- Hey, everybody, it's
Nate from EXPLORIST.life. We teach people how to build DIY campers. In this video, we are
showing you start to finish how we installed this
complete DIY electrical system in our Ford Transit camper van. Now, this video is going to
cover wiring the battery bank, building the enclosure,
wiring the battery heater, the Lynx Shunt and Lynx Distributor, rooftop solar, ground deploy solar, the MultiPlus inverter/charger,
the chassis ground, 24-volt air conditioning,
dual 12-volt fuse blocks, wiring shore power, alternator charging, wiring the Cerbo GX and Touch 70, securing the batteries to the van, and system programming and testing. Now, if at any point in
time you want to skip to a specific section of the video, we've put timestamps in
the video timeline below so you can do just that. Now, two things before we get started. First, there are a ton of resources that accompany this video, like wiring diagrams, parts
lists, plans, 3D models, and all kinds of other fun stuff that you'll want to check out
the video description for. And secondly, this video is
kicking off the expansion of shop.explorist.life
that we launched last year. In the past, we've pushed
everybody to Amazon to buy the parts necessary
to build these systems, but unfortunately, we didn't
have any control over quality or them keeping items in stock. So we've brought all of that in-house and Steph has been hard at work sourcing the parts and components for the system you're seeing today and a few new systems
that we've just launched for larger systems, smaller systems, and systems for 30-amp and 50-amp OEM RVs. Now, enough with the sales
pitch, let's get started. (screen whooshing)
(quiet rock music) To start this project, we needed to wire our two 12-volt Battle
Born GC3 batteries together to make a 24-volt battery bank. Now these batteries are
the backbone of the system, providing 6.8 kilowatt
hours of power storage, which is 270 amp hours at 24 volts or 540 amp hours at 12 volts. Now, these batteries
are also self-heating, since we travel for snow skiing and live up in the mountains of Colorado, where temps as low as
-20 degrees Fahrenheit are typical in the winter. - [Steph] Here are the parts we are using for this part of the installation. Two heated 12 volt, 270
amp hour Battle Born GC3 lithium iron phosphate batteries, the EXPLORIST.life two battery, 1/0 24-volt Battery Bank Wiring Kit, which includes wire,
wire lugs, heat-shrink, and we also need the terminal
fuse and terminal fuse holder from our 24-volt 1/0 Lynx
Distributor Wiring Kit. - [Nate] Let's start wiring. To make a 24-volt battery bank
from two 12-volt batteries, we need to wire the
positive from one battery to the negative terminal
of the other battery. And to do this, I flipped one of the batteries upside down so that the positive
and negative terminals were near each other. These Battle Born batteries can be mounted in any orientation, which is a huge perk for giving us mounting
flexibility in these systems. With the batteries in position, I could unscrew the terminal covers. Now, these batteries are internally heated so that they continue to function during extreme cold temperatures, but we still have to
wire them up externally, and to do that, we need to
access the heater screw terminal, which is under this mounting foot. Once we have access to
the heater screw terminal, we need to make the heater wire. So I crimped a ring terminal
onto our small-gauge wire, secured the ring terminal in
place to the heater screw, and then replaced the
battery mounting foot. Now it was time to make the
battery interconnect wire to make these two 12-volt
Battle Born batteries into a 24-volt battery bank. So I cut, stripped,
crimped, and heat-shrinked a 1/0 by 5/16 inch wire lug onto each end of a short piece of wire, and put 3/4 inch heat-shrink on each end. Then I sanded and cleaned the lugs and cleaned the battery
terminals with alcohol to get rid of any manufacturing
oil, dirt, or grime. Next I bolted the lugs directly
to the battery terminals with the hardware included
with the batteries. Now, it's super important to make sure that there's nothing between the lugs and the battery terminals
like heat-shrink or washers, and then tighten the nut to spec with a 1/2-inch wrench and socket. And here's how the battery
terminal connection should look. The lug should be directly in contact with the battery terminal
with washers on each side. And lastly, we can replace
the battery terminal covers. Now that our batteries are wired together, it's time to mount these
two batteries to their base, and that's coming up next. Now that our two 12-volt
Battle Born batteries are wired together into
a 24-volt battery bank, we need to mount the batteries to a base so that they stay put during travel. I measured out a piece of birch plywood to fit the bottom of the
batteries and cut it to fit. Next I made the tongue part
of our tongue and groove joint that would eventually
fit into our 80/20 base. I simply ran the wood across the table saw until I had a protrusion
that would fit nicely into the slot of the 80/20
and be flush on the bottom. A router and router table would've been much
easier and cleaner here, but alas, I don't have a router table yet. So the table saw and chisel method worked good enough for who it's for. Next I marked and drilled the holes for the battery mounting feet, sanded and finished the
wood with paste wax, and then we secured the
batteries to the wood with #10 by two-inch long
machine screws and stop nuts. With these screws in place, our Battle Born batteries are now firmly attached to the base and effectively each other. With the batteries firmly
mounted to the base, we can now move on to
building the 80/20 enclosure that will secure the batteries
to the body of the van and protect the rest of the components, and that's coming up next. Now that we've secured the
batteries to the platform, it's time to start building our aluminum extrusion enclosure. Now, it's also worth noting
that I use the term 80/20 and aluminum extrusion pretty
interchangeably in this video. Aluminum extrusion is
just the general name for this type of material
and 80/20 is a brand name. Now we need to flip our batteries over so that they are right side up, but first we need to make the base of the aluminum extrusion
enclosure to slip it into place. Our enclosure started with a plan. Steph and I spent a few days brainstorming what the
enclosure would look like and how it would fit into
the future layout of the van, and we came up with
this design in SketchUp. Now, if you want this SketchUp file, be sure to check out that info in the pinned comment below this video. With the plan in place, we ordered the aluminum extrusion. We ordered our aluminum
extrusion from TNUTZ because they have pretty quick turnaround and they will also precut and
machine the pieces for us, which saves a lot of time, effort, and wasted material for minimal cost. It's super nice to have the
material show up at our door 95% of the way finished
and all we have to do is make a few strategic access
holes and bolt it together. To bolt the extrusion together, we had TNUTZ tap threads in the ends and then counter-bore access
holes in adjacent ends, and the pieces simply
bolt together like so. This method is super strong, but maybe even more importantly, it keeps everything very square
and flush with each other. There are a few places though that we had to drill our own access holes. In some places the bolts needed to be halfway down the extrusion, so
we had to do that ourselves. We used a drill press for this, but you can absolutely just
use a hand drill for this as long as you can accurately
drill straight up and down. With the aluminum
extrusion base completed, we slid the base around the wood platform and then tightened it into place. Now that the battery base is complete, we can go ahead and flip
