Toyota Hilux 2.4D 2020 with a Safiery 250A Alternator
Our current Hilux is from early 2020 with a 2.4D engine and has a built-in 100A alternator which is frankly quite underpowered to quickly charge our 2 * 12.8V 200Ah Liontron batteries. When I installed 3* Victron Smart Orion-Tr 12-12 30A DC-DC chargers, I could only use 2 of them at a time.
When I talked to the guy who sold us the car, to get an upgrade, I was told, there is no bigger alternator than 100A and no room for a 2nd alternator in the engine compartment. What a pity.
What does it take to run an off-grid Household on Wind and Solar only
Our plot in Caithness is not really what you would call developed. The next water line is 2 miles away, and the electricity lines just connect our distant neighbours to the grid.
When I made an enquiry with Scottish Power to get me a grid connection to my plot, I was quite surprised, that I would become the partial owner of the company. At least, this is what you could think, when looking at their price tag.
For the ridiculous amount of 35’000,00+ GBP I would get a grid connection to a single place on my plot. Any other point on the plot, stretching a couple of 100m meters, would have to be installed and paid separately.
This and the news of rising energy prices for the next couple of years made me think. There must be something else we could do, like installing a miniature nucelear power plant on my plot, of have perpetuum mobile generating all the power thatI would ever need.
With nuclear energy out of fashion, and expected Planning Permission to be very unlikely, I actually found the perfect couple of “perpetuum mobile”, seeming just perfect for what I would need. Wind + Solar.
Located at the northern parts of the North Sea, near Wick, wind speed is excellent, as you can see from the map.
Wind Speed m/s @ 10m Height
Distribution over the year shows, most of the wind is to be expected during autumn, winter and spring.
Wind Speed m/s per Year
Furthermore, the actual distribution of wind speed reveals, that 60% of all wind speed is in a usage spectrum for wind turbines:
Distribution of Average Wind Speed m/s
The problem however, in the summer months, there is probably not enough wind to sustain the amount of needed energy production. And the star of our solar system comes into play: solar power.
In numbers for the last years 2015 and 2016 that gives some really impressive values:
Local and Global Irradiation monthly kWh/m2
And as we can see from the curve, the sun just starts to shine more when the wind is more asleep.
According to UKPower a medium household in 2019 used 12’000kWh for Gas and 2’900kWh for Electricity, totalling in about 14’900 kWh per year.
This amounts to the following power consumption for a Medium Household:
kWh/year 1’4900
kWh/month 1’241.67
kWh/day 40.83
With some calcuIations from the wind and solar database, I figured out, that with a 5kW turbine and 5m2 of solar panels I could roughly produce this amount of energy over the year:
Power Generation from Wind + Solar with 5kW Turbine and 5m2 Solar
So as we can see, this is just not enough to produce enough energy on your own. But it looks very promising. With more Solar, a larger turbine (or more turbines) or just a backup generator this could easily be addressed.
Regarding backup generator. Of course, energy sources like wind and solar are not stable, so we would have to have some battery storage capacity anyway.
A storage capacity for a single day in 3.2kWh blocks would cost roughly 22’500,00 CHF (list price for a Pylontech US3000). Adding the turbine with 40’000,00 CHF, solar panels 5’000,00 CHF and inverters 20’000,00 CHF you easily end up with a total price of 80’000,00 CHF – 100’000,00 CHF.
Electricity costs of roughly 3’500,00 CHF – 4’000,00 CHF per year will take a 25 years to pay off – if at all. And if the energy prices rise (as heard, by 50%), it would still need a 15+ years to reach a break even.
So what does this mean? There is no perpetuum mobile? And better use the grid and pay as you consume?
Probably not. Betting on higher energy prices, rising inflation, smarter and more efficient technology in the future and outages ocurring more often and often, this could really payoff much earlier than one would think.
Plus, it can be taken as an example, that it might actually be possible to produce your own energy without being dependent on anything else than wind and sun.
48 system in a car and running everything from AC.
We are getting ready for our next car. Or at least start thinking about it. Roughly, we want something like a MB Sprinter (short version, normal roof) and built the interior ourselves. And of course, when doing this, electricity is one part of it.
In this post we give a brief explanation of our requirements, use cases and possible solutions we came up with.
Storage capacity in our existing Toyota is 5’120Wh brutto with two Liontron 12V @200Ah batteries costing around 1’990,00 CHF, which makes 0,77 CHF / Wh. For our next van we would like to increase the storage capacity and the larger inverter, but keep cost down if possible. Currently we use 35mm2 cables to run our 1’200W inverter, so to run a larger inverter we would have to increase cable sizes in our system significantly – or increase voltage size.
