The Busbar

Charging · The Lead

Caravan Salon 2026: Ective folds four charging devices into one box, Renogy into another

The SBI20 combines a 2,000W inverter, an 80A mains charger, a 40A MPPT and a 40A alternator booster in one housing; the SBC50 does the charging half alone. Renogy's 4-in-1 makes the same argument in a pre-wired unit. Nobody has published a price, and nobody has said what happens when one quarter of the box dies.

Caravan Salon opened at Messe Düsseldorf on 28 August and runs to 6 September, with more than 750 exhibitors. The vehicles are not our department. The accessory halls are, and the clearest signal coming out of them this year is that the four-box camper electrical system is being sold as one box.

Ective (Hall A3, Stand 311) is showing two. The SBI20 is a 12V unit combining a 2,000W sine inverter, an 80A AC/DC mains charger, a 40A MPPT controller rated to 750Wp, and a 40A alternator booster. The SBC50 TripleCharger takes the charging half only — solar, alternator and mains in one device at up to 50A — and adds a standby charger that tops up the starter battery once the service bank is full, which is the fourth device it claims to replace. Both are given as available from October 2026. Ective's marketing line is "four control units become one." Neither product has a published price, and neither appears on Ective's own site yet.

Renogy (Hall 13, Stand E72) is making the same pitch with different words. Its 4-in-1 Smart Power Management System is a single pre-wired unit combining AC charging, DC-DC charging, MPPT solar charging and DC distribution, supporting up to 800W of solar input and hybrid charging to 60A, with CAN Bus and Bluetooth. Renogy has not published a datasheet, a price, or an availability date for it.

Two things are worth saying plainly. First, this is not new — Eberspächer showed the Zeliox Neo 4000, a 48V housing containing a 4,000W inverter, an MPPT, a DC-DC booster and a 2.4kWh LiFePO4 bank, at Caravan Salon 2025, with European availability from late that year. The integrated camper power unit has roughly a year of installed base behind it already. What changed in 2026 is that the mid-market followed.

Second, everything above is from show previews and trade press. Ective and Renogy have both announced capabilities without publishing the documents that would let anyone check them. The specification that matters for an integrated box is not the headline wattage — it is what is replaceable when one function fails, and neither company has said. See this week's Background.

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Solar

Renogy previews underseat DIN packs, a Rover 2 PRO MPPT range and a 60A IP67 DC-DC — no datasheets yet

The underseat 100Ah and 150Ah packs are the interesting part: DIN format, CI-Bus, self-heating, battery-to-battery balancing. The IP67 DC-DC is less new than it reads — the 50A version already ships in the US.

Alongside the 4-in-1 unit, Renogy is previewing what it calls its Fall 2026 lineup at Düsseldorf. The underseat lithium batteries in 100Ah and 150Ah are aimed squarely at European van conversions: DIN-format cases to fit the factory underseat cavity, CI-Bus integration alongside CAN Bus and Bluetooth, self-heating, and battery-to-battery balancing. For anyone converting a Ducato or Transit where the seat base is the only volume left, format is the specification that decides the purchase.

Also shown: the Rover 2 PRO MPPT charge controller in 20A to 60A ratings, new lightweight flexible panels for curved and pop-top roofs alongside the existing ShadowFlux rigid range, and an IP67 DC-DC charger with MPPT in 50A and 60A. That last one deserves a correction to the framing: Renogy's US site already lists a 12V/24V IP67 50A DC-DC Battery Charger with MPPT from $373.99. The genuinely new part is the 60A variant and the European push, not the product category.

Renogy has published no prices, no datasheets and no availability dates for any of it, and says further presentations follow in Italy, France and the UK. Treat all of the above as a show preview, not a launch.

Sources

Thermal

Bergstrom's OpenAir PLUS publishes what DC aircon vendors won't: 16–60A, and a 10A average at stated conditions

The replacement for the 12V OpenAir claims a drop from 14.2A average to 10A, moves to R-1234yf, and adds Bluetooth. The specification that matters is none of those — it's that Bergstrom prints a current range and an average with the test conditions attached.

Bergstrom has an updated OpenAir PLUS 12V rooftop air conditioner, the successor to the OpenAir it has been selling for some time. The changes are ordinary: a switch to R-1234yf refrigerant, higher airflow, a 4.5cm colour touchscreen, Bluetooth app control, and electrically adjustable outlets. The unit sits 200mm high over a 400×400mm roof opening at 25.3kg, in 1,250W and 2,000W cooling variants.