the whole assembly over and wire the other side
of the battery heater while we still have access to
it, and that's coming up next. Now that the battery bank is secured to the base of the enclosure, it's time to wire the other
battery heater circuit before we lose easy access
to the terminal screw. I took the positive battery terminal cover and the mounting foot off of the battery to gain access to the screw terminal for the heater of this battery. I grabbed the other end of the heater wire that I attached to the other battery and crimped a ring terminal onto it. Next I made a short piece of wire with a #8 ring terminal on one side and a 5/16-inch terminal
on the other side. I put the two #8 ring terminals in place and tightened them to
an appropriate torque. The other end of the short wire goes to the positive battery terminal. Now is also a good time to
install the terminal fuse that comes with our Lynx
Distributor Wiring Kit. I put the bolt that
comes with the batteries through the battery terminal, fuse holder, and small 5/16-inch ring
terminal, and tightened to spec. Now I'm going to put the
positive terminal cover back in place. It's important to keep the
negative battery terminal cover in place the entire time during this step, because touching the positive
and negative terminals at the same time with my wrench or ratchet would cause a lot of heat very quickly. (rock music) Now that the battery
heating circuit is complete, we can continue building the
aluminum extrusion enclosure, and that's coming up next. Now that we have the battery
heating circuit complete, we can reinstall the mounting foot and continue building the
aluminum extrusion enclosure. Building the rest of the
aluminum extrusion enclosure was more of the same concept
for building the base. We just used our SketchUp file
to go in a systematic method for attaching all of the
extrusions into place. Once we got to this piece on
the front of the enclosure, it was time to secure
the tops of the batteries to the extrusion. Battle Born makes brackets
for the GC3 batteries, and we're attaching those
brackets to the aluminum extrusion with one-inch long 1/4 by 20
carriage bolts and stop nuts. The other ends of the brackets
get secured to the batteries with the hardware included
with the brackets. For the lid support piece, we slid T-nuts into the
end of the extrusion, which the hinges would eventually bolt to. The T-nuts we used could
have actually been dropped in from the top as we found out later, but it goes in from the end as well. Next we built the lid
in much of the same way we built the rest of the enclosure. Now, this process involves a
ton of putting pieces together and taking them apart to make it all fit. It's a bit of a tedious process, but persistence and
patience pays off here. We found it best to build
all of the 80/20 first to make sure that everything
bolts together properly before making the panels. Now, we're using clear acrylic
panels for this enclosure because we plan on taking
it to camper van shows and we'll be using this
system as a teaching tool. If we weren't using it for that purpose, we could really use any
other type of sheet goods like colored acrylic, or even plywood. The panels simply slide
into place in most places, but in a few spots the panels needed to be
notched out for clearance. Now, this is my first
time working with acrylic and it actually handled similar
to wood in most regards. I pretty much just used
normal woodworking tools here. The acrylic was more brittle than wood and it threw a lot more melted plastic shrapnel when cutting it, but I didn't have to upgrade
to a plastic-specific blade or anything like that. (upbeat music) Once the panels were made,
we could attach the lid. We put the lid in place, dropped our T-nuts into
the top piece of extrusion, and bolted the hinges together. To keep the lid closed we're using these black chest latches. For these, we marked the
location of the holes, drilled the holes, and
tapped threads into them, and then screwed the
latches to the enclosure. The last thing we wanted to do was add some gas struts
to keep the lid open and to slow the lid down as it closed. Unfortunately, I bought
the wrong size of gas strut and my gas strut mounting design just didn't really work, so this enclosure is not
getting gas struts for now and I'll have to come up
with another solution later, but I'll be sure to put
the updated solution in the pinned comment below
this video once I figure it out. Now that the enclosure is all built, we can set it aside for a bit and install the rest of the components on the wall of the van,
and that's coming up next. Now that the enclosure is built and our battery bank is wired, we can move on to wiring all
of the Victron components, starting with the Lynx
Shunt and Lynx Distributor. The Lynx Shunt is a measuring device that measures the amperage leaving or going back
into the battery bank. Think of this like the fuel
gauge for your battery bank. The Lynx Distributor is a system of positive and negative bus bars with fuse holders for
the positive bus bars. This is the absolute best way to get nice and organized fused wire runs with minimal electrical
connections into a system. Now here's a rundown of these two products and how to install them. These products come with
covers that can be removed to access their internal components. Let's start with a Lynx Shunt, which has a space for an ANL fuse which protects the Lynx Distributor and acts as a backup to the terminal fuse that we installed on the battery bank, and a shunt, which is
actually the measuring device that I mentioned earlier. The Lynx Distributor
has a positive bus bar, a negative bus bar, four fuse
holders per Lynx Distributor, little breakaway separators
that we don't need, and wire separators that snap into place or out of the way as necessary. A second Lynx Distributor
can simply be added to the first Lynx Distributor if additional fuse slots are needed, which in this video we will indeed need the additional spots. So I can remove the hardware, clean the electrical points
of contact with alcohol, put the second Lynx Distributor in place, and reattach and re-torque the hardware. The Lynx Shunt mounts to
the first Lynx Distributor in the exact same method. Clean the points of contact, remove the hardware, put it in place, put the hardware back in
place, and tighten it down. The Lynx Shunt powers the lights inside of the Lynx Distributors with the data cables provided
with the Lynx Distributors. They simply attach to their
respective spots in each device. These cables are a bit too long, so I'm just coiling them
up and out of the way a bit so they don't hang down out
of the Lynx system so far. Now we can put our fuse in
place in the Lynx Distributor by removing the hardware,
cleaning the fuse, dropping the fuse into place, and replacing and
re-torquing the hardware. The fuse should be directly
in contact with the Lynx Shunt with no washers or anything in between. Now it's ready to mount to the wall. Now that our Lynx Shunt
and both Lynx Distributors are all connected to each
other and mounted to the wall, it's time to wire our first
solar charge controller into the system, and that's coming up next. Now that I mounted the Lynx
Distributor to the wall, I'm gonna show you how to wire the first solar charge
controller in the system to the Lynx Distributor. This charge controller is responsible for taking the 580-watt solar
array on the roof of this van that operates at a bit over 40 volts and regulating that voltage
down to the 29 volts that it takes to charge
a 24-volt battery bank. - [Steph] Here are the parts we're using for this part of the installation. The Victron SmartSolar MPPT 130, the EXPLORIST.life MPPT 130 Wiring Kit, which includes wire, ferrules, wire lugs, heat-shrink, a MEGA fuse,
