We bought Buddy the Camper with the intention of taking a 1-year road trip around the USA…and as of October 2024 we are 7.5 years into full-time RV living through Mexico, the USA, Canada, and Alaska (yeah we know it’s not a country, but it’s big enough it could be, lol). You might ask what keeps us going, and there are many parts to that answer: the people, the wilderness, the stories, the new & old friends we meet along the way, the music, the dive bars, the kayak journeys…the freedom. And that last one, the freedom to go in any direction we want, and to get remote for as long as we want…that truly is the magic. We aren’t tethered to campgrounds for electricity, water, waste, internet, etc. Some might find that freedom by running a generator to “power up”, but a noisy/heavy/stinky/money guzzling/polluting generator is no way to respect or enjoy the nature you are there to experience. This is exactly why Buddy is 100% solar-powered for all our electricity needs. A question a lot of folks ask us: “Is a lithium battery worth it”…let’s dive in!
OUR SOLAR SYSTEM
Our solar setup consists of four parts: Three Windy Nation 100-Watt 12V Flexible Monocrystalline Solar Panels (we would like a fourth, but with the two-person kayak, skylights, fan vents, and our Thule skybox, we don’t have any extra space up there), a Windy Nation P30L 30A Charge Controller (which regulates the energy flowing from the solar panels into the battery), a battery (much more on that later, lol), and a VertaMax 1500-Watt 12V Inverter (which converts the batteries energy from 12 volts to 120 so we can plug in all our devices that need juice).
DOWNSIDES OF A LEAD-ACID BATTERY
Since we originally thought this was just going to be a 1-year journey we went with the cheapest and biggest battery that would fit in the battery compartment, which was a lead-acid style battery…and boy did it cost us in the end. In the beginning of the journey it wasn’t so bad, but as the months went on the battery would hold less and less charge. One or two cloudy or cold days in a row and the inverter would start beeping that it didn’t have enough power to run our lights or the water pump (two kinda important things in a house). The other thing most people don’t realize about lead acid batteries is that they should only be used down to about 50% capacity (meaning that a 200 amp hour lead acid battery only has 100ah of usable power), and once you run the battery below 50% it starts to “remember” a new equilibrium and will never get back to 100% full again. Around year 2 we really started to notice this when our crappy battery was causing us to leave some of the most beautiful campsites in search of power…so we decided it was time to upgrade to Lithium.
WHY WE CHOSE RELiON
There are a few major players in the Lithium Ion Battery game: RELiON, Battle Born, Epoch, and Renogy. They all make good products, but a few things caught our eye about RELiON.
#1. They are one of the very few to offer a 300 amp hour battery. If you want 300ah most of the other guys make you buy multiple smaller batteries and wire them together…no thanks.
#2. They seemed less corporate.
#3. Their products got stellar reviews on all the sites we checked, and we couldn’t find a bad word about them on the internet.
#4. (This one we didn’t know until we had to use it) but the customer support team at RELiON could not be more knowledgeable or friendly. I was on the phone with Darren for over an hour, and he wasn’t even debugging a problem with the battery, he was trying to help me change the settings on my charge controller. And at the end of the call, he asked me to call him back in a few days to let him know we had fixed the problem (we had)…what a guy!
#5. And this one is probably the most important to us…is their commitment to the environment. They have committed to 1% For The Planet, which means they give 1% of gross sales (not just of profit) to charities making the earth a better place for humans and animals alike. They also have an internal program called Limitless Blue which supports a ton of charities.
BATTERY SPECS
So which battery did we go with? We are rocking the RB300. It has nearly identical dimensions to our old battery (which only had 100ah of usable power), is 33 pounds lighter, and has three times the usable power. I mean those are some serious numbers. And while this battery will set you back around $2k it is actually cheaper than lead acid in the long run (because they last up to 10 times as long, have over 3 times the power supply, and are maintenance-free).
IS A LITHIUM BATTERY WORTH IT: RESULTS OF OUR TEST
We installed this battery three years ago, and we honestly have not seen our battery meter below 90% a single time. And we can NOT tell you what a relief that is. Going from the days when we would be sipping power, or straight up not running devices for fear of the dreaded “battery is angry” beep…to seemingly unlimited power storage, we could not be more pumped. Oh, and the other thing I wanted to add is that a lithium battery is not just for folks who run on solar, it’s for anyone who wants to have more energy for their off-grid experiences. So head over to RELiON (and heck, compare their stuff to the other guys as well), and do yourself a favor and step up to Lithium!
P.S. When we found RELiON reached out to them and asked if we could test and review one of their products. We explained to them that if we weren’t happy with the battery we would simply return it without sharing it with you guys, and they said that was totally cool. As you can tell we are freaking in love with this battery and all the new adventures it opens up for us, and hopefully you too!