Build Your First Solar Power System! Beginner Tutorial Easily Explained, Budget Friendly

in today's video we're going to be doing a beginner friendly solar power system build and this is for somebody that has absolutely no experience building a solar power system we have a renergie 100 watt starter kit and this has the solar panels the wires and a charge controller and we are going to attach this to a 100 amp power sealed lead-acid battery which is ideal for solar power systems and then we're going to connect the battery to an inverter and this inverter will power your AC appliances and you would typically plug into your house outlet and once you build this system you can charge it with the Sun and you can power your appliances and this is actually a pretty good sized system you will be able to power quite a lot of stuff with it so yeah I hope you guys like this video and let's get started so first we need to take everything out of this cause you're gonna have a solar panel in another box that has a lot of components for our system and this kit will come with four different wires and these ones with these little connectors on top these will connect the solar panel to the charge controller that this kit comes with and then from the charge controller to the battery they give you these wires and they also give you some mounting hardware for the solar panel the first thing we want to do when mounting this solar panel is add these mounting brackets and you want it in this configuration you have a bolt a washer a washer a locking nut washer and then the nut at the end so first the bolts in the washer and all this other stuff goes in the back you can use pliers or an adjustable wrench on the back and then use a socket on the front Weibull it around to make sure it's solid now the next step is to use the included screws in a drill and mount your solar panel wherever you plan to mount it so you are gonna have two wires on the roof of your vehicle or your cabin and what we want to do is connect these to the solar charge controller but before we connect the solar charge controller to a solar panel you want to connect this to the battery first because if this is connected to the solar panels you can burn this out so we're going to connect this to the battery first and then we're gonna head back on over to the solar panel so what we're going to need are these cables and a battery so to connect this battery to the charge controller we're going to use this piece of wood and mount the charge controller to it and this should be very close to the battery now it's time to connect the charge controller to the battery with these two wires and in order to do this we're gonna need a flathead screwdriver first rip off the insulation and the wire should look like this if you look close up the charge control you'll see a battery icon in a solar panel icon go to the battery icon and there will be a negative sign so we want to unscrew the negative first and then you want to insert the wire where it says negative and then screw it down and then pull it a little bit to make sure it's tight now we're gonna take this wire and run it to the negative terminal of the battery it will either show a negative symbol or it will be black and then tighten this down with a wrench and then repeat the process for the positive cable on the charge controller and when you're screwing these terminals down make sure that you hold on to the wire and you push it up because they like to slip out and then feel it to make sure it's strong and then you're good to go and then connect the positive wire to the positive terminal of the battery now that the battery is connected you'll see a green light illuminate this means that you did a good job connecting the charge controller to the battery so now we're going to use these wires and connect the solar panel to the charge controller and I like to do these one at a time so first we're going to take one cable and plug it into the solar panel you're gonna have two connectors and this one is the negative and then the one with the red O ring is going to be the positive so the first wire that we want to connect is the negative so plug this one into the negative and now that we have the negative we can connect this to where it says solar panel negative on the solar charge controller so we can unscrew it all the way and then insert it and then screw it all the way down now we're going to take the positive solar panel wire and plug it into this wire and then connect this to the positive solar panel input on the charge controller this is what it should look like with all four wires connected now I can put the solar panel in the Sun and we'll see if this thing works and starts charging the battery and now the solar panel is outside make sure that it is not shaded anywhere today is a cloudy day but we should have enough power to charge our battery and if you go back to the charge controller we have a green light at P V that means photovoltaic or the solar panel and if you have two green right here in ones flashing that means that you are charging and you are good to go in this third green light tells us that it's green for sealed and that means sealed lead-acid and that's the battery we're using but if you need to change this you need to hold this button down for seven seconds five six seven and then when it's flashing we can actually change this one so green for sealed orange for shell battery and it looks kind of like a yellow and then if you have a flooded battery like some Trojans and you put it on red if you have a lithium like a lithium iron phosphate such as a battleborn then you're gonna put it on blue and once you're on the right color then you just let it sit for about 10 seconds and once it stops flashing then the settings are saved and right now this battery is charging but now we want to add an inverter so we can use the power that we store in this battery from sunshine and use it to power our appliances and so what we need to do for this step is actually remove one of the solar panel cables because we're gonna have to remove one of these battery cables and so whenever you messed with any of the wires between the charge controller and the battery you're gonna have to remove one of the solar panel cables