DIY Split Phase Battery Backup for Home - Step by Step

if you watched my previous video on installing  this Victron multi-plus 2 with two SOK server   rack batteries I was able to run my refrigerator  for four days it is a great starting level battery   backup system but now I want to expand I want  to be able to run 120 and 240 volt loads and   because I started with this multi-plus 2 and  the server rack batteries it's very easy to   expand by just adding additional modules so let's  clear this out and get rolling with the upgrade   welcome back to projects with everyday Dave my  first goal with this expansion is to be able to   run my entire emergency panel with both 120  volt and 240 volt loads such as my well pump   second is to be able to charge my batteries from  Mains power or generator power and finally to   have significant increase in battery capacity  from 10.2 kilowatt hours to 25.6 kilowatt hours   when I built my house I installed this transfer  switch and subpanel for all my emergency circuits   so I can simply insert my battery backup system  between the transfer switch and the sub panel that   will allow me to feed the inverters with both  Mains power and generator power and I can have   the inverters automatically turn the generator on  and off in the event of a sustained power outage   the inverters will guarantee the emergency  circuits will never lose power they can pass   power through from the mains or the generator  and if those aren't available they can take   power from the batteries to supply the sub-panel  that will allow me to have a lot of options for   powering my emergency circuits and I don't have  to worry about losing power if I'm not in town   my refrigerator my freezer my security system all  of those systems will always be running if you're   trying to build a similar system for completely  off-grid the differences would be you could   Supply the inverter directly with your generator  power and you wouldn't need a transfer switch to   switch between Mains and Generator input so you  could just eliminate this portion of the install even though these units are very heavy because  of the simple hanging style brackets one person   can set them fairly easily they hang securely  on the brackets and the bottom is secured with   just a couple more screws to connect the  battery and inverters together I decided   to go with the Victron Lynx distributor  and at first I thought oh it's kind of   an expensive way to connect everything  up but when you consider how much it   simplifies all of the things that need to go  together it starts to make a lot more sense   within the distributor there are two main bus  bars one for positive and one for negative   and there's a space for fuses so I can put a mega  fuse in for each one of the inverter conductors   that I'm installing these blocks open up allow  you to feed the negative cables in underneath   and then these covers drop down   and then the positive cables in from above  are a very neat distribution of cables and   later if I want to add solar I can connect the  solar input to this as well if you use the entire   link system then it will monitor the fuses and you  can know if a fuse goes out or something like that   but in our case we're just going to use it as  a distribution block I need all the cables for   the inverters to be the same length and I made  the first couple so that I could position the   distributor in the right spot that way I can get  them laying out just about right I can mount this   to the wall and then I'll put the other ones in  and they should line up without a problem be sure   to install the battery cables in the right order  cable then flat washer then lock washer and nut   the torque values are slightly different for each  connection for the Victron inverter end the torque   is 12 newton meters and the torque value for the  lynx distributor bolts is 14 newton meters for the   positive cable place the fuse in first then Bolt  the cable on top of it Victron recommends placing   fuses in the blank slots to maintain green  fuse okay lights in all four positions now   that the inverters are connected with equal  length conductors I can replace the cover all right I've laid out all the parts now I  can just put it together we'll start with the   vertical rails and the crossbars and then we'll  add in the guides for the batteries you can tell   the bottom because it has a hole for mounting  to the floor the crossbars face smooth side up   all the screws should be temp set at this  point to allow alignment of the rack once   it's fully assembled now that we have the two  ladders built we can put the guide brackets   in the battery support rails sit on top of the  crossbars with the angle facing up to support   the bottom of the battery I attached one to the  top and bottom of One ladder assembly to use a   stabilizer then connected them to the other  ladder assembly from there it's very easy to   just set in all the battery support brackets and  temp set all the screws okay that's pretty quick   and easy all the screws are still loose so now I  can make sure that the whole thing is perfectly   Square then I'll tighten them all up and we can  load it up I simply used a square to ensure the   rack was Plum and square then tightened all  the Fasteners with a rack fully assembled you   should put it in the final resting location and  lag bolt it to the floor that way if there's an   earthquake it won't move around the building  which could be very dangerous I on the other   hand I'm going to put some wheels on the bottom  because I need to be able to move it around for   all the testing I'm doing and I'll secure it  to the wall directly instead of to the floor   all right some high quality ball bearing casters  they're double locking that locks the caster and   the rotation in one click and they're supposed to  be able to handle over 2 000 pounds for the set so   they should be plenty strong for this application  and the bolt happens to be almost exactly the same   size of this hole so I can literally thread it  in and then I'll bolt it down from the other side   all right one problem I see with this is this  bottom bracket is just bent over it's not welded   to this channel so there's a couple Solutions  here one I could go ahead and weld this shut that   will prevent this from twisting or I can put an L  bracket on the inside and bolt to the face of this   and I think I'm going to do that because  I don't I don't like the fact I mean I   can move that by hand so with 500 pounds of  