Electrical is the part of a van build with the widest gap between what people install and what they use. We have seen weekend rigs carrying 600 amp-hours of lithium that never dip below 80%, and full-timers limping along on a single undersized battery. Both mistakes come from the same place: sizing the system before listing the loads.
Start with loads, not batteries
Write down everything that will draw power on a typical day, with honest hours of use. A realistic weekend list looks something like this:
- Roof fan on low overnight — roughly 15–20 Ah
- 12V fridge — 30–40 Ah per day, the biggest steady consumer in most vans
- LED lighting for an evening — 5–8 Ah
- Phones, headlamps, a laptop — 10–20 Ah
- Water pump and small electronics — a rounding error
That totals 60–90 Ah per day for a comfortable two-person weekend setup — before any induction cooking or climate equipment.
Sizing the bank
A good rule: your usable battery capacity should cover two days of your real total, so weather or a lazy day never forces a drive. For the list above, 200 Ah of lithium is genuinely comfortable, and 100 Ah works for minimalists who cook on propane.
Charging: solar is the supplement, driving is the workhorse
Rooftop solar earns its keep parked in the sun, but a DC-DC charger off the alternator refills a bank faster and works at midnight in the rain. Two hours of driving can put back what a full day of clouds took out. Most balanced systems pair 200–400W of roof solar with a 30A DC-DC charger.
Where a drop-in power station fits
For weekend builds, a modern all-in-one power station covers the entire list above without a custom electrical bay: inverter, charging, and monitoring in one box you can also carry to a campsite table. That is the approach our kit electrical package is designed around — full custom systems come into their own when induction cooking, air conditioning, or true off-grid work enter the picture.
Buy your second electrical system first: the one sized for how you actually camp, not the one sized for the trips you are still imagining.
Electrical options for both approaches are configurable in the Build & Price form, and our team is happy to sanity-check a load list before you commit.