DIY 400 Watt 12 volt Solar Power System Beginner Tutorial: Great for RV's and Vans! *Part 1*

in today's video we are going to be building a 400 watt capable solar power system and this is a great size for beginners who want to build a system for an RV a cabin a van or a boat or whatever you want it's a small off-grid solar power system that most people can build on their own and it can be very intimidating when building your first solar power system if you do not have much electrical engineering experience so what this video is geared for is the complete beginner if you've never ever done any of this stuff before but you really want a solar power system that you can depend on you can follow this video step-by-step also check out my book mobile solar power made easy and also my website that shows you lots of other different solar packages so before we build our system let's talk about what we have in front of us these are the major components of a solar power system - the solar panels and - the battery the battery and the solar panels are very easy to mount but the stuff between the battery and the solar panels people have a very hard time with so what is this first we have a solar charge controller this takes the power from the solar panels it makes it usable to charge the battery and power our appliances next we have DC power we have AC power AC power is what you're used to using inside of a home and this is where you can plug your appliances this is called an inverter next we have a fuse box so if you have DC 12-volt appliances this is where you connect it you find a fuse that the appliance is rated for and then you connect it right here and I think most people are capable of taking a piece of plywood and mounting these components to it but the hard part is using the right gauge wire with the right size circuit breaker and making everything close and measuring and cutting wires accordingly and how to crimp these connectors if you know how to do that you can build any size solar system very easily before we build our solar power system we need to talk about what tools are required in what I recommend so on this side we have electrical tools and these are my wire strippers and then we have wire crimpers so with my wire strippers I have one of these automatic wire strippers and everyone should get these and they're good for up to 10 gauge wire so this is for small wires these are for difficult situations and this is for large gauge wires this has an adjustable blade so it can remove any insulation and this is what you should be using next we also have these cable cutters and I like to use these for very hard to remove insulation and if something's very difficult you can use a razor blade next let's talk about the crimpers that I use we have a three point crimper and this is for up to four taut gauge wire so this is for huge wires right here you can also use a cheaper hammer type crimper with a small mallet or a hammer and this is good for most people and it costs only twenty bucks this one's about fifty dollars but this can do everything and this works really well you can also connect an impact gun on this side and it makes a perfect crimp every single time and this is called a 3-point crimper and then for small wires I use for these three crimpers so this is for standard sizes so if the crimp connector has red blue or yellow I can use this crimper and it gives a perfect crimp every time if something does not have insulation or it's a strange size or something I use this crimper or I use one of these little crimpers right here these are also cable cutters but I don't use those as cable cutters I use this as my cable cutter next we have standard tools so you're gonna need to have a small socket set so that you can ratchet down the little nuts and bolts on the actual components themselves such as this inverter you're gonna have nuts and bolts everywhere next we're gonna have you know various pliers next you need some flathead screwdrivers and what these are useful for is screwing down the terminals on our solar charge controllers and other various components next this one is so important a Milwaukee impact gun and lots of drill bits and various little attachments I love this if you don't have this you need to get one for other things around your house it's amazing then we also have this little black marker for marking the wire before we cut it and now that we have the tools out of the way now we can talk about what hardware we need first we need electrical tape we need screws so we can mount our components onto a wooden board we need cable clamps and these are very useful for holding the wire down to the board we need washers of all various sizes we also need circuit breakers and fuses if you don't know what size circuit breaker or fuse you need please check out my website for your system next we need a bus bar which is nice and makes your system look nice and clean we also have terminal connectors that are made out of copper for large gauge wire we also have a soldering iron with some solder and a cleaner for the tip we also have standard sized crimp connectors in large gauge wire craft connectors so even more front connectors and you can never have too many of these you always want a lot of them on hand we also have an inline fuse if we need it for something xt60 connectors these are not required but I love using them for all sorts of things and that's pretty much it these are the basic tools that you will need but like I said again most people can get by with just this in this and this and then they can have a hammer crimp and you don't