batteries on that it's going to want to twist   and I need it to be perfectly stiff so I'm going  to back that out put a stiffener bracket in there   in the back of my mind I know this isn't enough  and future Dave is about to pay the price   there now it is super stiff all right the spiny  version is ready and man that rolls nice I like   it yeah but don't do that be sure and Bowl yours  to the floor now I have two batteries from my   previous install and they already have the ears  connected to them right and then to prep the rack   we just put the nuts that come with the battery  squeeze them together and pop them into the holes   and of course Tyler came up with an easier method  to put them in using a screwdriver he simply hooks   one side and then uses the screwdriver  to squeeze it together set the back end there we go   all right I'll screw that in  and then we'll put in the next the first two batteries I already had the  ears on them so we slid them all the way in   a convenient way to put the ears on if you don't  already have them on is to put it most of the way   in then they're at a nice height I'll go ahead  and screw those on and then we can slide it in alright all the batteries are in let's see  if it rolls where are you going to   take it nowhere I'm just gonna see if it moves oh look at that I can feel the floor moving  yeah well it's over 500 pounds   of batteries that I can  just... the back wheel oh crap! and the front wheel I guess it doesn't  work and that one is also now bending   okay turn the video off you can probably see on my  face I wish past Dave had listened to the voice in   the back of his head after having a failure like  that I'm a bit embarrassed to admit to being a   mechanical engineer maybe you couldn't tell in the  video but the whole rack of batteries was starting   to lean to one side because one of the casters was  yielding the reinforced foot and allowing it to   bend slightly up it doesn't take much deflection  to cause a problem I failed to recognize the   rack is made of a mild steel probably around 270  megapascals and the bearing stress right at the   mount surface is too great locally yielding the  tap there is a big warning in the manual to mount   directly to the floor and not apply Wheels the  material is plenty strong when used as intended   because it has the direct support of the concrete  underneath current connected told me they have had   people apply casters to their battery racks  and the whole 500 pound stack fell over and   damaged the batteries that's enough weight to  seriously injure or kill someone plus if you're   in an earthquake zone 500 pounds of batteries  wandering around the room could be a real disaster   so please follow the instructions and bolt it to  the floor to recover the situation my son Tyler   helped me unstack all the batteries and I added  a piece of quarter inch angle iron all the way   across from one foot to the other and bolted  it to the front of the leg to resist bending   in both directions then I added an additional  quarter inch bearing plate the size of the entire   bottom of the foot to improve the distributed  load from the caster and resist local yielding   at the mount point after some great exercise  stacking unstacking and restacking 500 pounds   of batteries I cautiously confirmed the assembled  strength all right it's thumping me over this time tilting the casters out at a  45 degree or 90 degree angle   to the assembly really helps improve the stability before I connect all the batteries together I'm  going to set the dip switches for which battery   is Master I'm going to use the top batteries  master and that's important because the data   from all the other batteries is going to be  sent to one location and if they have the   same registration then the data will overlap  and you won't get the proper communication so   I'll set the top battery as battery number one  the master battery which is the one the inverter   will connect to and all of the other batteries  will send their information to there is a dip   switch chart that shows you which dip switches to  set for each battery in the sequence from the dip   switch table we can see that Master is on off off  off so we'll just turn dip switch one on and leave   the others off for battery number two it's off  on off off so I'll just switch number two to on   and so on for the rest of the pack I can just use  a standard ethernet cable use a short version to   connect each battery cascading through the  rs-485 ports and I can just secure them off   to the side to keep it nice and neat current  connected makes these convenient pre-made 2i   cables that are exactly the right size to go from  one battery to the next all of the batteries are   off the breakers are in the off position and the  BMS is off because the master battery is going to   be used for communication to other devices I'm  going to start with the first negative cable on   the innermost post to give me the most access  to the top battery port it's also a good idea   to add boots to the end of the cables so that  when we have everything assembled there won't   be any exposed conductible surfaces that could be  contacted you want the cable to be slightly longer   than the pitch between the two batteries so that  there's a little bit of flex in it that way when   things heat and cool it won't put too much tension  on it and cause the joint to come loose I set my   torque wrench to 15 foot-pounds or about 20 newton  meters which is pretty tight then I can slide the   boots up and that nicely covers our connections  so I'll go ahead and connect the rest of those   and we can move to the next step I keep forgetting  to take my ring off everyone in the comments keeps   reminding me to take my ring off when I'm working  on electrical work and I should also be wearing   safety glasses in case there was some kind of Arc  I forgot to turn something off so Safety First all right there we are everything's hooked up  now we're ready to turn it on if you're using   the new budget version it does not have  pre-charge resistor circuit built in and   current sharing capacity so you would want the  batteries to all be the same voltage but in this   case this premium version has the ability  to balance the current levels between the   batteries so you don't have to worry about them  being exactly the same voltage when you connect   them up so with the BMS off on every battery and  they come shipped that way but if it's not off   you simply press and hold the rst button until the  lights