The reason it's here is the datasheet. For the 2,000W variant Bergstrom publishes a current draw of 16–60A per ISO 5151:T1, and separately an average of 10A at 24°C indoor / 30°C outdoor — down from 14.2A on the previous model. Those are two different numbers doing two different jobs, and both are necessary: 60A at 12V (about 720W) is what sizes your cable and your fuse, while 10A is what sizes your bank, and the 24/30°C qualifier is what stops the second number from being marketing. At the 60A end the implied coefficient of performance is roughly 2.8.

Last week we noted that Velit publishes no continuous amp draw at all for its 10,000 BTU V3, and called the absence the finding. This is the counter-example, and it costs a vendor nothing but candour. Two caveats: 2,000W of cooling is about 6,800 BTU, so this is a smaller unit than the 10,000 BTU class it will be shelved next to, and a 10A average measured at a 30°C ambient will not be a 10A average in Andalusia in August. Bergstrom has not published a price.

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Firmware

Venus OS v3.79 and Multi RS firmware v1.32 make the Multi RS 230V usable — and v1.32 is mandatory for Dynamic ESS

The 48/6000/100-50 announced in July now has GX support: DESS, ESS min-SOC, AC-in current limit, generator start/stop, Node-RED flows. Firmware v1.32 fixes the energy counters that Dynamic ESS forecasting reads, and Victron says updating is required.

Victron released Venus OS v3.79 on 27 August, adding GX support for the Multi RS 48/6000/100-50 — the MPPT-less inverter/charger announced as the Multi RS 230V on 14 July. Support here means the features that make the unit worth buying: Dynamic ESS, ESS mode with a configurable minimum state of charge, AC-in current limiting, generator start/stop with warm-up and cool-down, and Node-RED control flows written for this variant.

A day later, on 28 August, Victron published Multi RS and Inverter RS firmware v1.30, v1.31 and v1.32. The one to read is v1.32, which fixes the energy counters on the Multi RS 48/6000 that feed the forecasting algorithm behind Dynamic ESS. Victron states that updating to v1.32 is required for this model, and specifically for systems running DESS.

The practical reading: if you bought a Multi RS 230V on the July announcement, the unit only became a full participant in a GX system this week, and it needs both updates. If you were running DESS on a Multi RS 48/6000 before this, your forecast was being fed bad energy counters — Victron has not said for how long, or how far off the results were.

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Battery

Dragonfly Energy signs Sphere Energy to put AI models into its next BMS — no product, no timeline, no numbers

Announced 17 August. Sphere's battery models go into the next-generation Dragonfly IntelLigence BMS architecture to improve state-of-charge and state-of-health accuracy. That is the entire disclosed substance.

Dragonfly Energy, the parent of Battle Born Batteries, announced a partnership with Sphere Energy on 17 August. The stated plan is to integrate Sphere's battery AI models into Dragonfly's next-generation battery management system architecture, improving state-of-charge and state-of-health accuracy and extending the existing Dragonfly IntelLigence platform into what the release calls AI-enhanced battery management.

We are covering this as a marker, not a development. There is no product, no ship date, no target accuracy figure, and no description of what the models are trained on. The underlying problem is real and unglamorous: SoC on a flat LFP voltage curve is a genuinely hard estimation problem, coulomb counting drifts, and SoH is harder still — the point we made at length when arguing that the capacity test is the only test that tells the truth. Model-based estimation is a reasonable direction. Whether this particular arrangement produces a BMS that reports a more honest number than a $30 shunt is unknowable from a press release.

Worth noting the context: Dragonfly's litigation against Will Prowse, which we covered in June, remains ongoing.

Sources

Dragonfly Energy — Partners with Sphere Energy to Develop Next-Generation AI-Enhanced Battery Technology (17 August 2026)

Solar

Ective's SolarShade puts 510Wp of CIGS on an awning — and claims a daily yield the arithmetic doesn't support

A flexible thin-film solar awning that needs no wall mounting, aimed at Sprinter and California-sized vans where the roof is full. Ective claims up to 4.5kWh a day from 510Wp. That requires 8.8 hours at full rated output.

Ective is showing the SolarShade at Düsseldorf (Hall 13, Stand F17), described as its first series-production presentation: a solar awning using flexible CIGS thin-film cells, rated to 510Wp, which deploys without wall mounting and is aimed at campervans like the Sprinter and VW California.