now that this solar panel line is removed we can remove these terminals from the battery and this is our inverter and we're gonna use wires that either come with it or you can buy them yourself at the store is battery hookup cables so I have two cables and one is marked for red or positive and then one is completely black and this is going to be the negative and these inverters don't usually come with it but I definitely recommend buying a bolt-on fuse you can find these at any automotive parts store for a 1500 watt pure sine wave inverter a 175 amp fuse works really well so the first thing you want to do is connect the positive wire to the inverter and screw it down and then attach the negative wire to the inverter itself and now that the wires are connected to the inverter it's safe to connect these to the battery you always want to connect the wires to the inverter first and then the battery second and we have a positive and a negative and the positive line is where the fuse will go and this is what it should look like when you connect the fuse it's just a simple bolt that holds it on there but make sure the the wire connector and the fuse are flushed together you do not want to put a washer between the fuse and the wire you want them flush and flat with each other and now we have the negative wire from the inverter and we're gonna connect it to the terminal of the battery and then tighten this one down I can't find the right size for this one so I'm using wrenches you want to use a socket though now we need to connect the positive inverter cable but there is gonna be a spark so what I like to do is where the wire is or the bolt between the fuse and the wire I like to spark it just like that and then I attach the fuse to the battery terminal and that's totally normal it happens every time but it scares people when it happens so watch out also remember that the fuse and this little connector should be flush with the battery terminal do not use washers between the battery terminal and anything else it needs to be flush and flat then tighten this one down all the way and now that the battery is reconnected to the charge controller now we can add the solar panel wire and charge it up we are charging the battery with solar power so that's good now we need to check if the inverter is working and now that we need to just press the power button and see if it turns on and then we're going to plug in an appliance and it works everything works perfectly this is a pretty simple system to build and use but something that you guys need to understand is beginners is that if you discharge this battery or you run it down to zero with loads like appliances connected to this inverter it will damage the battery and you'll lose a lot of money so what you want to do is buy a voltage monitor or a battery capacity monitor which I have on my website and it will tell you how much power is available in your battery and how low it is getting and when you connect your voltage meter it should be above twelve point two volts always unless there's a big load on it but at night when you're using power from this battery you want to make sure that it never goes below 12 point 2 volts also if you build your system and 100 watt solar panel is not cutting it and you don't have enough power you can add another panel to this same system and this is really easy to do all you have to do is buy some mc4 branch connector and you'll put them between these two connectors and it will enable you to hook up a second 100 watt solar panel I think for that will be below but it's very easy to make this system bigger I would not go over 400 watts of solar panel power for that solar charge controller inside also if you add more solar panels over time but you want more power you want to swap this out for an MPPT charge controller and an MPPT will cost a little bit more but it will produce a lot more power but one thing that I dislike about this kit is that it doesn't come with a fuse the line for the charge controller or wire so if you want added protection you should add for a 30 amp charge controller a 35 or 40 amp fuse for this line I'll have a link below for that fuse if you guys want that the next thing we want to talk about is that I do not like how this kit doesn't come with a temperature sensor if you're using sealed gel or flooded lead-acid batteries you need to buy the temperature sensor that plugs into the solar charge controller and then you're gonna put that temp sensor near the battery it's very simple it takes about two seconds to do it's very cheap but you guys need to do it unless your battery will not last a very long time and if you felt like you guys learned a lot about the basic components and how to set them up check out my other video where it goes in-depth on how to build a custom system and all you do is connect like a charge controller and an inverter to a wooden board and then you add your own wires this system is really nice because you don't have to do anything with the wires you just buy them like this and then stick them into the charge controller and if you have excess wire you can just bunch them up and zip tie them but idealistic leaf or a well-designed system you want to cut these wires and strip them to length so that you have minimal losses but for a beginner this works actually really well and considering the type of wire in the thickness of wire that they give you there will be minimal losses no matter what and that pretty much sums up this video if you guys want to learn more about these components and where to buy them I'll have some links in the description below but I have a whole website with different size packages that you guys might find useful and almost anything that you could ever dude about off-grid solar power is on that website so please check it out if you're a beginner and want to learn more yeah let me know if this video helps you guys I really hope you guys build your first system with this video and I hope you guys liked it I'll talk to you later bite

Channel: DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse

Views: 1,512,800

Rating: 4.949049 out of 5

Keywords: off grid solar, will prowse, diy solar, rv solar

Id: uobUwjCLfok

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2019