Flash and then you let go and it will shut   off the BMS so you want everything in the off  condition with all the breakers off then we can   turn the breakers on and we will start up one  BMS and it will automatically turn on the rest okay with all the breakers on and all the BMS  Systems off I can press and hold the master one   until it Powers up and boom boom boom boom  boom you can see they all fire right up so the   batteries aren't in exactly the same voltage this  one's at 53.08 and it is discharging at 1.4 amps   and this one is at 53.02 and it is charging at  0.95 amps So eventually it'll all balance out   but with the individual monitoring like  that you can see exactly what's going on   all right the system's working I can connect  it up to the computer and check it out make   sure everything's in good shape and then it'll  be ready to go to connect up to our inverter   now with the SLK adapter cable  I can plug into the rs-232 port   and the USB port on the laptop you can go  to the sok battery manual page on current   connected website scroll all the way down to  the bottom and download the sok monitoring tools   software to install and load the software pick  the com which for me is com4 open the connection and start monitoring and now I can see pack one  which is the first battery the master battery if   I set the pack 182 FF and open and communicate we  see that the pack quantity jumps up to five so it   sees all of the batteries then you should be able  to go to these other batteries and have a display   but I can't get it to do that for some reason  however if I close the connection and switch to   battery two and then open it back up it does load  the data so in this way I can look at the data for   each one of the batteries I can see the voltage  and the performance of every cell and the battery   pack I could see the voltage of the entire pack  the current that's flowing in or out of it it's   state of charge you can see battery pack 5 is  still putting out a little bit of current as   it tries to finally balance the entire stack if  there's any kind of problem it's very easy to   diagnose where it's coming from with this type of  monitoring the software to check it is free but   you do have to buy the cable to connect to it  all right let's check the voltage all right we   have 53 volts the pack is set up and ready to go  now I can shut it back down and we'll be prepared   to connect the inverter the system off we'll turn  off all the breakers and then hold down the rst   button and that will shut off the BMS and it will  be back in a completely shut down state for hookup press and hold the button until the lights blink  Let It Go and it shuts off now they don't shut   them all off together so I have to shut off each  one manually before I connect power up to the   distributor I'm going to insert this smart shunt  this is a Victron BMV 712 smart battery monitor   it's the one with the display I just mounted  the display in a little piece of polycarbonate   for easy reference and I've just created a short  piece of one knot cable to connect to the negative   battery terminal and that way I can mount my shunt  conveniently on the wall next to it to connect it   up I'll just use some one inch long 5 16 inch  stainless steel bolts and nuts with washers and   lock washers to tighten it up I'll just start  by temp setting both ends to get the position there's a couple different ways to hook up the  battery pack whichever way you choose you need   to make sure that you're applying a load in  a balanced way so that the batteries charge   evenly the most convenient way to do that is to  take the positive off of one corner of your pack   and the negative off the other corner I have  a diagram here that'll show you the different   options I think this is the simplest method for  the non-bus bar style in our case I have all of   the batteries turned off this has a resistor  pre-charge circuit built into it which we can   utilize there's no power on the inverters no power  on the batteries I've used a meter to make sure   there's nothing there so I can connect up the  cables without worrying about having any arcing and the other end of the negative  terminal will connect to the shunt   now we'll connect the positive  terminal to the bottom of the bank   and the other end of the positive  terminal to the lynx distributor now to just kind of keep these up out of the  way I'll just zip tie them together there we go   now while that's connected I can just connect the  display for the shunt actually I think I need to   put the battery monitor in there darn it I mounted  my smart shunt display in a little piece of   polycarbonate up underneath the lynx distributor  just for convenience there's a lot of extra cord   that connects the communication signal I just  wrapped it up underneath and the other end we can   just swing under here and plug it into the shunt  then the battery sensing cable I'm going to put   here which is the input to the lynx distributor  you probably want it as close to the battery as   possible but this is equivalently placed with  the negative which goes through the shunt   probably could have done with a little bit longer  bolt here for convenience but what I'm going to do   is Slide the sensor up through the boot and then  add another nut on top of the existing one [Music]   for the sensor there we go a little bit of stretch  for the boot but now that's nicely contained   then the other end of the sensor goes into the  B1 port on the shunt which we can just push in   because it has a nice little ferrule on it and  then we can bundle this up and zip tie it on   here just to get everything nice and clean there  we go now we have power from the batteries power   from the lynx distributor through the fuses to  our inverters we have a battery monitor connected   everything's set up and now we can power on the  inverters so we can program them for split phase now we're ready to turn power on to  the inverter so we can program them   start we want all the circuit breakers to  be off and the BMS to be off if it's not   off you can tell by pushing a button and  the screen will come on then push and hold   the rst button until it blinks and turns  off it's critical that everything is off   in order to use the built-in pre-charge  circuit that these batteries come with   if your batteries don't have a pre-charged  circuit you can always use a pre-charge resistor   turn the batteries on with the cable disconnected  then put the pre-charge resistor between them for   