The premise is sound and answers a constraint we keep running into — on a short-wheelbase van the roof is the binding limit on the whole electrical system, and an awning is unused horizontal area that appears exactly when the vehicle is parked in the sun. Thin-film is the right technology for something that has to roll or fold.

The claimed yield is the problem. Ective states up to 4.5kWh per day under optimal conditions. Divide it: 4,500Wh ÷ 510W = 8.8 hours at full rated output. Peak-sun-hours in Germany run roughly 4–5 a day in midsummer, and even southern Spain does not reach 8.8. An awning is also fixed in orientation once deployed, and CIGS derates in the same heat that makes you want the awning. We have no bench data and Ective has published no measurement methodology, so this is arithmetic on a marketing figure rather than a test result — but it is arithmetic anyone can repeat. No price or availability date has been published.

Sources

Camper Professional — ECTIVE präsentiert SolarShade Solarmarkise auf dem Caravan Salon 2026 (11 August 2026)

The Background · Trend Piece

What you give up when four boxes become one

Three separate exhibitors at Düsseldorf this year are selling the same idea: take the inverter, the mains charger, the MPPT controller and the alternator booster, and put them in one housing. Ective's SBI20 does all four. Renogy's 4-in-1 does the charging three plus DC distribution. Eberspächer's Zeliox Neo 4000 did it a year ago and added the battery. The pitch is always the same — fewer boxes, less wiring, one app — and it is a genuinely good pitch. It is worth being precise about what it costs, because none of the vendors will tell you.

The argument for integration is better than it sounds

Start with the case in favour, because it is stronger than the DIY instinct allows. The dominant failure mode in mobile DC systems is not silicon. It is terminations. Every separate device means two more cable ends, two more lugs, two more crimps, two more torque values nobody checked. This newsletter has spent the year documenting exactly that: a 74-foot motor vessel where thermal imaging found hand-loose DC terminations across a professional install, and a run of NHTSA recalls — Grand Design's inverter prep circuit, Forest River's missing battery-post breaker — where the defect was not a component but the wiring around it.

A pre-wired box eliminates that surface area by construction. Factory-terminated internal connections, one fused DC input, one AC output, one solar input. For an OEM fitting a hundred vans a month, that is a real and measurable reliability gain, and it is why these products exist. The target customer is a coachbuilder, not you.

What you actually give up

Fault isolation. Four devices are four independent failure domains. When the booster dies, the inverter keeps running and you keep making coffee. In an integrated unit the failure domain is the enclosure. Nobody has published whether an SBI20 with a dead MPPT stage still inverts, and that is the single most important question about the product.

Field serviceability. A 30A DC-DC booster is a stocked item at every caravan dealer in Europe; you can be running again the same afternoon in a strange town. A replacement SBI20 mainboard is an RMA. The relevant question to put to a vendor is not "what's the warranty" but "is it module-level replaceable, and by whom" — and the honest answer for most of this category is that the unit goes back to the factory.

Capacity coupling. The SBI20 pairs a 2,000W inverter with a 750Wp MPPT ceiling. Those are two different upgrade curves welded together. Add a third panel and pass 750Wp and you are not buying an MPPT controller — you are buying an inverter you did not need, or bolting an external controller onto a system whose selling point was that it had no external controllers. The all-in-one is dimensioned for the build it ships in, and builds grow.

Bus opacity. All of these units talk CAN. Whether that CAN is documented, and whether a third-party BMS or GX device can read it, determines if you own an appliance or a component. Renogy lists CAN Bus and Bluetooth for the 4-in-1 and CI-Bus for the underseat packs; what is published about the protocol is, so far, nothing.

Where that leaves it

The integration argument wins on wiring and loses on service, and which one matters depends entirely on whether you expect to be a hundred kilometres from a dealer. A rental fleet or a factory conversion should probably buy the box. A builder who chose separates because they wanted to fix things beside the road should notice that the industry is designing that option out of the mid-market, and that the reason is not a conspiracy — it is that most buyers genuinely are better served by four fewer crimps.

What we would like before recommending any of them, and do not have from a single vendor in this category: a block diagram showing which stages share a power supply, a statement of what remains functional when one stage fails, and CAN documentation. Until then, these are appliances being sold to an audience that has spent fifteen years learning to buy components.

