Brett and Kira Belan have spent the past decade transforming old vehicles into solar-powered campers. Their journey with Solarolla began in 2015, with their first conversion project, a Volkswagen Bus: a donor vehicle chosen for its ample roof space (enough for 4 solar panels). Brett engineered a mechanism to tilt the entire wall of panels up to a 40-degree angle, optimizing the vehicle’s ability to capture solar energy.
Growing up, Brett hot-rodded Camaros, Chevelles, and a 1932 Chevrolet and he sees his current work as a continuation of this. “I’m a hot-rodder. I grew up street-rodding. My dad and I built street-rods and the idea with street-rods is you taking a part from this car and a part from that car and you make exactly the car you want,” explains Brett. “We’re now electrical hot-rodders.”
With a degree in mechanical engineering, Brett worked at Ford Motor Company and taught CAD at Jaguar in England before leaving it to live off-grid with family. His first foray into solar-powered vehicles involved creating a solar golf cart and a solar postal van.
His projects are diverse from adding 3kw of solar to a Safari Trek 30-foot motorhome to working with master builder SunRay Kelley to turn his wooden “gypsy wagon” into what Kelley called “a solar-power plant that goes down the road that you live in”.
Their most recent project is an eStar conversion featuring a 5kW solar array for musician Redfoo. This ambitious conversion involved a month-long charging journey, with some necessary plug-ins during a freezing northern winter, from their workshop in Wisconsin to Redfoo’s home in Malibu.
For their most recent project, they built an old eStar van into a solar-electric camper van for musician Redfoo. We follow their month-long journey from their workshop in Wisconsin to Redfoo’s home in Malibu camping and charging with their two children where they were forced to slow down for multi-day charges and enjoy the journey.
We visit Redfoo days after delivery where he was still working out the kinks on his new technology. Brett called in to remind us that: “It’s not a car. It’s first an off-grid power station, then it’s a home and then it’s a car.” Redfoo hopes to use it during the next power outage to charge his home, his other electric cars, or even to provide mobile help to friends and neighbors.