about 10 seconds until it charges then quickly  connect the battery cable that will pre-charge   the capacitors in the inverter for you but the  system has it built in so this is how you use it   the switch on both inverters is off everything  is off I'm going to turn on the breakers then I'll press and hold the  rst button on the top inverter   you see a blink and come on and  every other battery turns on   and now we've charged and I can see from my clamp  meter set to inrush that we had about 30 amps of   inrush current in that process which is no problem  I can check the voltage on my inverter is 53 volts 53 volts and I can see from my Victor on shunt  which will also measure the voltage for me is   53.1 volts so we have power to everything and we  can move on to programming the first step is to   connect both of the units to each other through  the ve bus if you purchase your inverters through   current connected and told them you were setting  them up in a split phase configuration they will   pre-program them for you you can skip this  step entirely however if you need to program   them yourselves you'll need to get the Victron  interface MK3 USB they make a USB a and a USBC   version of this I have the usb-a version here  so we'll connect both inverters to each other   and then I'll connect another ethernet cable to  the ve bus and the programming dongle and from   there I can just plug that into my computer  now I can turn both units on to position one and you can see the lights are blinking back and  forth between the inverters that tells you they   are not configured to talk to each other and so  we need to do some programming if we just get   an inverter on then that means that they are  configured to talk together in some mode not   necessarily the one you want if I did not have the  communication table connected then I would have   an inverter on on both of them because they would  be running independently so we know communication   is working and it's ready for programming  you can get the free configuration software   by going to victronenergy.com and clicking on the  downloads button on the right hand side the first   item is Victron connect select the version you  need for your computer mine is Windows so I'm   downloading the Windows File download the file  then double-click the downloaded file to install   the software when you open the software it will  automatically search for connected devices if it   doesn't just hit the refresh button it found the  multi-plus and when I click on that I should see   the setup for multiple inverters but I don't  okay that didn't work it didn't identify the   two units as being on a system and I discovered  the problem was I need to turn both units on so   that it says inverter on with the green light  and then connect them with the ethernet cable   now the lights start blinking between inverter  and absorption now I know it's ready and now the   software picks up the multi-unit configuration  now the multi-plus 2 comes up I can click on   that and it immediately identifies that we are on  a bus system so I'll click next get your password   from your point of sale prepare your system by  connecting all the units with RJ45 Cat5 cables   which we've done we've turned all the units on  now we can go to next two units were found and we   want to set them up for a split phase 180 degree  units have to have the same firmware because they   haven't been updated so we want to go ahead and  update them okay took a couple minutes to update   them both now they're both updated we can continue  now it's asking us to identify and assign line one   and line two so one unit is blinking flashing  both all the lights back and forth and I want   to assign that to line two we'll make that the red  wire when we do the wiring just makes sense to me   logically now the inverters are resetting and the  configuration is complete now I can measure the   output to make sure that it's configured properly  I get 119.6 from neutral to line one 119.5 from   neutral to line two and then from line one to line  two I have 239.0 so great it's working properly   now I need to confirm the rest of the settings for  these inverters for managing the current into the   batteries and from the mains or generator source  as well as all the charging parameters for the   batteries for that we need another free app from  the Victron website the ve configuration tools app   all right so we'll go back to the downloads page  and we'll scroll down a little bit till we get to   the ve configuration tools double click on that  and install that or save that file and install   call it now the important thing is you want to  have the ve configure tools the quick configure   tool and the system configurator selected so that  you'll have those available to use when we're   doing multiple units you need a few more tools to  do this I'm not entirely sure why it can't all be   in one tool nonetheless this is how it works  now if you just have it open it'll open the ve   configure tool which won't connect to our units  because it's set up for multiple configuration   and it'll say the device is not configured for  a loan operation that's how you know we need to   go back and open the other tool which is the the  e-bus system configurator so we'll click the quick   start and auto detect make sure all the units are  on and they are they're on and powered up and it   detects our split phase configuration between  line one and line two and unit 1 and unit two   and then you can click on one of the units it  brings it up right click on that and click on   VE configure multi now from that it will bring up  the configuration tool and allow you to configure   them independently it takes a few seconds to  read all the information off the inverter all   right now if you got these from current connected  they will have pre-programmed all of this for you   but I'm just going to go through each one of  these tabs so you know what the settings should   be I'm not going to go through every one of the  settings but I'll hit on a few of the important   ones one of those being the AC input current limit  which is currently set to 50 amps and that's what   I'm configuring my system for I'll have a 50 amp  breaker from the mains and a 50 amp breaker from   the generator now if you have a Gerbo GX that  will allow you to modify this setting without   going into the software so if you're putting this  in a motorhome or you're switching from Mains to a   generator and your generator can't handle 50 amps  you