have to have all the tools but this is what you need if you want to cover all systems and this doesn't cost that much and this is my box of wires so you guys don't need all of this wire but what you do need to do is have like 10 or 12 gauge wire for DC appliances you also need some solar input wire which is UV resistant and this stuff is more expensive than the other stuff because this can last in the Sun and that's very important if you have wires on your roof you need solar hookup wire you cannot use stuff that you buy from Home Depot for it you need solar panel hookup wire and then also for connecting large appliances I love 4 gauge if it's mounted on wood so a 4 gauge works really well but if you have a large inverter that's more than you know 2,000 watts or the inverter is far from the battery your gonna need like 2 gauge or 0 gauge you can use my book to figure out what size wire to use but 4 gauge and 10 gauge and solar input wire you're pretty good that covers most systems the components that we're going to be using for this system we have a pure sine wave inverter 1500 watts for this size system though I recommend most people get a 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter we also have a 40 amp MPPT solar charge controller and this is the one I recommend on my website because it has huge input terminals and I love it you can program it you can charge any bad chemistry this thing's great also with the solar charge controller you're going to get a temperature compensation a thermometer module and then you're also going to get an MT 50 and this is required if you buy this because these are so very useful and important next we also have a fuse block and I bought the blue C systems 12 circuit with negative bus this is the best one on the market it is amazing and we also need a piece of wood to mount all of these components on and all the circuit breakers and the wire so try to find a piece of wood at the store I prefer hardwood but plywood also works as well and of course do you need solar panels and batteries but this video is covering more of how to connect the components together because that's the hard part batteries are easy you stick them in a battery compartment or a safe insulated area and then the solar panels you mount on the roof and then you run some wires down but for this system we're going to talk more about wiring all of these individual components together before we build our system we need to think about how we want to mount these components on the wood board this wood board should be measured and cut to fit inside of your vehicle somewhere it can be in the battery compartment it can be in a closet it can be wherever is most useful the spot that is closest between the solar panels in the batteries there should be a mid point but typically we want the inverter right next to the battery so that we have minimal losses because this requires the most amount of power and you need the biggest wires going from this to the battery so when we think about this we want this close to the battery so I'm going to put this right in the middle for the solar charge controller it can be elsewhere but it's better to have it near the battery the wires that connect to the battery from this are smaller than the inverter but it's wise to have it close to the inverter so it's easier to wire next we also need a fuse block and these can require lots of power some of them can take 100 to 150 amps so there's gonna be a large wire connecting this to the battery so these three components need to be pretty close to each other so for this system I'm going to put the inverter right in the middle and then we're going to put the solar charge controller on this side in a fuse box on this side and around the fuse box you want a lot of room so you can connect your appliances because you're going to have negative wires going in here you have positive wires going in right here and you want the wires to be able to flow easily around it you don't want this mounted close to this that would just be ridiculous you need it to have some space the solar charge controller doesn't need that much space so we could push this all the way up to the edge and then we could push this closer to that so we have more room for the fuse box and all of these things need to be very close to each other on the terminal side so see how all of these have terminals right here right here and right here well we can make the wires flow in this direction but depending on what your system design looks like you may need to make the inverter go right here instead solar charge controller up here in a fuse box right here and then the wires flowing out for DC and then out for AC and then you could have the solar panel charge controller wires coming from the solar panels coming from like right here or right here and it'll connect to the solar charge controller and then you can have all the big wires and bus bars and everything else that connects to the battery right here or the battery itself it really depends another way that you can actually put these is putting the smaller charge controller in facing the inverter in some systems this actually makes sense and you can cut it right here and then put the fuse box somewhere else but that can work sometimes I don't recommend it I really love lately is this design right here where the inverter battery solar charge controller in fuse box are in this arrangement but for this video I want to make it as simple to follow as possible I'm gonna have the inverter in the middle and the battery can connect right here we have the solar charge