and mounting screws. - [Nate] The Victron SmartSolar MPPT 130 solar charge controller has six terminals we will be using, battery positive, battery negative, solar array negative,
solar array positive, an equipment ground screw,
and the VE.Direct port for system communications
with the Cerbo GX. Now let's start wiring. We first want to temporarily mount the charge controller to the wall so that we can take our
measurements for our wires, which involves securing
the charge controller with two #14 screws in the
pilot holes that we pre-drilled. Next we needed to make our wires. To make our positive wire, we will cut, strip, crimp, and heat-shrink a six gauge by 5/16-inch wire lug onto one end of our red six gauge wire, and then measure, cut, strip, crimp, and heat-shrink a six gauge
ferrule onto the other side. To make our negative wire, we are doing the exact same thing just with a black wire
and black heat-shrink. I crimped a six gauge ferrule onto one end and a six gauge by 5/16-inch
wire lug onto the other, both with 1/2-inch black heat-shrink. Lastly, to make our equipment ground wire, I crimped a six gauge by 1/4-inch wire lug onto one side of the wire and a six gauge by 5/16-inch
wire lug onto the other end, both with 1/2-inch black heat-shrink. Now we can wire the charge controller to the Lynx Distributor. I started with the equipment ground wire because the screw is on the
side of the charge controller and it's kind of hard to get to, requiring the removal of the charge controller from the wall. I removed the equipment ground screw, placed the serrated washer, lug, washer, and lock washer in place, and then secured all of that with the equipment ground screw. The other end of this will get attached to the MultiPlus equipment
ground stud later in this video, so I'm just going to
leave it hanging for now. Next we can clean off our positive ferrule with a bit of alcohol and put it into the positive
battery terminal of the MPPT, tighten to spec, and then clean the negative ferrule and put it into the
negative battery terminal and tighten that to spec. Lastly, I'll ensure that
there is no insulation between the ferrule and the terminal. Now that I've connected the
wires to the charge controller, we can connect the battery
positive and negative wires to the Lynx Distributor. I'm going to pull the wire
separator out of the way for now, and then I'm going to
loosen and remove the nuts, lock washers, and washers from the furthest rightmost terminals of the Lynx Distributor with a 13-millimeter deep well socket. Next I will clean the
electrical points of contact with a bit of sandpaper
and alcohol as appropriate and put the negative lug on
the negative bus bar stud in the Lynx Distributor. It's important to ensure no insulation is interfering between the
lug and bus bar at this point. Then I will replace the
washer, lock washer, and nut on the stud, tighten it to the
manufacturer's torque spec, and replace the wire separator. Next I will clean my
electrical points of contact on the positive wire and fuse, put my MEGA fuse in place, put the positive lug in place on the bottom stud of the fuse holder, and then replace the washers,
lock washers, and nuts on the bus bar and fuse
holder and tighten to spec. Now that the charge controller for our roof-mounted solar array is connected to the Lynx Distributor, now we can wire the charge
controller to our solar isolator. I already put 10 gauge ferrules
and 3/8-inch heat-shrink from the EXPLORIST.life
Solar Array Wiring Kit on these wires coming from the
solar isolator ahead of time, since they are pretty
short and hard to work with once the charge controller is in place. The red wire goes into
the PV positive terminal and the black wire goes into
the negative PV terminal, and both get tightened to spec. It's crucial to ensure that the ferrule's
insulation is out of the way and is not interfering
with the connection here. Now that I have the first
charge controller installed, it's time to move on and install the second charge controller for our ground deploy solar array, which is coming up next. Now that I've installed
the first charge controller of this system for the
rooftop solar array, I'm gonna show you how to wire
a second charge controller into the same system for our
ground deploy solar array. This charge controller is for
a ground deploy solar array that we can place away from the van for supplemental charging
while parked at camp. This charge controller
can handle a solar array of up to a massive 1700
watts of solar panels. It can handle an array
voltage of up to 250 volts and regulate that down to the 29 volts that it takes to charge
a 24-volt battery bank. - [Steph] Here are the parts we are using for this part of the install, the Victron SmartSolar MPPT 250/60 and the EXPLORIST.life
MPPT 250/60 Wiring Kit, which includes wire, ferrules, wire lugs, heat-shrink, a MEGA fuse,
and mounting screws. - [Nate] The Victron
SmartSolar MPPT 250/60 solar charge controller has six terminals that we'll be using, battery positive, battery negative, solar array negative,
solar array positive, an equipment ground screw,
and the VE.Direct port for system communications
with the Cerbo GX. Let's start wiring. We first want to temporarily mount the charge controller to the wall so that we can take the
measurements for our wires, which simply involves
securing the charge controller with two #14 screws in the
pilot holes that we pre-drilled. Next we need to make our wires. We measure our two gauge positive wire and then crimped a two gauge by 5/16-inch wire lug onto one side and a two gauge ferrule on the other side. Each get 3/4-inch heat-shrink. For the negative wire I'll
do the exact same thing. I crimped on a two gauge by
5/16 inch wire lug onto one side and a two gauge ferrule on the other, both with 3/4-inch heat-shrink. For the equipment ground wire, this one gets a two gauge
by 5/16-inch lug on one side and a two gauge by
1/4-inch lug on the other, both with 3/4-inch heat-shrink. Now that I've made the wires, I can wire the charge controller
to the Lynx Distributor. I started with the equipment ground wire because the screw is on the
side of the charge controller and it's hard to get to, requiring removal of
the charge controller. Then I remove the equipment ground screw and then place the serrated washer, lug, washer, and lock washer in place and secured all of that with
the equipment ground screw. The other end of this will get attached to the MultiPlus equipment
ground stud later in this video, so I'm just going to
leave it hanging for now. Next we can clean off our positive ferrule with a bit of alcohol and put it into the
positive battery terminal, and then clean the negative ferrule, put it into the negative battery terminal, and then tighten that to spec. Lastly, I'll ensure that
there is no insulation between the ferrule and the terminal. Now it's time to connect
the battery positive and negative wires to
the Lynx Distributor. I'm going to pull the wire
separator out of the way, loosen and remove the nuts, lock washers, and washers from the Lynx Distributor, clean the electrical points
of contact with some alcohol, put the negative lug on
the negative bus bar stud in the Lynx Distributor, ensure that there's no insulation between the lug and bus bar, replace the washer, lock
washer, and nut on the stud, tighten the nut to the
manufacturer's spec, and then replace the wire separator. For the positive wire I'm going to clean my
electrical points of contact on the positive wire and fuse, put my MEGA fuse in place, put the positive lug in place on the bottom stud of the fuse holder, replace the washers,
lock washers, and nuts on the bus bar and fuse holder, and then tighten to spec. Now that I have the charge controller for our ground mounted solar array wired to the Lynx Distributor, I can connect the wires