want to be able to change this you don't want   to have to go into the settings and update it you  can do that directly from the screen if you keep   this override by remote button clicked and then  for grid the settings that come with it should   be just fine on inverter these are the settings  that we're going to use to manage the high and low   cutoff points for taking power from the battery  and you'll notice this ground relay one that is   clicked off now this setting is very important you  can only have one neutral to ground bonding point   in your system so when I have this configured in  a split phase situation like this one of these   will want to be selected and the other one not in  my case I'm going to have the L1 inverter be the   ground relay that means when we are in UPS mode  that relay will close giving us our ground neutral   bond for our sub panel you need to have a ground  neutral bond in only one location in your system   and when the mains are disconnected and the unit  is running off grid this creates that one bond for   you so for this one we'll leave that selected  and in a second I'll show you we'll deselect   it for the other unit for the charger these are  the absorption float voltage and charge current   settings that current connected recommends for  the sok battery and I'll include all of these   settings that I'm putting in here in the support  documentation that you can find in the description   of the video or on my website the virtual switch  and assistance tab we aren't going to make any   changes in all those settings are good to go if  you had to make any changes then we would just   click the send settings and we would say send  them to all devices and all settings for this   first configuration we'll hit OK it'll send that  information to both inverters and then they will   restart and all the settings will be set okay  so now the settings have been set and I'm going   to close this panel and go back to the system  configure and I'm going to go to the L2 unit   we're going to open that one up to the configure  multi tool and since we made all of the settings   sent to all of the devices this should match what  we loaded on the other one exactly but we have to   make one change to it that's independent and  that is unselecting the ground relay now the   only change that we want to have different between  these units is the ground relay which is under the   inverter tab you can see it's selected here we  will deselect it for this unit then I will send   settings but I will only send the modified sending  and only to this device say okay all right so   I heard a click because that relay opened so I  know that that worked but I didn't hear it in the   other one now our units are configured properly  and we can move on to the next step of connecting   the AC all right now the units are configured  properly I've checked the voltages we have our 120   and 240 the power for the battery charging and all  of its settings are properly set up now I can shut   this back off make all my AC connections and then  we can charge our batteries and do some testing all right I switched off the breaker so now all  of this is completely powered down the batteries   are powered down none of this has power one of  the things I really like about this Fluke meter   is a little magnetic hanger for it and I can just  stick it to the panel and hang it there for myself   I love that now just to make sure all the  power is disconnected I can double check that we have no voltage across any of our  inductors all right so let's get this thing redone   all right we're getting close I have  to make a few changes before we hook   up all the AC connections the way I'm going  to do this is I'm going to use some half inch   watertight flexible conduit and I have to use half  inch because the three-quarter inch connectors are   too big to fit on this distribution panel I'll  be using six gauge THHN conductors to make the   connections from the inverters to my panels and by  code I cannot put three six gauge conductors in a   half inch conduit however because I'm using 50 amp  Breakers I can de-rate the ground conductor to 10   gauge so I'll be using two six gauge conductors  for neutral and line one and neutral in line two   and one 10 gauge conductor for the ground  wire those three I can fit through the half   inch cable and that will fit on the unit in order  to lay this out I want the same length conductors   going from each one of these units to the panel  because they're sitting side by side this one's   a little further away so it would seem natural  just to make those a little bit longer but the   inverters rely on the amount of current that's  being drawn and that is measured based on the   resistance and if the wires are longer for one  than the other the resistance will be different   and therefore the one of the inverters will be  supplying more load than the other to minimize   the risk of that condition I'm going to take my  conduit for the furthest away unit approximate the   length that that has to be and then I'll make  the conduit for the other one the same length   and it will just have a little bit of extra  length going on here now some other changes   I have to make when I put in this transfer  switch past Dave was expecting future Dave   to apply some significant loading here at some  point and so he put in a 100 amp Supply to this   from the main panel however I don't need 100  amps the things that are in this now don't   come anywhere near that kind of a load the 50 amps  that this system is providing will be plenty for   that so I'm going to have to de-rate this I'll  pull the 100 amp breaker out of the main panel   replace this cable with six gauge and I'll replace  this 100 amp breaker with a 50 amp breaker so I'll   have 50 on each side 50 for the mains and 50 for  the generator input I also need a little bit more   space than what I have so I'm going to disconnect  this panel and move it down just a little bit then   I'll remove the connection between the transfer  Swish and the sub panel and we'll replace that   with our entire backup system all right let's  get to it I can pop out my 100 amp breaker   put in the new 50 amp breaker to make  sure that we keep the interlock connected   right there we go 50 50. now I can pop my 50  amp breaker in then I just ran some 6-3 to   connect the 50 amp breaker from the main panel  to the 50 amp breaker in the transfer switch   the liquid tight connectors for these conduit  are a little bit smaller than the tube