Tesla Power
After a very good evening out celebrating another September birthday with my family we groggily rose for our super early start. We were due to be on the road at 8.30am. Wearily we headed out to the car and off we went. Today our 7 hour round trip journey will take us from Canterbury right down to Christchurch in Bournemouth and back again.
Adventures to the Coast
What may we be up too today I hear you ask? Well, today is finally the day we head off to pick up our batteries! Power is an incredibly important part of our build and after managing to get a good amount of solar on the roof we need some super technology to store our sun power! What else was there to choose than Tesla car battery modules? These battery modules are used to run all Tesla cars, and you need about 16 modules to fully power a car.
Though still relatively uncommon in van installations, it has been attempted by a few people now, with much success. We have been excited about the prospect of having a larger battery bank for less weight than regular lithium ion batteries. Most people generally opt for 100-200 amp hours of either gel or lead acid batteries. Lithium ion batteries are becoming more popular, however the expense is why most people stick with lead acid batteries. For comparison, 400ah is considered to be a large battery bank for a motorhome or campervan, One Tesla battery module will hold 5.3kWh’s of charge. Never ones to shy away from technology, we’ve decided to buy not one but two Tesla Modules! This should allow us to store 10.6kWh’s of power (just over 800ah), that our 1015 Watts of solar will help to fill!
In addition to solar power we will also be investing in a battery to battery (B2B) charger that will charge the Tesla batteries from the van whilst we are driving. We will also have the ability to charge the batteries when we connect to shore power at camp sites etc.
The Batteries
Why choose Tesla?
Well despite the obviously huge power gain compared to conventional batteries, Tesla modules weigh in at around 25kg each so a total of 50kgs for our two batteries, in comparison the same amount of amp hours as lead acid batteries would weigh around 260kg. This is a significant difference and with a weight limit on the van, it makes total sense to choose the Tesla modules.
Why do we need such a big battery?
This setup makes sense for us, with both of us being Computer Scientists, we are obviously interested in technology. We both enjoy working on computers, particularly game programming for Ben and digital art for me. We will also use them for recreation for streaming media and playing games. Whilst we intend to be out living, enjoying life and seeing the world while on the trip, we will need to do some computer work. Ben is currently building a low power consumption, but powerful PC which he will be doing an article on later. Besides the technology we will have necessary components to run such as the heater, hob, fan, water pumps, lights etc. Having a good supply of power will help us should there not be much sun on snowy or cloudy days.
Conclusion
So after our very long drive and a great chat with the seller of the batteries, (who has solar and Tesla powered his house and a friends camper van), we are very pleased to have finally gotten the batteries home. It was quite a feat to carry them from the car as they are very delicate and heavy!
