Adding a 240V Socket in the rear & Bluetti Alternator Charger

[Steve9911]

I don't know if anyone will find this useful but this is what I have wanted to achieve for a while now and have finally got around to getting it done.
1: Fit an additional 240V socket in the rear to charge a Power station when on hook up.
2: Fit an 50amp Anderson socket to allow me to connect a Bluetti Alternator charger to allow me to charge the Power station while driving.
3: Use the Power station as if on EHU

I hope this is of some use to anyone considering doing the same.
Start by accessing the RCB to allow for connection of an additional power cable, this can be easily feed down to the rear battery compartment.




The cable can be feed down from behind the RCB panel into the left rear corner of the battery compartment, this was much easier than expected.

The 240V socket on the left and the Anderson socket on the right I sourced from Amazon. The easiest place to put these is on the removeable battery panel cover.

I wanted to be able to remove everything and just be left with the sockets if I required all the rear space at anytime. So I used Velcro to attached the Bluetti Charger and Trip. I purchased the additional cable that you can buy with the charger because it is very long and comes with the safety Trip, I was then able to make two cables from this. Just incase I wanted a longer cable to charge the Power station in the cabin.


This is it fully connected, the 240V is doing nothing as it is not on EHU and the Alternator charger is not taking anything from the leisure batteries as the Bluetti is a smart charger and will only work when the engine is running.


Obviously I have everything sitting out and will be packed much tighter when traveling so will not take up as much space as in the photo's. I will see how things go this year I might end up putting the Charger Trip in the battery cupboard out of the way. I hope this might help someone who maybe considering doing something like this.
Goodluck.

 

[couplands]

Very useful, thanks for the detailed breakdown of your installation.

 

[CC44853]

This is awesome, thank you for sharing.

 

[mister_blobs]

If I want to use the power station to power the Cali as if on EHU I just need to unplug the male end of the IEC lead form the power station input and connect it to a Female IEC lead I have made to go from the power station 240V output.

Are you saying that you have created a lead that goes from a standard 13A plug on the power station to another 13A plug which is plugged into your new socket? All this via a "special" cable that has some IEC gender changes?

If I have understood correctly then this is very dangerous.
The IEC connector like this one (https://www.switchelectronics.co.uk/products/cl1919-c14-iec-rewireable-connector-10a-250v-cliff) should only ever be used to receive power (i.e. there is no voltage on the pins when the cable is not made up). The same is true for 13A plugs. If your cables become disconnected for whatever reason then you could easily touch a live connection.
Equally there is nothing to stop someone plugging into the EHU socket on the outside of the van while you are powering the mains internally. These two mains supplies would be out of phase and there would be a large current flow between the two supplies until one or more events happen to break the circuit (MCB trip, wiring burn out etc)

There is a reason why you had to create a "special" cable - because no-one will sell you a cable that is inherently unsafe.

 

[Steve9911]

Are you saying that you have created a lead that goes from a standard 13A plug on the power station to another 13A plug which is plugged into your new socket? All this via a "special" cable that has some IEC gender changes?

If I have understood correctly then this is very dangerous.
The IEC connector like this one (https://www.switchelectronics.co.uk/products/cl1919-c14-iec-rewireable-connector-10a-250v-cliff) should only ever be used to receive power (i.e. there is no voltage on the pins when the cable is not made up). The same is true for 13A plugs. If your cables become disconnected for whatever reason then you could easily touch a live connection.
Equally there is nothing to stop someone plugging into the EHU socket on the outside of the van while you are powering the mains internally. These two mains supplies would be out of phase and there would be a large current flow between the two supplies until one or more events happen to break the circuit (MCB trip, wiring burn out etc)

There is a reason why you had to create a "special" cable - because no-one will sell you a cable that is inherently unsafe.

The only time that I will be using that cable is when I am not on EHU I know everything you are saying is correct but this is for my use only. Nobody is going to randomly connect an EHU to my van out in the wilderness. You are kind of stating the obvious. I am not telling anyone to do this but the 240V socket and Anderson plug are very safe! The extra IEC lead is for me to use for extra power if I need it.
I have deleted that part of the post as I wouldn’t want anyone to do something stupid, I will however use this the way I originally intended as no one else will be using it only me.