itself   so it's pretty hard to feed the wires through it  I find the easiest thing is to put the connector   on the inverter and I can snug it up later but it  just helps me lay things out the other thing is   the wire holder interferes with the end of the  coupler so the UL listed version has a deeper   chamber for the wiring which gives you a lot more  space to work in it so even if you don't need the   UL listed one you might want to spend a little  extra for that so that you can actually have a   little more working space here I'll make  sure that my conduits are the same length   just lay them out on top of each other and then  I can chop them off get everything roughed out well that kind of looks like the Borg I  I don't know if I can be proud of it but   that's what I'm going to go with now  that I have my conduits basically laid   out I can go ahead and pull my THHN 6 and  10 gauge wire through it and wire it up   all right these are stiff wires and pretty short  runs so I think I can just push them through let's   give that a try for this inverter on the end we're  going to have a red a white and a green they're 10   gauge bonding ground wire white neutral and then  red for line two in on the second inverter so I'll   just tape those together even though there's not  a lot of space in here I'm going to pull eight   inches of extra conductor out of this space so I  can bring it out and bend it and put it back in   that will give us room to maneuver if we need to  change or cut wires later you don't want to run   them straight up into the blocks that's going to  cause you problems so get about eight inches there   and then I need a couple inches to go up through  that guy you can see how much harder it is to get   the conductors through these fittings that's why  it's easier to run it through the conduit first   and then shove everything through the fitting all  right just a little bit make sure I got my eight   inches here a little bit more there we go all  right and then feeding it in on the other side   I need enough to come in and up to there the  ground for both units will connect directly to   the ground bus now the red wire line two we're  going to connect to line two for the inputs and   that's this lower lug here on the transfer switch  the neutral for both inverters will land on the   isolated neutral bus okay so that's line two the  six gauge wires are pretty heavy duty and they'll   slide into these no problem the 10 gauge one you  might want to add a ferrule but if you do you need   to make sure you have ferals that are long enough  this feral crimping set I picked up from Amazon   has multiple links for each wire gauge the longest  one is 18 millimeters which is what's required for   this connector there we go I have to mark the wire  at three quarters of an inch or 18 millimeters and   that's how much insulation we have to strip off  and then a full inch will get pushed into the   block to install these we'll need a very fine  tipped screwdriver that will go up into the top   portion of the slot and I will start with the one  on the left what we'll do is I'll put a 90 degree   Bend just about an inch in from the end then I'll  come down somewhere in the middle and bend it back   on itself I'll put the screwdriver in the hole  which releases the mechanism then I can slide   this guy up and see the conductor went all the  way in now I can pull that out and it is tight so we'll give it a 90 degree bend  on the end Flex it about halfway in   put the screwdriver in to release the  spring Slide the ferrule all the way in   that has to be one of the long ferrules by the  way pull the screwdriver out nice and tight and   then for the last one we'll put a 90 degree  Bend come halfway down bend it back on itself release the spring and then  it will easily slide up in   make sure it's all the way  in pull it out [Applause]   okay give them a good tug they do not come out  we have some material to work with if something   changes later there's no direct tension on  these if someone comes and moves on this   and these get pulled on there's length in  there that will absorb that activity and   it won't risk pulling on these so good and  tight all right now I'll connect the line in   for inverter one which will be black white and  green I'll feed that through we'll wire it up   first I'll make the connection to the transfer  switch probably sensing a theme Here the ground   connects to the ground bus neutral will  connect to the neutral bus bar all right   then line one will connect to the line one side  of the output of the transfer switch one tug on   everything make sure everything is good and tight  so now the transfer switch is completely wired I   changed out the breakers to be both 50 amp I have  power coming in from the mains to this breaker   which has a line one and a line two neutral goes  to neutral bus and then I have power coming in   from the generator which comes into this breaker  line one and line two now line one and line two   both connect to these looks line one goes to this  lug of both Breakers and both Breakers line two   goes to this lug so the output is line two goes  to inverter two and line one goes to inverter   one right now both Breakers are off which is a  possible position but if I switch it this way   of course the the main breaker is  off so there's no power here but   assuming there were then we would have power  coming from the mains and then if I push it   this way it turns the mains off and turns the  generator on back and forth which is between Mains   and Generator for our inverter input so I can  close that panel up and finish up the inverters   acn4 inverter one is the same as inverter two but  we have a black conductor for the line one okay   there we go that's input for inverter one all  right now all we need to do is connect the   output for the two to our sub panel all right  this one I ended up cutting just a little bit   shorter so I'm going to add a little bit of  length by looping this around Inside the Box   and then bring it up to the input breaker okay  both neutrals will connect to the neutral bus   so let's go ahead and connect that guy up here  I have a big lug I can put it under and then we   have a back feed breaker this will be a 50 amp  breaker that is feeding the panel line one will   come from inverter one then finish up inverter one  strip three quarters and then Mark the insulation   at one inch so I know I've got it pushed in Far  Enough all right final hook up here the line AC   one out for inverter two which