is there anything wrong with Jackery?

There is nothing inherently wrong with Jackery in particular or “power stations” in general. They will perform to spec and as designed. Here’s my copypasta on the topic of power setups:

== begin ==

In general the process is:

• assess daily power requirements <- arithmetic, not guessing
• think critically about charging options, based on your particular use case. Full-timing or long expeditions require more robust field charging than does weekending.
• read and understand relevant specs (not marketing) on everything under consideration
• choose whatever components or all-in-one solutions meet power needs…
  • under the worst conditions you are likely to encounter (winter? bad weather?)
  • at a price (money and effort) you are willing to pay.
• only then break out the credit card

== end ==

IME, anyone who does the legwork will get good results with either approach, whether DIY or a “power station”.

The problem is they are marketed as Magic Solutions to folks who don’t/won’t/can’t do the legwork. “If I just spend a lot of money on it I’m sure it will be fine”. And maybe it will. Often it won’t, because the buyer didn’t know what they needed or what they actually bought. I help owners of power stations frequently over on reddit; such help mainly consists of quoting relevant sections of their own device’s manual to explain why it’s doing what it’s doing.

I understand it can be an onslaught of information at first so I try to help with overviews like: choosing solar panels for your power station.

“This video has been removed by the uploader”

keywords have some rules
need to use the Booles
that’s the way I type it baby
I don’t want to scroll forever

(search fu up-grades)
(search fu up-grades)

Is this whole “Tiny House/Van” movement genuinely Solarpunk?

Is it claiming to be? I’ve met hundreds of folks living in solar-enabled campervans and none of them ever mentioned solarpunk.

I’d rather mods who don’t want outside participation to be able to stop their communities from showing in All.

Agreed. Niche communities can get hammered with downvotes and “I don’t want to read this” comments from readers of ALL.

It’s confounding: “show me everything”, then “I don’t like the content in your niche community”. WTF?

VictronConnect

I physically damaged one of the 3x 190w in that array. Since the originals were obscure NOS I couldn’t find another one to replace it. It was summertime so I was able to get by with 380w but that would not be sufficient to meet needs during other seasons.

So I started looking for replacements that would fill the available space. I ended up with 3x of the Trina 250w that flooded the market, the ones that Will Prowse would make famous in his video.

I made the swap on BLM land outside Las Cruces, NM and donated the 2x 190w to a family in a skoolie the next camp over. They had a 2x 100w set out so I figured they could use them. The deal was they had to come over and carry them them, I wasn’t going to deliver. :-)

Interesting. I’d never looked at my “lifetime” numbers before; I am keenly interested in daily harvests to understand the power budget but haven’t thought about the overall harvest.

Caveat: mine are higher, relative to size, because I live in the vehicle and so place more loads on the system. The rig has had two setups

• 570w array for the first 1,630 days = 2.82MWh
• 750w array for last 457 days = 0.89MWh
• total 3.71MWh

the stove over to induction next. I hate it when the batteries fill back up by 10am and I waste solar meanwhile I am still buying propane for the appliances.

It’s possible. For the 11 months I’ve been cooking from excess solar power (December is a little short). I still carry propane for heating and a few things that seem to work better over flame.

Not for living out of

He appears to live in a house. The description says “Follow me as I convert and modify vans on my driveway” and the build vids show him working in a driveway in a residential area.

Folks interested in full-timing might drop in at /c/houseless@lemmy.sdf.org if they haven’t already

I’ve never plugged into shore power or been to an RV park. I live off lithium batteries a generator and solar power.

Same, only no genny. I’ve been away from shore power for the past (checking…) 1.787 days.

Many of my nights are spent on the side of a road or a Cracker Barrel parking lot.

I boondock on BLM/FS land mainly, but do stealth in towns at times. I’ve heard the term “wallydocking” for dry camping at places like Walmart and Cracker Barrel.

Hot Take: I think WM should offer $5 overnights with water, dump, and dumpster in the back corner of the lots. $5 waived with a >$5 receipt from the store that day. Make some money off what people are already doing. :-)

Does this community welcome people like me or should I wait for the old farts to figure out how to create /c/RVlife?

I imagine it’s cool here. If not, come over to this community that explicitly welcomes folks that live in RVs: the description there is “Living in vans, cars, RVs, etc”

I just noticed the meme on the post. I’m not sure I understand what it’s trying to say. Here’s one that rings more true to me.

This is IMO and I don’t intend to gatekeep. Since you asked…

What does the term “Vanlife” mean to you?

It used to mean living in a van; the term was used that way back in the 90s on yahoo email groups, IIRC.

/cynic mode ON
Then it blew up and was co-opted by carbetbaggers and the van-curious. Now it means influencing, watching influencers, posting bikini and/or foot pics, spending way too much money on a conversion then saying “hashtag-vanlife is overrated” and bailing. Most people on popular YT vanlife channels, forums, etc, do not own a van and will never spend a night in a van.
/cynic mode OFF

Speaking generally, and not about present company.

Personally, I align more with being a weekender, despite having traveled extensively for several months

Still working on coffee, but I’ll suggest a spectrum of approaches/attitudes

• dreaming <– most people are here
• weekending
• weekending in a rig that is capable of longer outings. An underrated option, since it gives us the ability to deal with life challenges, natural disasters, etc.
• traveling for months - practically indistinguisable from fulltiming since it presents many of the same challenges: power, water, food, etc. The only things missing are exposure to both summer and winter, and the sobering realization that this is home and there is no other home to return to.
• fulltiming

TLDR

Vacations and campouts are fun. Living off-grid fulltime is serious business. I am reminded of the joke about different animals’ contributions to breakfast: the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.

I kinda hate the term vanlife

We fulltimers need to “reclaim” the word from the insta/YT influencer crowd.

This is day 1,774 offgrid for me.

The swoopy lines are the equivalent of WW1 dazzle camofluge. They (try to) disguise the huge expanses of flat slab side.

I like it!

I had a 1973 (?) vw bus when I was stationed in (the Former West) Germany. It was ex-Bundeswehr, OD green with rifle mounts and the gasoline heater/bomb. I did lots of weekending in it but never tried to convert it.

Also had a 1972 standard beetle back in the US. Might be in my blood, dad tells me I was conceived in the back of one of those single-cab pickup versions in 1965. :-)