Bluey and the Solar Panels.

We recently bought a Bluetti AC60 power station for our travels, mainly to keep our cooler box running — a must-have for cold beer, fresh food, and milk on the road. After charging it fully, we plugged in the cooler and monitored everything through the app. A quick calculation showed we'd get around 9 hours of continuous use. Great for shorter trips, but not enough for the longer adventures.

To stretch things out, we tried charging the Bluetti in the car while running the cooler, which gave us a surplus of about 20W. Still, it wasn't a long-term solution, especially for when we'd be parked up for a few days without running the engine. That's when we decided solar was the way forward.

Franciska put her legendary online shopping skills to work, and soon we were off to Dublin to pick up two 120W rigid solar panels. With the panels in hand, the next challenge was figuring out how best to mount them on our Tentbox. Tentbox support shared some useful advice, and a quick call to the shop where we bought the Bluetti connected us with Christina at offyourgrid.ie, who was incredibly helpful. She confirmed our plan made sense and encouraged us on our little travel project.

After a few trips to the hardware store (and more of Franciska's online shopping magic), we had all the parts we needed. A couple of hours, a bit of swearing, and a few scrapes later, the panels were securely mounted on the Tentbox roof bars.

Then came the big test. We plugged in the Bluetti, and as the sun came out from behind a cloud, the output jumped to 175W, dropping back to around 75W when the lovely Irish clouds returned. Since the panels were lying flat, we're confident that once the Tentbox is up and angled toward the sun, we'll have more than enough power for all our needs.

Big thanks to the Tentbox team and to Christina at offyourgrid.ie for their support — our little Bluey is now ready for the road!