will be a white  green red just like the end okay we have line   one is the black inductor from inverter one to the  top of the 50 amp breaker and line two will be the   red conductor to the bottom of the 50 amp breaker  right everything is wired up now inverter two we   have use the red conductor to just make sure that  we can easily identify it as line two we have the   in and the out for inverter one we use black for  line one line one in and line one out the neutrals   and the grounds I'll go to Common bus bars  and our back feed breaker our 50 amp back feed   breaker takes the line one and line two from each  inverter before I put all the covers back on we'll   turn it on and make sure everything's working  properly and I can take some current measurements   across our conductors so we can see what the  imbalances are as different loads are turned on   okay now that all the AC is connected with the  batteries turned off and the unit's turned off   I'm going to turn the power on to the inverters  and we'll start to work our way back and make sure   that everything's working properly so first  I'll give power to the transfer switch okay okay got 247 volts there so now I can turn on the  transfer switch and I will turn the inverters on   to position one right now it's showing low  battery and once it detects the mains and   the mains are stable then it should switch over  to Mains on foreign and there it goes means on   and bulk so now I'm delivering power and I  should see 240 volts at our input breaker   so I got 248 volts all right so I should be able  to flip this breaker and we'll see the lights in   here come on and my well and everything  else should get power boom lights are on ha feels good when it comes together all right  so I have Mains power running to the inverters   and they are supplying the loads to the house  the well the lights all the emergency circuits   are powered we're getting 250 volts at 60 hertz  now I can measure in DC mode and I should see 50   volts across the battery terminals oh because  I have it backwards didn't like that now one   of the cool tricks about these Victron inverters  is they are providing power to the battery port   even though the batteries are off and what that  does is it pre-charges the capacitors so I don't   have to worry about the pre-charge circuit when  I turn on my batteries now I'm going to go ahead   and use that just for good measure but because  they're pre-charged I don't have that problem   Victron battery monitor is showing 57.4 volts and  as soon as I turn the batteries on it's going to   start charging them so I'll turn on the unit  and because it already has power I don't even   have to hit the reset you can hear the inverters  buzzing because we're putting out 66 amps here   30 some amps per inverter and I can measure  that about 35 amps on this inverter and about 32 amps on this inverter   some slight imbalance there and the result is 67  amps going into the batteries so Power is coming   in no problem the inverters are charging up the  batteries I can track the charge the next thing   to do in order to calibrate the Victron shunt is  to fill the batteries all the way to 100 percent   and we also need to modify a few settings  so that it'll track everything properly [Music] you're the fans but that's only when they're  you know going full bore all right let's measure   some other things here now I can check line  one and line two on the breaker coming from   the mains and line one we're getting 14  and a half amps at 60 hertz and line two we are at 18 amps   you can see there's some slight imbalance between  line one and line two on the inverters and that's   because not only is it pulling power to charge  the batteries but I'm also back-feeding this   circuit panel and it's powering lights and other  circuits in the building the well so I can see   that we are putting 1.1 amps on inverter 2 on  line two and three amps on inverter one and   line one because the loads on the inverters are a  little bit imbalanced but it's able to both fully   charge the batteries and run those emergency  panel loads without any problem so we'll go   ahead and let the batteries charge up and then  I can shut off the mains power and we'll try the   battery performance make sure that it's running  the well power tools and all the other things   that I want to run with it without any issues the  batteries have been charging Full Tilt for several   hours now and it seems like a good opportunity  to try out this new thermal imaging camera top   Don sent me it has some neat features like Auto  tracking the highest temperature on the screen   in this image you can see why it's important to  connect the battery pack from diagonal corners   you can see by the difference in temperature  the higher current flowing at the first battery   connected by each cable the bright orange color  is only slightly warm to the touch that is a   really neat visual if you want to be able to  visualize the hot spots in your system right   now if you follow the link in the description you  can clip a 70 coupon and get one for 229 dollars   all right the batteries are fully charged now  it's been floating for several hours so I know   everything's completely saturated at 100 which  is the right time to do all the settings for   our Victron battery monitor the easiest way to  do that is with the app simply load the Victron   monitoring app it will connect to the unit and  then it will show the current status and we'll   go to settings in the top right hand corner  battery settings and these are the settings   that current connected recommends for this unit  the reason we want to set it now is we need to   set the 100 level for the battery so I'll go in  and put 500 amp hours for the battery capacity   you can simply Click on each one and adjust it as  needed so the important thing about this monitor   is if you ever disconnect power it loses the  capacity of the batteries now if you knew what it   was when you turned it off you can type it in and  tell it that oh right now it's at 99 and it'll be   pretty close until it resets otherwise you needed  to go all the way to 100 percent which we are at   now and it shows 100 and I can synchronize that  to 100 percent now it'll track all the power in   and out and I will be able to know the capacity  of the entire pack just from this monitor that's   a really great way to do it especially if you  don't have displays on the monitors if you're   going with the budget version you really  need one of these monitors so you