This page gathers data measured in real-world use (actual trips!): appliance consumption, daily usage, and — as we collect it — solar and alternator yield.
With accurate, real-world data, you can make better predictions about sizing your own electrical system. So we hope that helps.
This is a living page. FarOutVan #2 is fully instrumented (more on that below) and we add results as they come in — we are currently at home working on the van, so more data will come later during summer 2026. Last data added: July 2026.
Our Electrical Systems
FarOutVan #1
DIY
FarOutVan #2
EcoFlow Power Kit
How We Measure
Our numbers are our numbers: ambient temperature, insulation, and cooking/riding/showering habits all move the needle. Use them as reference points to calibrate your own estimates, not as gospel.
AC Appliances
AC appliance consumption is measured at the plug (120V side). But what really matters is how much energy is drawn from the battery bank, so we add about 12% loss to account for inverter losses.
That’s the easy part. We use Smart Plugs with built-in Energy Monitoring.
We chose Zigbee Smart Plugs, because plugs using this protocol draw very little power themselves. If you don’t have a fancy Home Assistant system in your van, you can simply use Wi-Fi Smart Plugs (no hub needed), but be aware that these plugs draw more power themselves.
DC Loads
Here, we had to get a bit geeky and build our own power-monitoring device (a.k.a. the “Quad-Shunt”). It lives in the EcoFlow Distribution Panel, and we can measure 4 devices simultaneously (space constraints).
The Quad-Shunt lives in the EcoFlow Power Kit’s Distribution Panel:
It’s made of 1 x ESP32 board (it’s like a mini-computer that can transmit data over Wi-Fi), 4 x INA228 Energy-Monitoring Boards, and Wago Connectors:
System Level
(Solar, Alternator, Daily Usage)
Data will be taken from the console of the EcoFlow Power Kit:
Home Assistant
All the data is gathered by a Home Assistant Green; it’s like a mini-computer built specifically to run Home Assistant. We made a custom dashboard (still in progress) to track the important stuff in FarOutVan #2:
Overview Panel:
Power Panel:
Climate Panel:
Connectivity Panel:
Appliance Consumption
Our current van runs an EcoFlow Power Kit with an all-electric galley: induction cooking, electric oven, electric water heater, and two e-bikes charging in the garage. Full specs, wiring, and breaker sizes live in the install guide’s complete loads list; this page is about what those loads actually consume. We track the loads that move the needle — every light, fan, and USB outlet is in the loads list, but they won’t make or break your battery bank.
Induction Cooktop
Cooking Pasta + Heating Sauce
One element comes on at ~946 W (pasta water), the sauce element joins at ~4.5 min (~1400 W combined), a brief 1633 W peak when both ran high, then turned down to a ~750 W simmer around 15 min, off at ~21 min. Total: 369 Wh at the plug, ≈414 Wh from the battery with the 12% inverter loss. A full pasta dinner costs about a third of a water-tank heat-up — nice data point.
More meals coming…
Oven
Making Toast
The oven comes on at ~1846 W and holds a flat ~1815 W for the whole run — no element cycling on the toast setting — then off at ~4 min. Total: 127 Wh at the plug, ≈142 Wh from the battery with the 12% inverter loss. Sunday-morning toast costs about a third of the pasta dinner.
Water Heater
The Isotemp SPA 15L (installed in our water cabinet) is a simple resistive heater: 750 W element, no surprises.
Full Tank Heat-Up
Heating a full 15 L tank from room temperature — the “we just filled up, let’s make it shower-ready” scenario — is one steady pull: 726 W average for 1 h 21 min. Total: 980 Wh at the plug, ≈1100 Wh from the battery with the 12% inverter loss. In practice we do the initial heat-up on shore power before leaving the house, so the battery only pays for top-ups on the road.
Maintaining Temperature (no hot water use)
With nobody using hot water, the Isotemp fires a short reheat burst — ≈800 W for 3-4 min — about every 55 minutes: every ~45 min at night, with longer gaps during the warm afternoon. That adds up to ≈1386 Wh per day at the plug. Keeping the tank hot costs ≈1552 Wh per day from the battery with the 12% inverter loss — more than heating the tank from cold once. Worth switching the heater off when you won’t need hot water for a while.
e-Bikes
Two mountain bikes charge from the van: Isa’s Santa Cruz Bullit (600 Wh battery, Bosch BPC3410 fast charger) and Antoine’s Transition Repeater (630 Wh battery, Shimano EC-6002 charger). Here is a full 0-100% charge for each, measured at the plug:
Two takeaways. First, plan for roughly 650-700 Wh per bike per full charge — a bit more than the battery’s rating, because the charger keeps 5-10% as losses (call it ~0.75 kWh per bike from the van battery, with inverter overhead). Second, the charger is a big lever on time, not energy: the fast charger peaks at 188 W and is done in ~4 h, while the standard charger sips 87 W for ~9 h. Either way, charging both bikes costs about the same as heating the water tank once.
