Going ‘off grid’

When going ‘off grid’ it’s essential to take measures that will minimise the drain on the leisure battery (or batteries).

It’s often very nice to have all of the bells and whistles of a big, well equipped campsite – but there are times when something more basic is more appealing. Also, the more basic the site, the lower the cost (in general).

Or it may be necessary or expedient to stay overnight in a layby or quiet road, though that’s rarely recommended (see separate post).

When ‘basic’ means no mains hook-up then you’re going to be quite reliant on your leisure battery and while it is possible to do without any electrical power, it’s not entirely convenient.

Of course, if you have a solar collector then you can keep the battery topped up on a really sunny day and at least add a bit of charge on an overcast day. If the solar panel is on the roof, don’t park under trees that will shade out the solar panel.

A small wind turbine might also provide a bit of topping up but there’s still likely to be a net reduction of power stored in the battery.

If you haven’t got any way of topping up (other than running the engine), then conserving the power in the leisure battery for little ‘luxuries’ like running a 12V television for a few hours in the evening can be very worthwhile.

Assuming your cooking, heating, hot water and ‘fridge can all be run from the gas supply the first thing to do is consider what you use electricity for. In my case it’s the lighting, water pump, charging a ‘phone, possibly running the laptop and maybe watching TV or DVDs in the evening.

Whatever you do, don’t try to run the ‘fridge on 12V when the engine isn’t running, it will drain the leisure battery in just a few hours, so gas is the answer there. If you haven’t got a 3-way ‘fridge you can put food outside (well wrapped) on cold evenings. Or you can keep the ‘fridge door closed for as long as possible to keep the cold in.

Now, getting back to electricity, lighting is potentially a big user of power so one obvious thing to do is make sure your lighting is as efficient as possible.

If you have a central switch or control panel for turning lighting on and off then go around all of the individual light fittings and turn them off, so you can then just turn the lights on that you need at the time.

The same principle applies to the water pump. Only use it when you have to – strip washes are going to be more practical than taking a shower.

LEDs use a lot less power for lighting

A bit more involved is upgrading the bulbs to LED if you haven’t already. There are many LED equivalents to traditional fluorescent or halogen bulbs, though you’ll need to shop around to get 12V. I’ll leave that to Google as I don’t want to give links to sites where I can’t be sure of the product quality.

Of course, it’s also handy to have a few battery-powered or wind-up torches or lanterns in case the power does run out.

It’s also worth taking advantage of the batteries in mobile devices, so plugging them in while you’re driving so they are charged when you stop will give you more run-time. A fully charged laptop battery should be able to charge a ‘phone sufficiently for a while.

There are other blogs on the internet that go into this subject in more detail and are for dedicated ‘off-gridders’. This post is really aimed to people who only go off-grid occasionally and still treat themselves to luxuries like mains power most of the time.