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Product Radar

New and notable components announced or launched this week

SBI20 — Ective

Charging

12V all-in-one power centre: 2,000W sine inverter, 80A AC/DC mains charger, 40A MPPT controller rated to 750Wp, and 40A alternator booster in a single housing.

Not published Announced for October 2026; shown at Caravan Salon (Hall A3, Stand 311)

The headline numbers are fine. The unpublished number is what still works when one of the four stages fails — see this week's Background before specifying one into a build you have to fix yourself.

4-in-1 Smart Power Management System — Renogy

Charging

Pre-wired unit combining AC charging, DC-DC charging, MPPT solar charging and DC power distribution. Up to 800W solar input, hybrid charging to 60A, CAN Bus and Bluetooth.

Not published Show preview only; no datasheet or date published (Hall 13, Stand E72)

Aimed at OEMs and professional installers rather than at retail, which is the honest reading of the whole integrated-box category this year.

Underseat Lithium 100Ah / 150Ah — Renogy

Battery

DIN-format LiFePO4 packs sized for the underseat cavity in European camper vans. CI-Bus integration plus CAN Bus and Bluetooth, battery-to-battery balancing, self-heating, BMS protection.

Not published Show preview only; no date published

Format is the specification here. On a Ducato or Transit conversion the seat base is often the only volume left, and a pack that doesn't fit it is not a candidate at any price.

TBooster PRO 1245 — Teleco

Charging

12V DC-DC charger rated 45A continuous with peaks to 70A. Sits above the TBooster PRO 1225 (25A continuous, 30A peak, €229).

Not published (1225 variant: €229) Shown at Caravan Salon (Hall 13, Stand A03)

The counter-example to this week's integration story — a booster that is only a booster, and therefore a part you can carry a spare of.

OpenAir PLUS 12V Full Inverter — Bergstrom

Thermal

12V rooftop air conditioner, full-inverter compressor and fans, in 1,250W and 2,000W cooling variants (about 4,300 and 6,800 BTU). 2,000W version draws 16–60A per ISO 5151:T1, averaging 10A at 24°C indoor / 30°C outdoor. R-1234yf refrigerant, 200mm external height over a 400×400mm roof opening, 25.3kg, Bluetooth app control.

Not published Successor to the OpenAir; no date published

Here for the datasheet rather than the product. A current range for cable sizing, an average for bank sizing, and the test conditions attached to the average — that is the disclosure standard the DC aircon category should be held to, and most of it isn't.

iNet X (Pro) Panel 2 — Truma

Monitoring

Second-generation capacitive touchscreen control panel for heating, air conditioning, gas level and — on the Pro variant — vehicle electrical systems. Two CAN ports, so the panel no longer has to sit at the end of the CAN-Bus structure, and the power supply no longer occupies a connection slot. Flush-mount installation, app control, remote access via iNet X Connect.

Not published Autumn 2026, retrofit through specialist dealers and to OEMs

The second CAN port is the substantive change and the reason it is here rather than in a lifestyle roundup — bus topology is what decides whether a retrofit is a wiring job or a rewiring job.

Recalls & Safety

Official notices, firmware safety fixes, and reported failures

Safety

Rossmonster is the sixth builder recalled over the same MaxxAir fan PCB — 85 units, letters due 15 September

Rossmonster Vans is recalling 85 vehicles — 2026 Skye, Baja and Havn motorcoaches — fitted with MaxxAir N-Series Maxxfan rooftop ventilation fans whose printed circuit board "may fail during certain operations and overheat" (NHTSA #26V538). Dealers will inspect and replace the PCB free of charge; owner notification letters are expected 15 September 2026.

This is the sixth RV builder we have recorded on the same supplier defect, after Tiffin (#26V412), Grand Design (#26V446) and Winnebago (#26V450), Forest River (#26V477), and Airstream (#26V401). By our arithmetic the running total across the six is roughly 1,464 units — our sum, not a figure published by NHTSA or MaxxAir.

Rossmonster is the smallest builder on the list by some distance, which is the detail worth noting: the defect is now reaching boutique converters buying the same fan off the same shelf as the volume manufacturers. There is still no component-level recall covering the fan itself, so the count continues to grow one coachbuilder at a time, and anyone who fitted a Maxxfan aftermarket remains outside all six campaigns.

NHTSA — Recall Campaign #26V538 (Rossmonster Vans, 2026 Skye/Baja/Havn)