actually   know what the capacity of your battery is at any  given time some kind of shunt monitoring system   I'm also going to add one of these Emporium views  to the load Center the reason I like using this   particular monitor is it actually uses current  sensors on each one of the circuits so I can   precisely measure what's happening everybody  always wants to know how much I can run off   the battery backup system so I have my entire  emergency panel wired using the Emporia View   and it has current sensors that you can place  on every single circuit so I can exactly map   how much energy is being used by each thing how  much is being used by the well how much is being   used by the microwave I have a special Outlet  down here that I can use for other loads so   I'll track all of that data so I will be able to  show you how long the batteries last and how much   each Appliance used during that amount of time  lots of data coming this is going to be awesome   it has been exactly 24 hours we've been  running everything in our emergency panel   on these batteries for the whole time the  microwave the well the lights all kinds of   different things and I can tell on the app for  the smart shunt we're still at 75 percent so   25 percent of the battery per day roughly four  days running just like we normally would for   all of our kitchen Refrigeration well things  like that so a total emergency situation with   no solar input for four days so that's really  good I plan to add some solar to this so that   I can extend that life but the nice thing about  four days of capacity you can have rain storms   and and cloudy conditions or snow or things like  that that can block out the sun almost completely   at least around here for four days for sure so  that sets me up to be able to pretty much run   indefinitely with this setup in an emergency  situation so even now we're pulling about 25   amps 1200 1300 Watts because everybody's still  using stuff in the building and we've consumed   133 amp hours now I can jump over to the Imperial  view on the emergency panel and I can look at how   much has been consumed over the last 24 hours  so the total usage is 6.5 kilowatt hours and   the fridge consumed 36 percent of that now I'm  kind of surprised I didn't expect the fridge to   be such a large portion of that of course the  TV internet security was number two there the   well drew a pretty good portion several showers  lighting the microwave was only three percent   the microwave pulls a thousand Watts when you're  running it so it's a huge load and we use it all   the time but it doesn't consume nearly as much  power over that 24 hour period relative to the   other things that are running non-stop it's those  non-stop loads that really eat into things then   outlets and and some various other minor things  make up the rest so that's a pretty neat result   I should pull that together and kind of draw  some conclusions from it one interesting thing   about these units is they have a very low idle  consumption and one unit is between 9 and 10   watts and the two together is between 19 and 20  watts so when I was running just one if you watch   my previous video when I had just one inverter  connected with just two batteries I could run   just my refrigerator for four days but if I ran  just my refrigerator with two units connected   that's going to consume a little bit more idle  standby power because even though the fridge only   needs one to be on they're still both running all  the time even so 20 watts is really low when you   compare it to all the other options out there this  is one of the best now you don't have to track   of your appliances and you don't have to track the  battery capacity but these are helpful tools you   can understand where the power is going and in a  situation where you really need to conserve things   you can look and see it might seem like running  the microwave is a big deal but by the data I have   it's not the big deal the big deal is the running  the lights all the time and the refrigerator that   consumes an awful lot of power so it's through  these tools that you can really understand what   your usage is and what you need it to be it has  been a full three days now the batteries are down   to about 20 percent everyone has been living like  normal my kids stand with the refrigerator open   and search for something to eat and take half  hour long showers there was never a flicker or   an overload no one even knew we were running off  grid these Victron inverters with their efficient   low frequency Toyota Transformers have one big  advantage over the more portable all-in-one power   stations they can provide the initial surge  current that large induction Motors need like   the table saw or the dust collector these tools  immediately trip the over current protection on   the 3600 watt Ecoflow Delta Pro but start and run  just fine with the three KVA Victron setup that   we haven't called here and that includes running  simultaneous loads such as lights and other things   around the house purchasing your equipment through  current connected has some advantages they provide   an extended warranty of 10 years for the Victron  units and the SLK batteries they also pre-program   your units for you and offer support as needed  if you're doing things yourself finding all the   software and settings can be very time consuming  I've compiled circuit diagrams torque values as   well as links to software manuals and parts in an  organized way on my website projectswiththeve.com   you can find everything you need through the  links in the description below I'm planning   to do some future expansion videos where I  add solar charging and some other features   meanwhile you can watch the budget single  phase version of this install right here or   one of my other DIY solar projects here thanks for  watching and I'll see you for the next project!

Channel: Projects With Everyday Dave

Views: 184,062

Keywords: battery backup for home, DIY battery backup for home, diy home battery backup power, sok 48v battery, server rack battery, victron multiplus ii, off grid, home battery backup power supply, battery backup for home office, battery backup for home without solar, battery backup for home internet, home battery backup power, battery backup for home power outage, best home battery backup power supply, home battery backup power outage, prepper, Storage, Split Phase, 120/240V

Id: ipLRNglTdhg

Length: 56min 4sec (3364 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023