Working remotely from a caravan: the power and signal budget that actually works

I had a client on a video call last year ask why my picture kept freezing. I told her the truth: "You've caught me between two Telstra towers with 40 percent battery and a laptop that thinks it's plugged into mains." She laughed. I wasn't joking.

Working remotely from a caravan is sold as a lifestyle upgrade — laptop on the picnic table, ocean view, freedom. What nobody spruiks is the actual power and signal budget behind that photo. I've spent the better part of three years helping people work out why their "full-time remote setup" collapses by day four of free camping, and it's almost never the laptop. It's the assumptions stacked underneath it.

The real power draw of a working day, not a holiday day

A holiday day in a van draws power in bursts: fridge cycling, lights at night, maybe a kettle. A working day is a flat, sustained draw for six to nine hours, and that changes the maths completely.

A modern laptop under load pulls roughly 40-65W when it's actually working (rendering, video calls, multiple browser tabs), not the 15-20W idle figure most spec sheets quote. Run two laptops in a van — common if you're a couple both working — and you're looking at 80-130W continuous just for compute, before the modem, monitor, or Starlink dish gets involved.

Add a portable monitor (another 10-15W), a 4G/5G modem or Starlink (25-50W depending on unit and signal strength), and your fridge running its normal cycle, and a working day easily draws 400-600Wh over eight hours. That's before dinner's cooked or the lights go on. I've had clients tell me their "200Ah lithium system" should easily cover remote work. On paper, sure. In practice they're forgetting inverter losses (typically 10-15 percent), that lithium is genuinely usable to about 90-100 percent of rated capacity unlike AGM, and that solar input on an overcast day in a tree-shaded free camp can drop to a third of the panel's rated output.

Sizing your setup for a working week, not a weekend

If you're touring and camping, most guides (including our own on sizing a dual-battery setup for real off-road use) size around fridge plus lights plus water pump. Working from the van adds a new, sustained load category that most factory setups weren't built for.

My rough rule for a single remote worker: budget 500-700Wh a day for compute and connectivity alone, on top of your normal touring loads. For a couple both working, double it. That pushes a lot of vans that get by fine on 200Ah of lithium into needing 300-400Ah, or a genuine daily solar input of 400W+ in good sun, or acceptance that you'll be running the vehicle alternator or a generator on cloudy days.

I'd argue the "just add more solar" answer that gets thrown around online is oversold for this specific problem. Solar solves generation on sunny days in open camps. It does very little for you parked under trees at a bush camp with a deadline, or during three overcast days in a row, which is exactly when remote workers most need reliable power. A decent DC-DC charger (see our explainer on why your alternator alone won't cut it anymore) topping up from driving days matters more for working travellers than it does for weekend tourers, because you can't just decide to skip a day's charging when there's a deliverable due.

Monitoring what you're actually using

You can't budget power you're not measuring. A cheap battery monitor with a shunt tells you voltage, which tells you almost nothing useful in the moment — we've covered why in our piece on battery monitors and shunts, but the short version for remote workers is: track amp-hours in and out, not just volts. I run a simple daily log for a week whenever I'm testing a new setup for someone — what the modem drew, what the laptop drew charging versus idle, what the fridge cycled at. It takes ten minutes and tells you more than any spec sheet.

Parasitic drains matter more too when you're running to a schedule. A van that's slowly bleeding 2-3 amps overnight from a dodgy DC-DC charger or a always-on inverter isn't a big deal on a leisure lap — you notice it eventually. On a work trip it can mean waking up to a flat system before an 8am call. Our guide on the parasitic drains nobody checks is worth running through before you commit to full-time remote work, not after.

Signal is the harder problem, and it's not just about bars

Power gets all the attention because it's measurable. Signal is messier, and in my experience it's the thing that actually derails a working day more often than a flat battery.

A 4G modem showing "3 bars" can still choke on a video call if the tower is congested or you're on the edge of its coverage cone. I've sat at caravan parks with full signal bars and unusable upload speed because forty other vans were streaming at the same time. The honest fix isn't a better antenna, though a decent external antenna does help with weak signal specifically — it's knowing which network actually covers where you're headed and having a fallback.

We've written separately about satellite messengers, UHF and sat phones for remote coverage, and the same logic extends to work connectivity: a satellite internet unit like Starlink's roam plans genuinely changes what's possible for remote work in places mobile networks don't reach, but it draws real power (often 40-60W continuous when active) and needs a clear view of sky, which isn't guaranteed in a tree-shaded camp or a steep-sided gorge. Check the ACMA coverage maps and your carrier's own coverage tool before you commit to a route with back-to-back calls scheduled — not the general "coverage" the brochure claims, the specific stretch of road.

Where you camp changes the equation entirely

This is where remote work touring actually differs from a normal lap. A free camp with no shade and open sky is solar gold and often has reasonable signal if it's near a highway. A national park campground tucked into a gorge, like Karijini's Dales Campground, might be gorgeous and well set up for camping but is close to useless for a scheduled video call — no signal, and tree cover kills solar input too.

Caravan parks solve the power problem (mains power, easy) but not always the signal one, and they cost real money over a working stretch — see our numbers on what park fees actually cost over a year if you're trying to budget a working lap properly. My honest advice for anyone genuinely working full-time on the road: build your route around connectivity first, scenery second, at least on the days you've got calls booked. Save the free camps and the gorges for the days you're not on the clock. That's the trade-off nobody tells you about when they're spruiking the "laptop by the campfire" lifestyle — the good camps for working and the good camps for actually enjoying the trip are frequently not the same camps.

A realistic weekly rhythm

What's worked for the couples and solo workers I've helped set up isn't more gear, it's a rhythm. Three or four solid working days near town or a caravan park with reliable power and signal, then two or three days genuinely off-grid where work isn't scheduled and the battery bank gets a rest from the heavy daily draw. Trying to work every single day from deep in a national park with no mains and patchy signal is where I see people burn out their gear and their patience simultaneously.

None of this needs to be complicated, but it does need to be budgeted honestly before you buy the solar kit or sign the Starlink plan. Work out your actual daily Wh draw, measure it for a week rather than guessing, and pick your camps around your calendar rather than the other way around.

— Priya Raman, Gear, Power & Trip Planning