from the solar isolator. Now, I already put the 10 gauge ferrules and 1/4-inch heat-shrink on these wires from the solar isolator ahead of time, since they are pretty
short and hard to work with once the charge controller's in place. The red wire goes into
the PV positive terminal and the black wire goes into
the negative PV terminal, and both get tightened to spec. It's vital to ensure that
the ferrule's insulation is out of the way and is not interfering
with the connection here. (rock music) Now that I have the
second charge controller installed in the system, it's time to move on to wiring the Victron MultiPlus inverter/charger, which is coming up next. Now that I have both
solar charge controllers wired to the Lynx Distributor, it's time to move on down
the line of blue boxes and wire our Victron
MultiPlus inverter/charger to the Lynx Distributor. The Victron MultiPlus will allow us to do three different
things in this system, charge our 24-volt batteries
from 120-volt shore power, power our 120-volt
outlets from shore power, and power our 120-volt outlets from our 24-volt battery bank. - [Steph] For this section of the build we are using these parts, the Victron MultiPlus
24-volt 3k inverter/charger, and the EXPLORIST.life 24-volt
MultiPlus 3k Wiring Kit, which includes wire,
wire lugs, heat-shrink, a MEGA fuse, and MultiPlus
mounting hardware. - [Nate] The Victron
MultiPlus has 10 terminals that we will be using in this build, positive and negative battery inputs, hot, neutral, and ground
AC inputs from shore power, hot, neutral, and ground AC outputs to the 120-volt breaker box, an equipment ground terminal, and the VE.Bus terminal for communications with the Cerbo GX. Let's get started. I fastened the MultiPlus
mounting plate to the wall with the five flathead screws that come with the MultiPlus Wiring Kit. The MultiPlus simply rests
on the mounting plate with the lip on the back and hangs there. The bottom gets screwed
to the wall as well, but we will do that later once we're certain that we don't
have to move the MultiPlus. With the MultiPlus mounted to the wall, I removed the front cover so that we could access all
of the electrical connections. I measured the 1/0 wire for both the positive
and negative connections and crimped a 1/0 by 5/16-inch
wire lug onto each end with 3/4-inch heat-shrink. Next it was time to move
back over to the MultiPlus and remove the nut, lock washer, and washer from one of the studs on each of the positive
and the negative terminals. After cleaning the connections, I put the black wire on
the negative terminal and the red wire on the positive terminal, and then fastened both in place with the washer, lock washer, and nut, and tightened it to an appropriate torque. The equipment ground wire
goes underneath the MultiPlus on the stud at the very back corner. This stud is also where we
land the equipment ground wires for the solar charge controllers. After removing the hardware from the MultiPlus equipment ground stud, I replaced the serrated washer, 1/0 lug, two gauge lug from the MPPT 250/60, six gauge lug from the MPPT 130, washer, lock washer, and nut, and then tightened to
an appropriate torque. Next is time to connect
the equipment ground wire to the Lynx Distributor. I loosened the nut,
lock washer, and washer, put the equipment ground lug in place on the negative bus bar
of the Lynx Distributor, and then replaced the
washer, lock washer, and nut, and then tightened it to spec. Next is connecting the MultiPlus
positive and negative wires from the MultiPlus to
the Lynx Distributor. I removed the nuts,
washers, and lock washers from the negative bus bar
and positive fuse holder in the Lynx Distributor, and then I clean my wire lugs with the bit of sandpaper and alcohol. Then I put my negative wire lug in place on the negative bus bar and replaced the washer,
lock washer, and nut, and then tighten to spec. And then I replaced the wire separator. Next I removed the little red
ring terminal from the stud that goes to the Lynx
Distributor computer board, drop my MEGA fuse in place, put the PCB ring terminal back in place, put my positive wire lug in place directly on top of the fuse, and then replace the washers,
lock washers, and nuts, and then tightened it to spec. Now that the DC side of
the Victron MultiPlus is all wired up, we still need to wire the AC input and AC output for the MultiPlus, but I'm going to keep going
with the DC wiring of the system and get everything connected
to the Lynx Distributor. Let's move on to wiring
the chassis ground. Now that I have wired the
MultiPlus to the Lynx Distributor, it's time to wire the chassis ground. - [Steph] For this part of the install, we're using the 1/0 variety of the EXPLORIST.life
Chassis Ground Wiring Kit, which includes wire,
wire lugs, heat-shrink, a nut, bolt, washer, lock
washer, and serrated washer. - [Nate] Before we installed the walls, we wired the chassis ground
connection to the van's body. We used one of the body
support ribs for this. This connection is as simple as drilling a 5/16-inch
hole in the support rib and then bolting our 1/0
by 5/16-inch wire lug to the body support rib
with the serrated washer between the lug and rib, and the washer, lock washer, and nut on the other side of the rib and then tightening until snug. Since this was pretty hard to see back in that dark and tight corner, here's how that looks on
a tabletop demonstration. The serrated washer is in
between the lug and body panel and then the washer, lock washer, and nut are on top of that, all bolted together nice and tight. The serrated washer cuts
through the van's paint, giving a good metal-to-metal connection. If you feel this is not
enough of a connection, feel free to sand away some
paint at your discretion. Back to real-time now with
the walls already installed. I already crimped on a
1/0 by 5/16-inch wire lug onto this end of the chassis ground wire and fed it through the wall. This chassis ground wire gets
attached to the center stud on the negative bus bar
of the Lynx Distributor. I pulled the negative connection for the Lynx Distributor
PCB out of the way, put the lug directly on
the negative bus bar, replaced the ring terminal for the PCB, and the washer, lock washer, and nut directly on top of that, and all tightened to spec. Now that we have wired the
chassis ground connection, it's time to wire our 24-volt
Nomadic air conditioner, which is coming up next. Now that we have installed
our chassis ground, it's time to wire our 24-volt
Nomadic air conditioner to the Lynx Distributor. The Nomadic 24-volt air conditioner is the air conditioner that we installed back in episode 21 of this build series, so most of the wiring
is already completed. We connected the two gauge
wires to the air conditioner, and the lugs we already
crimped onto the ends for bench testing the unit. We already ran those
wires through the walls and now we just need to connect those to the Lynx Distributor. I remove the hardware from the negative bus bar
of the Lynx Distributor and then put the negative
wire lug in place, and replace the washer,
lock washer, and nut on top, and tightened it to an appropriate torque. Next I remove the nut, lock washer, and washer from the positive bus bar and bottom stud of the fuse
holder of the Lynx Distributor and I put my MEGA fuse in place, and then I put my positive wire lug on the bottom stud on top of the fuse, and then I replaced the
washers, lock washers, and nuts, and tightened them to
an appropriate torque. Now that I have the air conditioner wired, it's time to move on to wiring
our 12-volt fuse blocks, which is coming up next. Now that I have wired the air conditioner, it's time to wire our 12-volt fuse blocks for our small loads like lights, fans, USB outlets, and such. I'm gonna break this
section into two parts, installing the Victron Orion
24-volt to 12-volt converter and installing our dual fuse blocks. The Orion 24-volt to 12-volt converter is responsible for lowering the
