Camper Power & Climate Planner
Plan an EcoFlow-based battery, charging, and air-conditioning kit sized to how you actually camp — from a weekend fridge-and-phones setup to running AC all night in a van.
1 · Start here
Pick your make and model — we'll load its factory outlet wattage and camping-power quirks. Not listed? Use a generic fallback at the bottom of the make list.
2 · How you camp
Build the list of what you'll actually run — add the same item more than once if you need to, set quantities, and every preset's watt-hours are editable: if you've measured your gear, trust your meter over our defaults.
3 · Climate
4 · Recharging between camps
5 · Your kit
Safety gear for this setup
Safety, non-negotiable: never sleep with a combustion heater (diesel, propane, wood) that isn't vented outside and paired with a working CO alarm. And strap heavy batteries down before you drive — a 60 lb battery loose in the cabin is a projectile in a crash.
How the math works
Appliance presets (Wh per day or per night)
12V fridge: 320 / 400 / 480 Wh for ~30 / 40 / 55 L, multiplied by an ambient factor tied to your overnight low — 0.8 below 60°F, 1.0 at 60–75°F, and 1.9 above 75°F (compressor fridges nearly double their duty cycle in real heat). CPAP: 60 Wh dry, 350 Wh with heated humidifier. Starlink: 100 Wh (Mini, evenings), 550 Wh (Mini, all day), or 65 W × hours for the Standard dish. Laptop 80 Wh, phone 15 Wh each. Diesel heater fan+pump 175 Wh/night, roof fan 80, clip fan 50, LED lights 40/evening. Electric blanket 200 (low) / 425 (high) Wh/night. Induction cooking 350 Wh/meal, kettle 120 Wh/boil. In step 2 you add each item to your list from the picker (the same preset can be added more than once), set a quantity, and edit any watt-hour figure; custom items let you enter anything we don't list. Total daily energy is simply the sum of each item's watt-hours times its quantity.
Overnight AC / heat model
AC_Wh = k × ΔT × 8 h + 30 × 8 h + pulldown, where ΔT is how far the overnight air sits from your target (outdoor − target for cooling), the 30 W term is fan and controls overhead, and pulldown = 450 × (initialΔT / 15) × 0.5 covers knocking the evening heat (≈ ΔT + 5°F) out of the space at bedtime. Heating uses the same shape with k × 0.9 (the WAVE 3 heats at a similar coefficient of performance). Implied average draw is clamped to the WAVE 3's real envelope of 70–690 W.
The k-table (W per °F of hold, window covers assumed)
| Sleeping space | k | Sleeping space | k |
|---|---|---|---|
| Truck cab | 9 | Insulated full-size van | 9 |
| SUV / crossover | 13 | Rooftop tent | 20 |
| Minivan | 16 | Uninsulated full-size van | 26 |
| Ground tent | 32 | ||
Honesty about the k-table: only two of those points are anchored to measured overnight data (a minivan and an uninsulated van); the rest are scaled from relative surface area, glass, and insulation using the BuildItSolar heat-loss method. Treat them as ±30% planning numbers, not lab results.
Recharge & efficiency derates
Total need is divided by 0.85 for inverter and conversion losses. Driving credit: a factory outlet of 1,000 W+ is capped at 1,200 W sustained (thermal reality of these inverters); 300–999 W outlets are derated to 80%; anything smaller falls back to the 12V socket's ~105 W. An installed alternator charger counts as at least 700 W effective. Solar counts panel watts × sun hours (5.5 summer / 4 shoulder / 2.5 winter) × 0.70 for angle, heat, and cable losses. Battery capacity must cover the worst cumulative deficit across your nights between recharges, floored at one full night's use.
The core kit pieces
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FAQ
Can a power station really run an air conditioner overnight?
Yes, if you size for it. A WAVE 3-class portable unit holding a minivan 6°F below the outside air draws a few hundred watts on average, not its 690W maximum — on a mild night that works out to roughly 1 to 1.6 kWh over 8 hours. A 2 kWh DELTA-class stack covers that with margin for the fridge and phones. The trap is the hot, humid night in an uninsulated metal van: heat leaks in three times faster, the compressor rarely cycles off, and the same 8 hours can swallow 4 kWh or more. That is why this planner asks where you sleep and what the overnight low is instead of quoting one runtime number.
Do I need the WAVE 3's add-on battery or a DELTA power station?
The WAVE 3 has no built-in battery, so it must run from something. If you already need a DELTA-class station for your fridge and devices, running the WAVE from that stack over its XT150 DC port is usually the better buy — one pool of energy, one thing to charge, and DC operation skips inverter losses. The add-on battery makes sense as a dedicated bank when your air-conditioning need alone pushes past what the station stack can spare — roughly the 4 to 5 kWh territory — or when you want the AC to be a self-contained unit you can leave in the vehicle.
Will my car's 12V socket recharge a big power station?
Barely. A standard 12V accessory socket is fused around 10-15A, which works out to roughly 105W of real charging — about 10 hours of driving per kilowatt-hour. That is fine for topping up a small RIVER-class unit and nearly useless for a 2 kWh-plus stack. The fix is an alternator charger: it wires to the starter battery with a fused cable and pulls up to 800W while the engine runs, so a normal travel day genuinely refills the bank. Between those extremes, a factory 120V outlet of 400W or more is worth using whenever the engine is on.
What does a hybrid minivan or truck change?
Two big things. First, hybrids like the Sienna or the F-150 PowerBoost can hold cabin climate all night by cycling the engine a few minutes each hour off the traction battery — that can replace a portable air conditioner and its battery bank entirely, which is the single largest line item this planner recommends. Second, their factory inverters (1,500W on the Sienna, 2,400 to 7,200W on the PowerBoost) recharge a power station at wall speed while you drive or idle, so the battery capacity you carry can be much smaller for the same trip.
How much battery do I need for a weekend without air conditioning?
For two people, two nights, and no driving between camps: a 12V fridge (about 400 Wh a day), phones, a laptop, and lights land near 550 Wh a day, or about 1.3 kWh for the weekend after inverter losses. A 1 kWh station covers it if you drive a little or bring a panel; a 2 kWh stack covers it with no recharging at all, plus margin for a hot-weather fridge surprise. Add a CPAP with humidifier or an electric blanket and you should treat 2 kWh as the floor.
Is EcoFlow the only option?
No — the sizing math in this planner transfers directly to Jackery, Bluetti, Anker SOLIX, Goal Zero, and DIY LiFePO4 builds; watt-hours are watt-hours. We model EcoFlow specifically because we could verify current specs and prices against the manufacturer's own listings, and because its expansion-battery and alternator-charger ecosystem maps cleanly onto the recharge strategies the tool recommends. If you already own another brand, take the battery watt-hour target and charge-rate numbers from your results and shop the equivalent pieces.