controller on this side where the wires can connect with the solar panels right here and we're gonna have the fuse block over here so this is how we're gonna do it so now we're going to use screws in my Miller walkie impact gun and put all these components into the board that's it guys we have these components mounted to the board now we need to place our circuit breakers and fuses for this system we're going to need a 170 amp circuit breaker and this is going to be connected to the fuse box and the inverter and then because this is a 40 amp MPPT solar charge controller if you multiply this by 1.25 you get 50 amps so we have 50 and we're gonna connect this right here now that we have all of the components connected to the board with the circuit breakers we can add the wires and so we need to start with the large wires first and then do the smaller wires so first we need to connect the inverter this circuit breaker and this fuse box together with large gauge wires and for this size I'm going to use 4 gauge wires but we need to think about where is the battery going to connect so the positive is going to connect to the main fuse but the negative usually people have a bus bar and that's where everything connects to that has negative wires but for this system this inverter is centrally located and we can connect the solar charge controller to the negative here and we can connect this negative to the negative right here so what we're going to do is connect the negative terminal of the battery right here so negative battery cable goes here positive battery cable goes right here so first let's think about all of the positive terminals that we need to connect we have a positive terminal right here that needs to connect to this then we have one right here that needs to connect to this we have one right here that needs to connect to this we have one right here that needs to connect to this so we have 1 2 3 4 wires that are going to be read that we're going to connect all of these terminals together now that we have that out of the way we can actually connect this wire to our system so the first thing that we want to connect is the fuse box positive wire to the circuit breaker so what you want to do is put your connector that you're going to be using next to it so that we can measure this right here and so next you're going to need a marker and you want to figure out where the wires are going to fill in and then we're going to mark it right here and that's where we need to strip the wire so we're gonna use a wire stripper right here for this and then we simply spin it on this I'm using this wire stripper you need to adjust this blade to the depth of the insulation so for this one is already cutting too deep so we need to adjust this little thing down here until we're removing less insulation now we can actually cut it without damaging the wires inside and after you adjust it just stick the wire in there and then spin it around and it'll cut the insulation off it should look like that and then we're gonna put the connector over it and make sure it fits perfectly all right see where that line is it should end right where the connector starts and this is pushed in all the way so this is good now we can crimp this so the most common way to crimp these connections that are large is to use a hammer type crimp so if you fit it in just like this and you whack the top of it with a hammer you can crimp it and this is the cheapest way to do it and most people will find this way to be very easy you just stick it inside of there make sure the wire is pushed in all the way and then you whack it with a hammer in this video we're not going to use a hammer type crimper because this thing is way better so I have my impact gun connected to a three-point crimper and first you want to put the crimp connector inside like this and tighten it just a little bit just so it's holding it but you don't want to smash it yet and then we need to put all of the strands of the wire dry into this crimp connector and some people might be curious why are we using anti-corrosion stuff inside of here well first of all this is a gas tight joint and there's going to be no corrosion inside this termination if this is a true termination with proper tools like this there is no need for it and if you want to protect it you can use heat shrink or you can use anti-corrosion greases and stuff on the outside of it but for what we're doing just take a dry wire inside the terminal connector and then we can crimp it this one is done just like that you can see that it went all the way through and it pressed it really nice you can use heat shrink to protect this or you can use electric tape because this is not marine or around you know salt or water electric tape will work fine and it's very easy and fast so now that we have this wire crimped we can connect it to the fuse box and then we can put this little nut down and then we can use our wrench to tighten it now this connection is done but now we need to connect it to this over here I like to tighten it down so that when we measure and cut this side it will be perfect and so now let's get out our marker so if we place the connector on the terminal and then we put the wire on top of that we can get a really good measurement and so the wire should stop right here so that's where we want to cut the wire and then where we want to remove the insulation is right here it actually will move this just a little bit over here so now we know where to cut the wire and where to strip the wire so first let's cut it with our cable cutters and let's look at it to make