24-volt battery bank voltage to 12 volts to provide
up to 70 amps of power to all of our lights, fans, USB outlets, and other small 12-volt
loads around the van. - [Steph] Here are the parts we're using for this part of the installation. The Victron Orion 24-volt
to 12-volt 70-amp converter, two 12-volt fuse panels, and the EXPLORIST.life Orion 24/12 70-Amp Converter Wiring Kit, which includes wire, wire
lugs, insulated ferrules, heat-shrink, a MEGA fuse,
and mounting hardware. Plus the EXPLORIST.life Secondary Fuse Block Addon Wiring Kit, which includes wire, insulated ferrules, and additional mounting hardware. - [Nate] The Orion 24/12 70-amp converter has three different terminals that we will be using, the positive input terminal,
the positive output terminal, and the negative terminal. The 12-volt fuse panels that we are using have three different terminal areas, two six gauge positive
connections, a negative bus bar, positive terminals for
the branch circuits, and the blade fuse slots on the front. Now let's start wiring. Before we installed the walls, we ran the positive and
negative six gauge wire from our Victron Orion
24 to 12-volt Wiring Kit from the electrical enclosure area up to where the first
fuse block would live. I stubbed those wires out of the wall and put six gauge by 1/4-inch wire lugs with 1/2-inch heat-shrink on each. I also made some short six gauge wires that would go from the Lynx Distributor to the Orion terminals with a six gauge by 5/16-inch wire lug and 1/2-inch heat-shrink on one side, and a six gauge by 1/4-inch wire lug and 1/2-inch heat-shrink
on the other side. Getting started, I secured
the Orion to the wall with the screws included in
the Orion 24/12 Wiring Kit. Then I removed the nuts,
washers, and lock washers from the side of the
Orion and set them aside. Then I made sure that this
little wire bridge was in place. The Orion will not function
without this in place, so it's important that it's there. Next I put the lugs that go
to the 12-volt fuse block on the negative and 12-volt
positive output studs of the Orion. And then after that I removed
the nuts, lock washers, and washers from the three
studs of the Lynx Distributor. And then I attached
the short negative wire from the negative stud of the Orion to the negative bus bar
on the Lynx Distributor. Next I put the washers,
lock washers, and nuts back on the negative stud of the Orion and the Lynx Distributor
and tightened to spec, and finally put the wire
separator back in place. After that, I put the MEGA fuse in place on the fuse holder on
the positive bus bar, and then put my positive wire in place between the fuse holder
of the Lynx Distributor and the 24-volt input
of the Orion converter. Then I put my washers,
lock washers, and nuts back on the Lynx Distributor
and tightened to spec, and then replaced the washers,
lock washers, and nuts back on the Orion and
tightened those to spec. Now that the Orion converter
has been installed, I can move on downstream and
wire the 12-volt fuse blocks. (screen whooshing) Now, we are wiring two separate
12-volt fuse panels here, one on the driver's side of the van and one on the passenger side. Both of them are powered from the same Orion 24-volt
to 12-volt converter, and here's how to wire the first one. We already ran the six gauge wires from the electrical enclosure
up here to the fuse panel before we installed the walls, so we pulled those out,
stripped back some insulation, and crimped six gauge insulated
ferrules onto each wire. There are two positive terminals on the back of the 12-volt fuse block. We're connecting the positive wire from the Orion converter
into one of these terminals and then connecting the wire that goes to the second fuse
block to the other terminal. Which one goes to which does not matter as they are both connected internally. The negative wire from the Orion goes to any of these spots
on the negative bus bar. The negative wire to the
second 12-volt fuse block goes to any remaining spots
on the negative bus bar. Connecting all the branch circuits is just a matter of
stripping back the insulation on each positive and negative wire and putting them into their
proper places on the fuse block. The negatives go to any spaces
on the negative bus bar. The positives go to any spaces
on the positive terminals on the other side. Wiring the second fuse block is nearly the same as the first, with the positive wire coming
out from the first fuse block going to one of these positive terminals on the back of the fuse block. It doesn't matter which one though. And the negative wire
goes to one of the spaces on the negative bus bar. Which one we choose here
also does not matter. And same as the previous fuse block, all of the positive wires go
to their positive terminals and negatives go to the negative bus bar. Now I can fasten both of
the 12-volt fuse blocks with the screws included in the 12-Volt Fuse Panel Wiring Kits, and we can insert the
appropriately sized blade fuses in the front of their
respective circuits on the back. Now is also a good time
to label the circuits so we know which fuse
goes to which circuit. Now that the Victron Orion
24-volt to 12-volt converter has been installed and wired
to our 12-volt fuse panels, it's time to wire our
120-volt distribution panel, and that's coming up next. Now that I have the 12-volt
fuse blocks wired up, it's time to wire our
120-volt AC distribution panel so that our MultiPlus inverter/charger can send power to our breaker box and our breaker box can send
power to our 120-volt outlets. - [Steph] Here are the parts we are using for this part of the installation, a 120-volt AC distribution panel and the EXPLORIST.life 120-volt AC Distribution Panel Wiring Kit, which includes wire, insulated ferrules, a 50-amp main breaker, heat-shrink, a cable gland, and mounting hardware. We are also using two
20-amp tandem breakers. - [Nate] The 120-volt AC
distribution panel here has three different electrical areas that we are focusing on, a negative bus bar, a ground bus bar, and the positive terminals that are in the bottoms of each breaker. Now let's start wiring. Before we installed the walls, we ran the 6/3 wire behind the walls that went from the Victron MultiPlus to the 120-volt AC distribution panel. I stubbed those wires out of the wall, stripped off the ends, and put the six gauge insulated
ferrules on each wire. I was able to get the outer insulation of the 6/3 wire into the
gland of the MultiPlus, but the way I got it in there, I don't necessarily recommend it, so I'm not gonna show you how I did it. Instead, I'm gonna refer you back to the 30 minute and 22 second mark in the last full install video I did to show you how I
recommend making that work. The link to that video is
in the pinned comment below. The black, white, and green wires go into the line, neutral,
and ground terminals of AC output number one, and then tightened to
an appropriate torque with a Phillips-head screwdriver. Now moving up to the 120-volt
AC distribution panel, there are knockouts on the back of the 120-volt AC distribution
panel for our wire gland, but where we are installing this panel there wasn't enough room behind it, so I drilled a new hole in the side and installed my wire gland there. Next I fed all of my wires through, 6/3 from the side and
12/3 through the back. Then I securely mounted the AC distribution panel to the wall. Next I stripped back the outer sheath from all 12/3 wires going to our outlets, and loosely grouped all
black, white, and green wires to prepare for wiring. Wiring this box is really pretty simple. All of the green wires go to the bus bar in the back of the box, so I stripped off a bit of
insulation from each wire, crimped on ferrules, loosened the screws on the ground bus bar, and then put the wires into the bus bar and then tightened the screws. All of the white wires go to the bus bar in the front of the box