Fridge
Over one summer day — cabin swinging from 16 °C at dawn to 34 °C mid-afternoon — the NovaKool R5810 averaged 21.7 W, its 51 W compressor running ≈43% of the time. The duty follows the cabin temperature: more rest overnight, longer runs through the warm evening. Total: 522 Wh per day, measured on the DC side — no inverter in the loop. A winter day will be cheaper; we will log one when we get there.
Roof Fan
Power Draw vs Speed
We stepped our Maxxfan Deluxe from speed 10 down to 0, holding each speed for ~15 seconds, and read the power at each plateau. Speed 10 pulls ≈45 W, speed 5 only ≈17 W, speed 1 barely 2 W (DC side, no inverter). The top speeds cost the most — going from 5 to 10 nearly triples the draw for the last bit of airflow.
Power Draw vs Intake Restriction
Also tested: windows (the intake) fully closed vs fully open — no change in power draw, but a very noticeable change in airflow (that one we can’t measure).
Is that expected? Yes — even if intuition says otherwise. The intuition trap is thinking of the fan like a pump fighting a blocked pipe, “straining” against the restriction and drawing more current. But there is no feedback loop in a Maxxfan: the motor gets a fixed PWM duty for the speed you set, and its power draw is just RPM × torque. The torque comes from accelerating air mass through the blades — choke the intake and the blade actually has less air to push (the van goes slightly under-pressure and the fan mostly churns), so the aerodynamic load stays the same or drops a touch. For propeller-style axial fans, power is typically highest at free flow and flat-to-slightly-lower when restricted — the opposite of a centrifugal pump. Add that our readings are integer watts on a ~45 W load, and a few-percent dip would be invisible.
The consequence: watts don’t measure ventilation. With the windows closed the fan draws the same 45 W while delivering close to zero fresh-air exchange — the energy cost per unit of actual ventilation goes through the roof. Opening an intake is “free airflow” from the battery’s point of view.
Starlink Mini
Left on 24/7, the Starlink Mini idles at a steady 18-20 W with a bump to ≈39 W during heavy evening use. Total: 486 Wh per day (DC side, no inverter) — about as much as the fridge. Switching the dish off overnight would save ≈150 Wh/day.
Wi-Fi Router
The router (GL.iNet X3000) is the van’s network hub, and it has three ways to reach the internet: its built-in 5G modem (SIM card), Starlink as its upstream, or repeater mode, where it grabs an outside Wi-Fi network (campground, cafe, home) and rebroadcasts it inside the van. Whatever the source, every device in the van stays on the same van Wi-Fi — switching sources never touches a device.
That flexibility is also a power strategy. The router runs 24/7 anyway, and both 5G and repeater mode ride on its small budget — while Starlink adds its own ≈500 Wh/day on top when left on around the clock. So the pecking order is: repeater when there is Wi-Fi to borrow, 5G where there is coverage, and Starlink only where nothing else works. We have not isolated the router’s own power consumption yet — coming soon.
Daily Power Usage
Coming soon!
Solar Yield
FarOutVan #2’s roof is documented in Adding Solar Power to a Van.
Coming soon!
Alternator Charge
Coming soon!
FarOutVan #1
Our first van (our home from 2017 to 2021) ran a classic 12V build: lithium batteries, Victron solar charging, and a Sterling B2B alternator charger (later upgraded to a Victron Orion XS 50A Charger). We had less instrumentation back then, so this section is short — but the data aged well.
Measured Summer Daily Power Usage
The Victron SmartSolar charge controller can’t measure loads directly, but it measures harvest. So when (1) no other charge source is used and (2) there is more solar available than we need, harvest = usage. Here is a month of summer days measured that way:
Summer vs Winter Solar Harvest
We couldn’t measure winter usage (the Sterling B2B did most of the charging, unmetered), but we could still compare solar harvest across seasons:
No surprise: winter harvest is way, way lower than summer — and the summer numbers are actually understated, since harvest stops once the battery is full. This is why we were glad to have the Sterling B2B: Plan B in summer, Plan A in winter. Solar + alternator remains, in our opinion, the balanced combo for a van electrical system.
