How mutch power should i store?

Hi guys im new to the Van life experience .

So the main goal is living full time in the van and be completely indipendend on power
using solar. already this gives some questions to mind like actual battery storage.

i want to play video games on my ps4 pro and my tv for like 3 hours a night,
mabey power a household fridge
and all the other basic house van stuff

can anyone help me in the right derection?

kind regards Youri ;D

Hi trying to find put the same info as you so would be really interesting if any one has any info

It’s really not a simple question to answer as it involves knowing some specifics. If you can settle on the actual products you wish to use you can calculate their hourly power usage and multiply by how many hours you expect to use each item. Once you’re confident you’ve got everything it’s probably smart to add a little extra for unforseen power usage. There’s a few websites out there with calculators set up for this. I think Faroutride.com has a good one

I’m not an expert so take this with a grain of salt,

ps4 roughly 100watts
tv roughly 150 watts (could be 400 depending on size/type)

= 250 watts / 110v = 2.27 amps
(watts / volts = amps)

Then plug that in here (if the calculator works correctly): Calculate AC to DC Amperage Through Inverter | BatteryStuff

so ~ 23 amps an hour, so for 3 hours ~ 70 amps. This really doesn’t take into consideration a lot of factors such as how efficient your inverter is at converting power. From looking at this 110/120 dc seems to be about 10x the amps. 70 amps is more power than we typically pull in three days, but we don’t have a TV or playstation 4 hooked up in our van. Maybe look at a tablet. We honestly use our ipad pro for everything, tv, games, movies, work. Beyond our phones, it’s the only electric device we use that isn’t life sustaining.

Also if you have standart lead acid batteries, you only can take 50% of the power from them before they start to sulfate and lose overall capacity. So for 3 hours you essentially would need two 70ah batteries. Again, I could be way off base here as we don’t convert 110 for anything in our build.

Just a thought (and this is only my opinion), but having a PS4 in the van kinda defeats the point of living in a van. To me, the best benefit of living in a van is that it gives me the economic and literal freedom to experience everything in life that I want to. I still like my video games from time to time though, so do have a Nintendo Switch in the van. The switch only uses 15 watts of electric as opposed to the PS4 which uses 140 watts when gaming and 90 watts when streaming. The Switch can be changed directly from the 12v system or it can be plugged into the 120v system and connected to my tv. Make sure that you have an 120v Energy Star TV too, the 120v TVs are more energy efficient than the 12v TVs. My 120v 1080p 32” LCD TV only uses 39 watts of power and cost $90 at Walmart. Now for some math:
PS4 140w x 3 (hours) = 420 watt/hours
TV 65w x 3 (hours) = 195 watt/hours
Your inverter will use some electricity too for the cooling fan and what not.
Inverter 20w x 3 (hours) = 60 watt/hours
This gives us a very rough estimate requirement of 675w/hr of available power, if you use anything other than Lithium batteries that means you will need at least double that, so 1.35kw/hr. I would double that so that you don’t have to worry about draining your batteries to a dangerous level if you run the game system before going to bed (most battery types will see a reduced life expectancy if they are drained below 50% capacity, it gets worse if it’s cold outside). So you will need roughly 2.7kw/hr of power. Now for some more math, 2,700 (watts) / 12 (volts) = 225 (ah). To run your game system you will need about 225ah (12v) of battery capacity. Another great benefit of the Nintendo Switch, it only requires 10ah of battery capacity at the minimum, and it’s tiny so it doesn’t take space in the van. The switch can even be reliably charged from the engine battery through a cigarette lighter plug without even having to worry about draining the engine battery.
If you built your system to have at least 150w of solar capability, 400ah of battery capacity and a smart battery isolator relay to charge the house batteries when you drive, you should be completely set and should never run into power issues.
Once you know what kind of TV and fridge (and lights, roof vent, and every other 12v component) you will be going with, I can help you do the calculations to figure out exactly how big of a system you will need. Just send me a PM if you want my help.