in the exact same fashion. For the incoming 6/3 wires, they also go to their respective
green and white bus bars with ferrules on each. The black wires attach to the breakers, and the breakers simply attach to the bottom rail of the
breaker box and tilt up so that the metal spline goes
into the back of the breaker. Make sure that you put
your main incoming breaker and branch circuit outgoing breakers on the same side of the breaker box, because, as you'll notice, there is a left side bus
bar and a right side bus bar and the two are not connected. I loosened the screw at
the bottom of the breaker, stripped the insulation back, crimped on a six gauge insulated ferrule, inserted the wire into the 50-amp breaker, and tightened the screw. And the black wires from the 12/3 go into their own spaces
on their own breakers, or tandem breakers in our case, and sometimes it is easier
to remove the breakers to see what you're doing here. Please note how all breakers are on the same side of the box. The breakers must all be
on the same side of the box for them to work. Also, don't forget to
put the threaded ring on top of the gland, otherwise you have to undo
things like I did here. The little metal clip that's taped to the
inside of the breaker box gets screwed to the top of the box, which holds the main breaker in place. Now I can cut out the breaker knockouts, attach the lid to the breaker
box, and label our circuits. Now that I have installed our
120-volt distribution panel, it's time to move on
to wiring shore power, which is coming up next. Now that I've wired our
120-volt distribution panel, it's time to wire for shore power. Shore power will allow us to
power our 120-volt outlets and charge our batteries directly from shore power at a campground. - [Steph] Here are the parts we are using for this part of the installation, the EXPLORIST.life 30-Amp
Shore Power Wiring Kit, which includes wire, a
30-amp shore power inlet, ferrules, and mounting hardware. We're also using a 30-amp shore power cord and a 15 to 30-amp power adapter plug. - The 10/3 wire coming out of the wall comes from the shore power inlet we installed back in episode
number five of this series, which I'll link to in the
video description below. I stubbed the 10/3 wire out of the wall and stripped back the outer
sheath and insulation. I also already put the 10
gauge insulated ferrules from the EXPLORIST.life
Shore Power Wiring Kit onto each of the ends. I fed the 10/3 wire up into the MultiPlus, input the black, white, and green wires into the line, neutral, and ground terminals of the AC input. Then I tightened them
to an appropriate torque with a Phillips-head screwdriver. Now that we are sure that we don't need to move this inverter, we can place the screws
under the MultiPlus to hold it firmly in place. Now that I've wired the
system for shore power, let's move on to alternator charging. Now that shore power is installed, let's talk about alternator charging. And here's the bad news.
(record scratching) Unfortunately, we aren't going to cover alternator charging in
this video, and here's why. We want really fast alternator
charging capabilities and we plan on using the 100-amp Victron
Buck-Boost to accomplish this, but supply chain issues have made it so that those aren't available to us, but more importantly, to
all of you until December, and we weren't going to hold up this project until then because of that. Rest assured though, alternator charging will
absolutely happen soon and it will get its own dedicated video. We've even planned ahead, and that alternator charging source already has a spot dedicated
to it in the Lynx Distributor as well as a spot the wall. Now, let's move on to wiring the Cerbo GX. Now that we've talked
about alternator charging, it's time to wire our Cerbo GX. The Cerbo GX is responsible for everything to do
with system monitoring, which will tell us our
battery state of charge, charging wattages, discharging wattages, and a thousand other things that I can't fit into this
eight-second section summary. - [Steph] Here are the parts we're using for this part of the installation. The Victron Cerbo GX, the Victron Touch 70 touchscreen monitor, the Touch 70 Wall Mount, the EXPLORIST.life Cerbo
GX Monitoring Wiring Kit, which includes VE.Direct data cables, RJ-45 UTP data cables,
and mounting hardware. And we're also using a
third-party HDMI extension cable. - [Nate] The Cerbo GX has
five different terminals that we're using in this video, VE.Direct ports, VE.Bus ports, VE.Can ports, an HDMI
port, and a power input. Let's start wiring. The first connection would be
to send power to the Cerbo GX. We are connecting the power wires that come with the Cerbo GX to the empty far right studs
of the Lynx Distributor. I removed the nut, lock washer, and washer and placed the ring
terminal for the red wire on the positive bus bar and the black wire on
the negative bus bar, and then re-secured the
washers, lock washers, and nuts. For the rest of the connections, if you've ever wired
up a desktop computer, the Cerbo GX is very similar, just a lot of data cables
going from the Cerbo GX to these other blue boxes
that we've already installed. Here's the rundown of the connections, an RJ-45 UTP cable from a
VE.Bus port on the Cerbo GX to either of the VE.Bus ports on the MultiPlus inverter/charger, a VE.Direct cable from a
VE.Direct port on the Cerbo GX to the VE.Direct port on the MPPT 250/60, a VE.Direct cable from a
VE.Direct port on the Cerbo GX to the VE.Direct port on the MPPT 130, VE.Can terminators in
the first VE.Can port on the Lynx Shunt and in the second VE.Can
port of the Cerbo GX, an RJ-45 UTP cable to the second VE.Can
port on the Lynx Shunt to the first VE.Can port on the Cerbo GX. And the final connection
is the HDMI connection for the Touch 70 GX monitor we have mounted above the slider door, but let's talk about that
connection right now. (screen whooshing) The Victron Touch 70 GX has a wire pre-installed
onto the back of it that contains both an
HDMI cord and a USB cord,. The HDMI wire transmits touchscreen data and the visual signal and the USB cord sends
power to the monitor from a USB outlet. This cord is about five feet long and would normally plug into the HDMI and USB ports of the Cerbo GX, which is easy enough, right? Here's our problem. Our preferred mounting
location is about 15 feet away. After a talk with Victron, here's the not Victron approved, but should work in most
cases hack to make it work. Installing a USB extension and HDMI seems like the obvious solution, but the power sent via USB is not powerful enough to
overcome the voltage drop of a longer USB cable, so that won't work. But what will work is connecting a high quality HDMI extension cable from the Touch 70 to the Cerbo GX and then adding a dedicated USB outlet near where the Touch 70 GX
monitor will be installed so that the USB outlet can just plug in without an additional extension. Before we ran the walls, I
ran the HDMI extension cable, which I plugged into the Cerbo GX. I connected the other end
to the Touch 70 HDMI cable. For the USB outlet, I wired a USB outlet to our 12-volt fuse block
that's above the door and plugged the Touch 70 into that. I tucked all that up nice
and neat-ish behind the wall, which is not the most elegant solution, but it's good enough for who it's for, and only myself and the six
people still watching this video will ever know about it. Thanks for sticking around, by the way. While we are up here at the Touch 70, we can go ahead and mount it. We mounted the Touch 70
wall mount to the wall with the included screws, and then snapped the Touch
70 to the wall mount. Now, if you decide to do
the HDMI extension hack, I strongly recommend bench testing this before burying all the wires to verify that the HDMI
