Hi everyone!
Excited to announce our project to create an emission-free, mostly solar-powered site assessment/work truck for our Portland based solar installation company Elemental Energy.
We bought a 1985 VW Transporter Double Cab (aka "Doka" - before pictures attached) whose pug-like charm turns heads everywhere it goes - and will soon turn even more when we electrify it and deck it out with some solar panels!
Before anyone freaks out
, let me clarify that we'll be charging the vehicle at our office which has a sizable solar array, hence most of our battery charging will be from solar! We plan to put some panels on the car as well, but that is mostly for marketing purposes - we are aware that the extra weight, cost and drag typically aren't worth the amount electricity they would produce. But having some solar on there is a must in terms of marketing. We may end up using the solar just to charge our 12V system, or we'd also like to maybe throw a 15A AC circuit on there to have a mobile power source - another candidate for putting the solar to more practical use.
On to the good stuff: the most exciting part of the project so far is that we got our hands on a really nice motor/controller combo for a great deal on ebay. We'll be using a Remy HVH250 with a Rinehart PM100DXcontroller.
Our next big design decision will be battery selection. Our ideal scenario was to get around 80-100 mi range unloaded, and maybe 50-60 miles loaded up with job equipment (1,600 lbs of solar panels, worst case). For that, we estimated we'd need somewhere in the ballpark of a 35 kWh battery pack. This might be cost prohibitive for us, so we may end up going with a smaller pack to start with, evaluating how well that works for us, and upgrading later if necessary & financially feasible.
In terms of our experience, we all went through a unique degree program in renewable energy engineering, which involved a lot of DIY hands on electronics projects, so we love this kind of stuff and have some good theory under our belts. However we are lacking in the auto mechanics department, and this is our first conversion project, so there will surely be a steep learning curve. We look forward to help from our local friend and former classmate Hollie Maea, and we also have a series of videos to reference from the EV4U guy who has done a conversion on the same vehicle.
We are excited to get to know you all and welcome any advice/suggestions/comments as we work our way through our first conversion. We hope to document everything pretty thoroughly, which we'll share here, and I'm sure we'll have tons of questions as we get started. Thanks!!
Excited to announce our project to create an emission-free, mostly solar-powered site assessment/work truck for our Portland based solar installation company Elemental Energy.
We bought a 1985 VW Transporter Double Cab (aka "Doka" - before pictures attached) whose pug-like charm turns heads everywhere it goes - and will soon turn even more when we electrify it and deck it out with some solar panels!
Before anyone freaks out
, let me clarify that we'll be charging the vehicle at our office which has a sizable solar array, hence most of our battery charging will be from solar! We plan to put some panels on the car as well, but that is mostly for marketing purposes - we are aware that the extra weight, cost and drag typically aren't worth the amount electricity they would produce. But having some solar on there is a must in terms of marketing. We may end up using the solar just to charge our 12V system, or we'd also like to maybe throw a 15A AC circuit on there to have a mobile power source - another candidate for putting the solar to more practical use. On to the good stuff: the most exciting part of the project so far is that we got our hands on a really nice motor/controller combo for a great deal on ebay. We'll be using a Remy HVH250 with a Rinehart PM100DXcontroller.
Our next big design decision will be battery selection. Our ideal scenario was to get around 80-100 mi range unloaded, and maybe 50-60 miles loaded up with job equipment (1,600 lbs of solar panels, worst case). For that, we estimated we'd need somewhere in the ballpark of a 35 kWh battery pack. This might be cost prohibitive for us, so we may end up going with a smaller pack to start with, evaluating how well that works for us, and upgrading later if necessary & financially feasible.
In terms of our experience, we all went through a unique degree program in renewable energy engineering, which involved a lot of DIY hands on electronics projects, so we love this kind of stuff and have some good theory under our belts. However we are lacking in the auto mechanics department, and this is our first conversion project, so there will surely be a steep learning curve. We look forward to help from our local friend and former classmate Hollie Maea, and we also have a series of videos to reference from the EV4U guy who has done a conversion on the same vehicle.
We are excited to get to know you all and welcome any advice/suggestions/comments as we work our way through our first conversion. We hope to document everything pretty thoroughly, which we'll share here, and I'm sure we'll have tons of questions as we get started. Thanks!!