sure it actually fits properly and that looks really good now that we know that it fits really nicely we can take off this insulation and strip the wire and instead of using this little wire stripper I'm gonna show you guys how you can do it with this this is not recommended by some professionals but I like it and as long as you don't hit the wire and you're very careful this is a very fast and easy way to do it so what you do is you put it in the cable cutter and it's a small cable cutter not the really large ones just a nice little handheld one and then you spin it around slowly and you look to see if it's actually made it down to the wire so I can pull it back right now and see where the wire is so I know that I'm not hitting any of the strands of wire and if there's a thick spot you can rub it slowly on there until you hit it where it needs to be and now there's just a little bit of plastic holding it on so we can actually use our hands or pliers in BAM that's a perfect one there is not a single strand they got hit now that we have both ends ready to go and we can crimp this side we need to figure out what it needs to be so if this circuit breaker was angled differently we would have to orient this crimp connection differently because this is flat to flat we can make them the same and then crimp it like that for this one let's do a hammer crimp because why not it will be fun to show you guys so you put it inside of the hammer crimp just like that very straightforward and make sure like I said a second ago it's oriented correctly for how we are putting it on the board so for this one needs to be flat to flat in something you guys have to get right though is aligning this thing so it goes down because some of the cheap ones like to go the other way so make sure that you look and see that it's in there properly and then you can start hammering away make sure the wire is pushed in how you want it BAM you can hear a thud because it's not hollow anymore and the two metals have molded together in there you have a perfect crimp now that this is crimped we can use electrical tape and cover this up so it looks nice and good and the moment of truth let's see if this fits properly let's angle the camera down a little bit there we go and it looks perfect god that is actually really nice also you guys can see that this hole is a little bit small this hole is perfect for this stud but for this one it's a tiny bit different so what you can do to increase surface area is use a small washer this one actually has a washer but I just wanted to mention it right here where it's actually most helpful to see it and then you guys can see that none of this bolt is touching the insulation if this insulation was going further under here that would be bad and you'd have to remove some of it but this is perfect so we're going to tighten this down just like this and that connection is done we are completely finished right here we still need to connect a wire from here to the inverter so we're gonna leave this nut off and now you just need to repeat the process over and over to connect all of these so for the next one we're going to do in Werder to the circuit breaker that is perfect both of these connectors fit with this stud and there's lots of surface area and it's nice and tight so this looks really good so far now we're gonna have to connect the inverter to this circuit breaker so that we can supply the solar charge controller with the connection to the battery and luckily I actually have some wire that I use for this in my last project and it fits perfectly so I can just tighten these down and so now when you connect cables to an inverter or post you want to make sure that they all lay flush and flat and there's lots of surface area and then we also have a washer you can also put a lock nut washer on there as well and that right there is a perfect connection now we need to put a bolt down here but we need to add a washer because we didn't have the right size for this stud but that's okay especially considering how much power is going through this thing it will be fine to use a small washer and then tighten this down just like that and now that wire is perfect before we move on we need to talk about the wire gauge sizing so this is 4 gauge 4 gauge and this one is 4 gauge 2 because it is protected from the battery as an amp source by this circuit breaker so all of these wires connected to the circuit breaker need to be 4 gauge if they're a longer distance then you need a thicker gauge wire but at this point right here now that we have a circuit breaker we can reduce the wire size because all we need is this to be able to handle 50 amps from here to here so what we're going to use is a 6 gauge wire and then we're going to connect it from the circuit breaker to the solar charge controller so first we're going to measure it and this looks about right so we're gonna snip it right here now we have a connector that is made for this gauge of wire and can fit this stud so we're going to connect right here and crimp it crimped it and protected it with some electrical tape now we're going to Tison it down a little bit you don't want to tighten these too much because these nuts are kind of small so you can damage them or strip them that's perfect right there now we just need to strip this side and stick it in this little hole right for the positive battery and this is where we need a small flat-head screwdriver and now what you need to do is unscrew this all the way until it stops because we want this hole open as large as possible then when you look inside you can see