extension wire chosen does work, since this is not a
Victron-approved kind of thing and any issues with the Touch 70 will likely stem from
the use of the extension. With the Cerbo GX and
Touch 70 GX all wired up, we can mount the Cerbo
GX in place on the wall and do a little wire management. Now that I've wired the Cerbo GX, everything on the wall
is finally complete. Now we can move our battery
bank enclosure in place and secure it to the van,
which is coming up next. With everything on the wall
completely wired together, it was time to move the batteries
and enclosure into place. Now, the batteries only weigh a total of 180 pounds combined, so they were actually pretty
manageable to move around. The enclosure was held in
place with L-track bolts through the L-track that we installed back in episode number
27 of this build series. (rock music) Now with the enclosure in place, it's time to move on to wiring the battery
bank to the Lynx Shunt, and that's coming up next. Now that the enclosure
is secured to the van, it's time to wire our
Battle Born batteries to the rest of the system
through the Lynx Shunt. - [Steph] Here are the parts we are using for this part of the installation, the EXPLORIST.life 1/0
Lynx Distributor Wiring Kit for the Lynx Shunt, which includes wire,
wire lugs, heat-shrink, a terminal fuse and fuse holder, a master disconnect switch,
two bolt assemblies, a 300-amp ANL fuse, and mounting hardware. - [Nate] Now, for this,
I have made three wires, a negative wire with a 1/0
by 5/16-inch lug on both ends and two positive wires, each with a 1/0 by
5/16-inch lug on one end and a 1/0 by 3/8-inch
lug on the other end. All of this gets 3/4-inch heat-shrink. Now I'm going to start on
the Lynx Shunt side of things and bolt the 5/16-inch lugs of a positive and the negative wire to the terminals of the Lynx Shunt. Now, since this is the main
electrical point of the system, it's important to make sure
that the lugs are clean and that there's no heat-shrink between the lug and terminal. The black wire goes to the bottom negative bus bar of the Lynx Shunt and secured in place with a
washer, lock washer, and nut, and tightened to an appropriate torque. And the red wire goes to the top positive bus bar of the Lynx Shunt and secured in place with a
washer, lock washer, and nut, and tightened to an appropriate torque. The other end of the negative wire goes all the way back
to the negative terminal of our battery bank. I'll remove the terminal cover, secure the negative wire lug to the negative battery terminal, and then replace the terminal cover. The other end of the positive wire with the 3/8-inch lug goes to the switch. Now, it doesn't matter which stud of the switch you attach this to. It does say input and output
on the back of the switch, but that doesn't really matter, especially since the input and outputs of the switch could change depending on if the system
is charging or discharging. The other positive wire gets attached to the other side of the
switch with the 3/8-inch lug, and then tightened to spec. Now is a great time to verify that the master disconnect
switch is set to off. The other end of that positive wire goes to the terminal
fuse that we installed way back at the start of this video. Now, before we turn the system on, let's go ahead and secure
the switch in place with a machine screw and locknut. Now, this is a bit of an atypical way of mounting this switch, but I'm just kind of trying
it out to see if I like it, and it's super nice because it does keep
the terminals covered. Now that the Lynx Shunt is wired to our Battle Born battery bank, it's time to wire our solar isolator, and that's coming up next. Now that the Lynx Shunt is wired to our Battle Born battery bank through our master disconnect switch, it's time to wire our solar isolator so that we can disconnect the solar arrays as needed for system maintenance. - [Steph] Here are the parts we're using for this part of the installation. This section of the project uses the final few remaining pieces from the EXPLORIST.life
Solar Array Wiring Kit, which are the solar isolator, wire glands, and mounting hardware. - The solar isolator we are using has eight screw terminals inside of it, and each one is connected top to bottom when the solar isolator is turned to on. This means that this isolator can handle two separate solar arrays, disconnecting both the
positive and negative wires from each simultaneously. I removed the caps from the tops and bottoms of the isolator, and then replaced them
with the wire entry glands. Now, first I mounted the solar isolator by putting machine
screws through the front of the inside of the isolator
box and through the panel and secured it on the backside
with a washer and nyloc nut. Now, there are four pairs of solar wires sticking out of the wall here. Two pairs of them are going to each of the solar charge controllers that we've already wired up in this video, and the remaining two are
coming from the solar arrays, one from the roof solar array and one from the port
on the side of the van for an auxiliary ground deploy array. For the wires coming from
the roof solar array, we covered that in extreme depth back in episode number 25 of this build, so you'll want to check that out as we're now picking up exactly where that left off in that video, and our rooftop solar array wires have been disconnected prior
to working on these wires. For the ground deploy array, before we installed the walls, we installed this DC power
port into the side of the van. Installation here was similar
to our shore power port. We taped off and drilled a hole, wired the connector with
the red wire to pin one and the black wire to pin two, added a zip tie for strain relief, fed the wires through the hole, and secured the port in place with bolts, washers, lock
washers, and nyloc nuts. Now we'll show the ground deploy array and wiring in action later, but back to the isolator wiring for now. Now, I ran the wires coming
from the two solar arrays into one end of the isolator, and the wires going to
the charge controllers on the other end. For us, the left two terminals are for the ground deploy
array and the MPPT 250/60, and the right two terminals
are for the roof array and the MPPT 130. Now this is a bit hard
to see in this video since all of these wires are
the same size and colors, but just refer to the wiring
diagram for this system for additional clarification, if needed. I stripped the insulation
back on each of these wires and put them into their
appropriate terminals on top and bottom. Now, in this isolator, each pole is simply
connected top to bottom with the isolator turned on, so lighting the proper
wires up top to bottom is all that's necessary here. Next I can put the solar
isolator cover in place and make sure that the
isolator is turned off. At this point, I could
reconnect the MC4 connectors for the rooftop solar array. Now that everything in this
system is completely wired up, we can turn the system on
and make sure that it works. Now after spending a fair amount of time quadruple checking that
all of my positive wires are connected to positive terminals and negative wires are
connected to negative terminals, it's time for the most anxiety-inducing part of the entire install,
connecting battery power. And it works! Now is a great time to go around and flip some lights
and check some outlets and make sure that
everything works as expected. Now that everything works as expected, it's time to program the system, and that's coming up next. Now that the system is up and running, we need to program the system
so that our Victron equipment delivers the proper
voltages to our batteries based on Battle Born's
recommended parameters. To program the SmartSolar
charge controllers, we have to use the VictronConnect app and select the charge controller that we're wanting to program. We're starting with rooftop
