Your leisure battery sits at the heart of your power system in a motorhome or caravan.

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Deciding on the size of your battery is essential to determining your off grid capability and general use of your vehicle. The size will depend on what you want to power from it, the space you have to accommodate it and the weight allowance you have to transport it/them once fitted.

 

MACSUK prefer to fit FOGSTAR lithium batteries although we are flexible if the customer wishes to have an alternative, established battery type fitted such as Victron or ROAMER.  

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In general terms, leisure vehicles are originally fitted with 105ah AGM or GEL batteries, neither of which are suitable for off-grid use other than to power USB sockets or LED lighting. They are essentially supplied to provide 'light off grid use only' and more commonly in conjunction with an electrical hook-up supply.

 

Many customers do not realise that the 12v battery is an essential part of of the operating system of a caravan or motorhome even when hooked up to electric. For example, a fridge requires 12v from the battery to power the control panel and services such as the water pump and lighting are generally powered from the battery. The 240v EHU simply charges the battery in most cases when hooked up, allowing the van to use the stored battery power to operate the core systems. This is why a low powered battery can be used when regularly hooked up, but when there is no EHU available, the requirements change!

 

At this point, the ability of your van systems to deliver power to the various components over time simply relies on the capacity of your battery.

 

The recharging systems that deliver power to the battery in order to repeat the power delivery scenario day after day away from EHU then become critical to the off grid experience. 

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If you generally spend most of your time on sites where there is EHU, you may not need a bigger battery! In some cases, customers simply want the confidence to be able to go 'off grid' for a day or so if they so choose. In this case, a simple battery size upgrade is often sufficient.

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If an owner wishes to explore a travelling style more suited to a mixture of campsite, aire and off grid ('wild') camping, then more often than not, a battery upgrade with associated improvements in solar harvest capability and vehicle charging (B2B) will be required.

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MACSUK recommend a minimum 300ah lithium battery to deliver reliable off grid capability of up to two days. The amount of time it takes to deplete the charge in the battery depends on what devices the user wishes to introduce into the motorhome or caravan.

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As a rule of thumb, the use of 12v devices such as USB charged items, phones, laptops, battery banks can survive on smaller amp/hour batteries such as 105ah examples fitted but there is a significant risk of power depletion if they are not charged on a daily basis.

 

If the use wishes to use 12v hairdryers or TVs, or venture into the inverted 240v power to run microwaves, air fryers or kettles. MACSUK recommend a minimum battery capacity of 300ah for light daily use.

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For anything more than light daily use, certainly if there is any ambition to power space heaters, air conditioning, induction hobs or other cooking devices for anything more than 15 minutes a day, then an upgrade to 460ah or 560ah batteries is recommended.​

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For full off-grid self sustainability, we suggest that budget and space are balanced, and in most cases this results in >600ah battery capability with up to three batteries of any size (max 628ah) to facilitate the true off-grid experience.

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In every case listed above, there are implications associated with solar, alternator and 240v EHU charging to regenerate the battery bank. For more information please visit our 'off grid living' page of the website.