After some thinking, we opted for a 48V system (rather unusual for a car) with two Pylontech Us3000 batteries summing up to a net capacity of 6’400Wh. Considering the price for the batteries (arund 1’730,00 CHF each) this would lower the price to 0,54 CHF / Wh. With this capacity we could run an 3000VA / 2400W inverter and cable sizes could then even stay the same.
However, the main problem with that setup would be to get 48V from a 12V alternator. But luckily, we are not the first tasked with this problem and Safiery has a solution just for that: Safiery Scotty 12V-48V DC/DC converter at different power levels (1000W, 1500W, 3000W). As the car engine would have a 250A alternator, the setup could really benefit from even the largest model. Ideally the DC/DC converter would be installed in the engine compartment, in order to minimise the relative voltage drop on the way into pssenger area.
As we currently do not have a fixed solar system, this is definitely something on our wishlist. But with that large DC/DC inverter and the fact that we are not staying for days at a single spot without moving the van, the initial cost for 400W solar panels just do not seem to be justified. So, we thought we prepare everything, so we can later still install solar panels without having to redo a lot of installation work. Enter Victron Energy EasySolar-II 48/3000/35-32 MPPT 250/70 GX. Now, how does this roll of the tongue?
But in fact, that system really looks promising: in a H 499mm x W 268mm x D 237mm box at a weight of 26kg, you get
a 3000 VA inverter,
250V/70A MPPT solar charger,
two AC out 230V @13A,
a communication controller (GX) with Can bus. USB, network connections (wired, wireless),
a 230V AC/DC battery charger with a 35A DC output (rather small),
programmable relays;
everything to be monitored and administered via a tablet,
options for future expandability such as LTE and GPS exist.
Considering, both the Scotty and the US3000 also have a CAN bus interface, this really make a neat paclage, as all devices are able to talk to each other. More bang for the buck.
At least in theory. As I have not built it yet. But I think, this is a good starting point. I will contact the vendors to get a response if my setup is supported and if there are any reference installations on it.
Now you might wonder, how I would charge my other 12V devices, as I do not have a single 12V output in the setup. And yes, I thought about this too, and came to the conclusion: I do not need 12V output. Or sort of.
Compressor, winch etc I will power from the alternator directly. All the rest I will power via AC, such as the fridge, mobile, USB, notebook. This of course, comes with a penalty, as I have to convert the energy twice. But this also saves me an additional device and a lot of cabling and extra fuse boxes (and this is all saved space).
Now about the weight:
the inverter I already mentioned 26kg: EasySolar-II 48/3000 GX
64kg: 2* Pylontech US3000
plus additional devices, such as 12V/48V DC/DC converter, bus bar, fuses, cables,
future solar panels would come on top (no pun intended).
The van (2-seater) has a total loading capacity of 1080kg, so I think this is a justifiable weight for a pretty massive power system.
For connection of these systems, I opted for a bus bar with integrated fuses, the Victron Energy Lynx Distributor, though a back-to-back-cabling with extra fuse boxes would also have worked.
In case, the interaction with Safiery, Victron and Pylontech via CAN bus does not work out as expected, I would insert a Smart BatteryProtect BP-220 in front of the Scotty, so I can switch the converter on and off depending on the ATD and ATC signal in the EasySolar via a relay.
System diagram: Van Electricity
So these are my plans for the next van. I am curious, what response I get from the vendors and how it all works out.
In case you have questions or recommendations for improvement, I am more than happy to hear from you.
Back, when we bought our Toyota Hilux we basically got the cheapest variant we could get; meaning, that we would not have seat heating or SatNav system. Instead we got a built-in no-extras “entertainment system” with a CDplayer. I added some links, in case you are generation x-why-z-what-do-i-know and were obliged to pass on this pre-historic equipment.
But that now has changed! (And no, we did not upgrade to DVD.)
When sorting through some boxes, I discovered an old Android tablet (a Huawei MediaPad T3 7″, if I am not mistaken; with street prices around 70 CHF) that still seemed to work. When I checked, that it could still run Google Maps and connect to my Victron Chargers and LionTron batteries, I thought I give it try.
With some Velcro I quickly sticked the tablet on the screen of the “entertainment system” and the CD slot. And I must say, it looks exactly as it was built for being in that very place.
Finally, I could make use of the 3.5,mm TRS input and the USB charger on the front. However, the charger does not provide enough power to charge the device. It just prevents it from discharging. So maybe, I still have to use the charger at the 12V cigarette output.
On the other hand, my onboard monitoring capability greatly improved, as now all my apps are much better readable due to the larger screen.
And now the cables:
I used a 3.5mm TRS male to 3.5mm TRS male cable (originally from my JBL BoomBox 2) that just fitted.
An short MicroUSB to USB-A cable with cable ties.
But to all this good news there is one caveat: now, I do not have a CD player any more.
Our Journey to Scotland 