solar array, which is the 130. Once we are in the
charge controller screen, I can then navigate to
the device settings menu and change the name of
the charge controller to something more memorable. From there, I can navigate to
the battery charging settings. Now, instead of going over
the settings line by line, I'm just going to put the
settings that I'm using in the video description. And lastly, I'll use
this charge controller to set up the VE.Smart Network, and then it's time to move over to the other charge controllers. So back out to the main
VictronConnect screen. (screen whooshing) Select the next charge controller, which in our case is the 250/60, change the name to
something more memorable, change the battery charging settings, and then join the VE Network that we set up with the
first charge controller. (screen whooshing) Now, the MultiPlus comes from Battle Born with the settings already
correct for their batteries, but in the event that you
need to access the settings, you'll need to plug in RJ-45 cable into the VE.Bus port of the MultiPlus, plug the other end into a
Victron MK3 USB adapter, plug in a USB cord, USB adapter, and then into your phone or laptop. From there, we can access the MultiPlus similar to the MPPTs. For the settings, Victron only
wants trained professionals accessing this menu, so if you aren't a trained professional, just skip forward 20 seconds or so so you can't see the password
that I'm putting in right now. Now, same story as before, I'll leave Battle Born's
recommended settings in the video description below. (screen whooshing) Lastly is the Lynx Shunt, and this one we actually
program over at the Touch 70 GX. Navigate to the Lynx Shunt settings page, and then put in the
proper charging settings. Now, the Cerbo GX and the Touch 70 GX are incredibly, incredibly detailed, and it's sort of like asking,
how do you use a computer? There's a lot more to the system, but we're not going to talk
about it in this video. The user manuals are incredibly detailed and have a ton of
information, so start there, but we'll be covering
more of these systems in future videos. Now that the system has been programmed, let's test the system. Now, you've already seen
the puck lights turn on, but let's dive into system
testing just a bit more. I pulled the van out into the sun to see how our solar panels are charging, and it's really overcast
today, unfortunately, so we aren't seeing great performance, but we are still seeing
about 106 watts coming in from our 580-watt solar array, which is expected for the
weather conditions that we have. Power is coming from the
sun to our solar panels and then to our MPPT 130 charge controller at about 36 volts. The charge controller is converting those 36 volts down to 26.2 volts to charge our 24-volt battery
bank at a rate of 3.9 amps. We can also see this power
coming into our system on our Touch 70 display. Now let's set up our
ground deploy solar array. I have this wire I've made with the other end of
the two-pin DC connector I showed earlier in this video, and that's on one end, and on the other end is MC4 connectors. It's 30-foot long and is simply red and
black 10 gauge solar wire inside a wire loom with
heat-shrink on the ends of the loom to make it look a little nicer
and keep the wires protected. I've set four 100-watt
solar panels out in the sun and connected them all in series, which means connecting the
positive and negative wires of neighboring panels together and then connecting the ends to our ground deploy solar wire. Now I'll turn my solar isolator off, and the other end of that wire goes into the auxiliary solar port we've installed on the side of the van. With the panels connected, we can then turn them right side up and turn the solar isolator to on and they should start to charge. Power's coming from the sun to our ground deploy solar panels to our MPPT 250/60 charge
controller at about 80 volts. The charge controller is converting that 80-ish volts down to 26 volts to charge our 24-volt battery bank at a rate of unfortunately only one amp on this nice and cloudy day. We can also see this power
coming into the system on our Touch 70 display. While we're outside charging things, let's go ahead and plug into shore power. I'm gonna use my 30-amp to 15-amp adapter to plug my 30-amp shore power cord into a standard 15-amp household outlet, since I don't have a full
30-amp shore power connection here at our shop just yet. And the other end goes into
our 30-amp shore power inlet on the side of the van. Now with the MultiPlus set to on, we can see that we are indeed
charging from shore power. 120-volt shore power
is coming into the van and going through the Victron
MultiPlus inverter/charger, which is converting that 120-volt AC power to 26 volts DC to charge
our 24-volt battery bank. Now let's go ahead and
turn the MultiPlus off and disconnect from shore power for now. Now with the MultiPlus set to on and all of our 120-volt
breakers in the on position, we can plug something into
one of our 120-volt outlets. Now, since we're disconnected
from shore power, our Touch 70 is showing our battery banks sending 24-volt power out
to our inverter/charger, and the inverter function is converting that 24-volt DC power to 120-volt AC power and sending it through the breaker box to our 120-volt outlets. Next, let's test PowerAssist. PowerAssist adds power
from the battery bank to an underperforming
shore power connection. I've set our shore power
input current limit to only pull 7 1/2 amps from shore power, since I've got other
things on that circuit we're plugged into. This tells our MultiPlus to pull no more than 7 1/2 amps
to power our devices and charge our battery
bank from shore power. Now I'm going to plug in this space heater and turn it on high. I can see that the space heater is pulling a little over
1200 watts from the system. 7.5 amps, or 834 watts of that, is coming from shore power, and the remaining of that is actually coming from our batteries. PowerAssist is why we use 10
gauge wire for shore power and six gauge wire for the MultiPlus to breaker box connection. Shore power can provide 30 amps from a 30-amp shore power pedestal, and then PowerAssist can add the rated wattage of the inverter to that, which is another 20-ish amps at 120 volts. Now I'll turn off the heaters and disconnect from shore power. (screen whooshing) Next up is our small 12-volt loads. Now, we already saw our 12-volt loads power our puck lights in the ceiling, so we know that they're working, but now we can check the Touch 70 to see how much power they're drawing when I turn the switch off and on. 24-volt power is coming
from our battery bank and the Orion 24-volt to 12-volt converter is converting that 24-volt
power down to 12 volts and sending it to both of
our 12-volt fuse blocks to power these things like our
lights and our Maxx Air fan. (screen whooshing) Next let's check our 24-volt
DC Nomadic air conditioner. Our 24-volt battery bank
is sending 24-volt DC power directly to the air conditioner through the Lynx Distributor, and it's working perfectly. We can now check that on our Touch 70 to see that when we turn
the air conditioner on, the power usage does indeed jump up to show the air conditioner being powered. Now, before we wrap this video up, I want to give a special
thanks to Battle Born Batteries for not only sponsoring this video, but this entire build series. From floors to walls to
this electrical system, none of these videos we are making for all of you here on EXPLORIST.life would've been possible without
their continued support. But also I wanna thank you for sticking around for this whole video and for letting us be a
part of your projects. We hope you learned something new today, and we will see you in the next video. (energetic rock music)
♪ Yeah, I think I like it ♪ (music fades)