where the screw goes down and then make sure that the insulation goes all the way up as far as you can where the screw starts and then you can screw this down just like that and now this is solid and those are our main positive cables we have a four gauge a four gauge and a four gauge in a six gauge these are the four main cables for our system and now we can do negative black cables and as you can see now the negative wires are connected and then also we need to cover up these positive terminals because if somebody drops a tool over here on this terminal and it's touching a ground such as this case or something like that you can get a spark and it can set off this circuit breaker so what we're going to use is electrical tape to cover all of these positive terminals and this is what it should look like when you cover the terminals with the electrical tape so I just use like three pieces on here couple pieces right here a couple pieces right here and I think one piece right here and this will make sure that nothing short circuits on accident now that all of this stuff is done we can connect the positive terminal battery cable to the main circuit breaker right here in this battery cable because it's a two gauge cable we have a 175 amp fuse and this will connect to the positive terminal of the battery and then this other battery cable that goes to negative doesn't need a fuse and it has nothing so these two connect to your battery system on your battery this is a tiny battery that we're going to use as an example it's a small sealed lead-acid but on your battery bank system you're gonna have positive and negative and check out my book if you want to know how to build a battery bank but for this system we're just going to connect it straight to this battery first put the positive right here like this and then you put the negative right here and you're gonna see some sparks see that spark that's the inverters capacitor is charging and so now we can connect this with the bolt there's another spark oh that the battery is connected we can go up here and check out our stuff so first the solar charge controller is on because there is a green light for the battery that is good that is a good sign next on the inverter if you press the power button it should be able to turn on and it just turned on so if you don't hear any crazy beeping noises you know that it's working and we can turn it off now and now with the fuse box this is pretty straightforward so we can test that later but this system works so now we can finally connect the solar panels and this is where you're going to connect the solar panels you have a negative and you have a positive so you're gonna have two wires that come through your roof and then you connect them right here you simply unscrew them with a flathead screwdriver and you stick the wires inside if this light does not come on or it does not come on at all do not connect the solar panels yet you need to make sure that the solar charge controller is working and with your battery first and then you connect the solar panels so I just added some mc4 connectors as place holders for solar panels and when you connect the solar panels on and there is sunshine this green light the PV or photovoltaic should turn green and that means that it's charging up your battery so when you plug in these solar panels another green light should illuminate the solar panels are installed we can add the temperature compensation sensor so all you do is plug it in right here where it has a little temperature thing and you can have a long wire and this needs to go where your batteries are so if you have a battery compartment you can zip tie this to the battery compartment but you want to be as close to the batteries as possible some temperature sensor modules will actually have a connector that goes on the negative terminal typically what I'll do is I'll stick it right here and I'll zip tie it to the negative wire and that ensures that the temperature of the batteries is being recorded by this so that it can influence how the solar charge controller is charging up your batteries and this solar charge controller we also have low terminals and I do not suggest anybody using these I do not like them at all if you want to connect a load to the system that's 12 volts connect it with the fuse block and we'll get to that in a second so for the final wire the solar charge controller it's the MT 50 and this is very simple to plug in in use you plug it in and then the other part plugs into the back of this screen and this will tell you stats about your system we do not have solar panels connected so ignore this part over here this is also kind of confusing so please read the manual when you get it it says thirteen point four volts in the middle and that's what the battery is at and if it's a happy smiley face that means that the battery is full and with this device we can find out all sorts of interesting stuff we can figure out how much watts the solar panels are producing we can figure out the temperature at the controller we can also figure out if there's any loads which we don't want manual control and you can also press escape and then go down to control parameters this is my favourite place because you can see what it says battery type is sealed and this is a sealed lead-acid if we were using a lithium iron phosphate drop-in lead acid replacement this would be perfect sealed works for most batteries if you have flooded batteries you're gonna have to go in here and change this yourself if you have a sealed one that's on my website or lithium you are good to