another six gauge wire here that connects into the AC side of our distribution panel.

[00:15:38]I'm not sure if this was necessary, but we do have chassis grounds for the 12vt side and the 120 volt side of things.

[00:15:46]And both of these ground wires do connect at the exact same point. And like I showed you guys earlier, all of the different components are contained in this electrical box here to keep them safe. And this entire box is screwed into the wall of the van, so it's mounted and super secure. Up top here are the little screens that I was talking about. So on the left side we have the inverter charger remote control. We have this onoff toggle switch here and this allows us to turn the inverter on and off remotely without having to go down and flip that switch on the actual inverter itself every time. Now on the right side we have this battery monitor and this is connected into the shunt. It displays super helpful information like how many amp hours we have left, the voltage and the percentage of our batteries. And I have these two control units mounted up by my bench seat, so they are super easily accessible. So, this system is pretty beefy and works great for extended off-grid use. But one of the most important parts is being able to keep these batteries charged. I have three different ways of recharging my batteries. So, let's talk about those now. So, if we come to the outside of the van, the first way I can recharge my batteries is with our RV shore power hookup. So, if I'm ever at a RV park or RV campground and they have shore power hookups, I can plug in here to get power to my van. Now, to show you guys the second way of recharging my batteries, we have got to go up on the roof where I have some solar panels mounted. Up top here, I have got four of the Reny 200 W solar panels, giving me a total of 800 W of solar. All of these solar panels are attached into a custom roof rack that I built using extruded aluminum. And I have videos on my channel showing the process of building and attaching this roof rack along with installing all of the solar panels. Now, the third way of recharging my batteries is the DC/DC charger. And I can't fully show you that because it's not hooked up yet, but as soon as that is wired up, we'll be able to use the alternator of the van to recharge our batteries when I'm driving.

[00:17:55]But there you go, guys. That is a look at the electrical system in my box van.

[00:17:59]800 ws of solar, 640 amp hours of usable power. I am pretty excited about this system. I truly cannot wait and I'm just so excited to take this van out on its first adventure once it's done and put this electrical system to the test and just see how it works. But I think having things like lights, a fan, microwave, induction cooktop, fridge, and freezer should make living on the road pretty dang enjoyable. I hope you guys found this video interesting and maybe helpful. I do have full build videos of both the electrical cabinet and the entire electrical system. So, I'll link those videos down in the description of this one. Thanks again for watching and I will catch you guys in the next one.