go if you have a home-built lithium you're gonna have to program this with your computer and that's very hard and difficult and you can watch my other videos for that so don't even think about it if you buy the solar charge controller on my website and you use one of the batteries that I recommend you don't have to program this what you use this for is monitoring and this will tell you all the stats you need to know it will tell you how much power is being produced and how much is charging the battery this amperage right here is how much power and amps is going into the battery it is a voltage so I like to look at this because this stuff can fluctuate the voltage from the panel's and the current from the panel's can go up and down but this will stay the same and you can use this to tell you how much power is actually going inside your batteries I think we have a charging system for this battery we need to use the power so we have AC power right here we have DC power right here so the AC power you simply turn on the inverter and then a light will turn on and then we plug in appliances right here for the DC fuse ball we're going to attach appliances directly to this so let's look at this real quick we have one fuse that came with it but we need to add our own fuses so where this fuse is 15 amps that means we can supply 15 amps with this terminal and then we have negatives right here these are grounds so if you have an appliance you're going to connect it right here and right here and then let the wires dangled out and and you can connect the wires to this board with these cable clamps and these will hold the wires on to the board so it doesn't get too messy around the fuse box now we're gonna actually connect an appliance to this fuse panel I have xt60 connector so I can connect multiple devices to it with high and low amperage input but this can handle 60 amps so what I want to do is put it to a 20 amp fuse because most of the appliances that connect to this are pretty small so we're gonna find the positive and the negative wire and we're going to add crimp connectors and attach it right here and right here so the first thing we need to think about is where is this why you're gonna run let's say the wire needs to go over here and they are going to go underneath here then we have a positive all the way up here at a 20 amp and then we have a negative way down here see how there is excess what we do need to do is cut this wire right here because we don't need all of this wire just like that so now when you measure it you can say the negative goes right here positive goes right here and it's a good distance and everything lays flat so use one of these automatic wire strippers to take just a little bit off the tip then we have two stripped wires that we can add crimp connectors so for this size wire in this type of terminal we can use this little blue one so what we want to do is slide the wire inside of there make sure all of the strands of wire go inside and fit perfectly inside the connector and then what we do is crimp it with our crimp tool and because this is a blue connector you put inside the blue indentation and then you squeeze and it's done and then do it on the other wire as well and these crimp connectors actually have heat shrink so what I use as my stove but you can use a heat gun or whatever you have on a hand to make these things hot and then the heat we'll shrink it and it should look like this it's smoking just a little bit so we can turn the fan on but that's a perfect connector now we need to connect it to our fuse block so first let's get the positive wire for your appliance and screw it down and then we have a negative wire so loosen one of the negative bus terminals push it in there and then screw it down but we have this wire dangling around still so we're going to use a cable clamp and install it into the wooden board and then hold it where we want it to be now it's perfect so this will reduce strain on these connection terminal joints because you don't want these getting yanked out or anything that's it guys that's how you connect appliances you can connect all of these fuses to different appliances if you are using so much power from this fuse block that this circuit breaker starts to trip while you're using the inverter you will have to make this bigger but for most people if you have a circuit breaker that's sized for the inverter the fuse block will not trip because most people with inverters do not use the maximal amount that this thing can produce so typically just size the circuit breaker for the inverter and then the fuse block will be fine that is the completed system guys you can put this in a battery compartment or in a closet or something connect it to the battery bank that you have in your vehicle or your cabin or whatever connect some solar panels second and you're done everything here just needs to be plugged into appliances DC appliances AC appliances I hope you guys found this video useful let me know if there's something that I was missing and thank you so much for watching this video if you and if you guys want any more information about what size inverter what size solar charge controller what batteries I recommend everything else what tools I'm using please check out my website at www.opm.gov/tribalprograms

Channel: DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse

Views: 1,613,113

Rating: 4.9037929 out of 5

Keywords: offgrid solar, van solar, rv solar, solar tutorial, how to solar

Id: IRRKHYwB3Uo

Length: 32min 56sec (1976 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 24 2018