EASIEST Off Grid Solar Power... just like a little Lego

so basically when the world ends we're going to be okay wild and awesome [Music] the sun's only going to be around for the next few billion years so we might as well use his juice while we can behind me is a giant fifth wheel rv and today we'll be installing a complete off-grid solar package and it's going to be a lot easier than you might think this video is sponsored by ecoflow they probably have the most user-friendly battery backup and solar kit ever invented it's all plug and play just like a little lego let's see how long this takes us to install the clock starts right about now let's get started [Applause] [Music] without windy it is today though we might be better off installing a wind turbine but maybe we'll do a video on that later let me introduce you to my buddy bryce what's up he owns an rv park in swan valley idaho so he knows way more about rvs than i do you might remember bryce from the viral puppy video that was sweeping the internet a few years ago a nice shirt by the way thank you do you want to give us a little tour of your crib yeah so this was a master bedroom so this is a fifth wheel toy hauler 44 foot 48 feet counting the whole front part but this was our master bedroom we converted it to the girls bedroom so we took out our there's a king bed in here and we built bunk beds in here dressing stuff with the girls bathrooms in here this is basically living room area fireplace entertainment center with our kitchen pretty sweet leds on the countertop right that's funny how you recognize that you're like oh is that a strip before and then this was a garage to put in a toy hauler um it's actually our bedroom we converted to our master bedroom so our bed comes down and then during the day we took a trip to come here so we just kind of put stuff here that we knew would be secure as we drove so what do you guys do now for electricity so actually it's we have a generator or we plug into power when we get to inaudible park and so i've heard it called shore power why is it called shore no idea because it's sure different spelling anyway today though we are going to install eight solar panels on the roof with a 10 kilowatt hour battery backup system that will allow these guys to go completely off grid yeah i'm stoked for that what makes this solar setup so easy is that it comes in just four parts obviously we have these solar panels here we have an inverter this is where the solar panels plug in there's no crazy wire snipping or splicing the inverter is what connects the solar panels to the batteries to provide electricity for the rv which is where this comes in also connected to the main hub this is what's going to control the lights refrigerator and ac units it'll make a lot more sense when you see it all installed the panels we're using on this project are 100 watt panels a little bit smaller than the ones we used on my house to be honest we could use the ones on my house here on the rv the inverter would handle them just fine it's just a little harder to situate them and the 100 watts are a little more secure all right so we're gonna estimate where the hole goes so about 32 about six hopefully it pops up right here measure twice cut once [Music] there's a huge bundle of wires right where i'm cutting note itself next time i do this we didn't check the panel above for wires turns out there's actually like 20 wires up there and now bryce does not have tv anymore so our hole was here and we came up right there that's actually not too bad now it's time for some solar panels [Music] [Music] so right above the bathroom sink going into the wall and then out the ceiling we are wiring them all in series plugging the positive and negative all the way around until we get to the inverter the inverter can handle 150 volts worth as long as we stay under 30 amps these panels here should be enough to charge up the 10 kilowatt hours of battery every day as long as the sun is shining there's some portable solar panels that i'll show you in a second that we can use to supplement on cloudier days because as of right now we're only using one of the solar inputs on the inverter and there are three so we have a whole lot more room to grow and expand later on [Music] so in the kit that came with the solar panels initially they gave us screws that were supposed to be self-tapping into metal the roof of the rv we're working on now though is just a half inch sheet of plywood so we had to grab different lags with a more coarse thread that actually gripped the plywood screwed everything down into place and then poured rv roof sealant over the top just like how they've done with all the other vents ac units and skylights on this same roof that keeps the water from getting down inside of the holes we just made the panels are in place generating electricity as we speak now we have to mount the rest of the hardware if you're curious about this panel it ties directly into the 12 volt system used to start their generator so we're leaving this one in place but they are two completely separate systems our system is going to be used to run the whole rv this one is mostly just for that generator which now that i think about it they don't even need anymore but it's still good to have you never know when you might need a backup solar is up top the home for all the rest the equipment is going to be in this cubby right here we are charging up one of the batteries as you can see on this display and this is the inverter i'll explain more about it after we get it mounted on the wall once i get the inverter mounted inside it goes deep in this cubby hole it'll be kind of hard to see so i'll explain what's going on right now here we have an input for the alternator but since this is towed by a truck we do not have an alternator so it can be used as a third solar bank this one is where we're going to plug in the portable solar panels which i have not shown you yet we'll get to those in a second and this is where we're going to plug in the solar panels that are currently on top of the rv this is where we plug in battery one battery two this gets us the 10 kilowatts we have a battery three which we could plug in to get 15 kilowatts or a smart battery generator this is where we plug in the ac in which is coming from the control panel underneath the sink so if we do park at an rv park or something and plug in this will charge up the two batteries this is just an extra plug so if bryce wants to charge anything inside of this little tunnel he can do that here here we have the ac out which is going to the panel we just installed and the dc out which is also going to the panel underneath the sink then we have two can network ethernet ports one coming from the display and the other one coming from the panel underneath the sink the system should almost be ready to go we just have to get it crammed in this tiny hole [Music] told you it was cozy back there [Music] i don't know if zach has told you guys this yet but if you buy this shirt you'll have good luck for seven years try me on it get it tweet me in seven years tell me i was right yes got it so the hardest part of this whole project was probably this right here we have the original control panel of the rv and we had to pick which circuits to bring over to the new smart panel we have 30 amps of ac to work with and 60 amps of dc while the ecoflow system is very plug and play the most time-consuming part of this project was just getting the wires run through the walls and the floor without causing any aesthetic damage to the rv these wires are what transport the power from the inverter to the smart panel which then keeps all the electronics and plugs working in the rv itself probably not my favorite wiring job but we just took wires from here and plugged them directly in here this is also the part of the project where you really want an electrician or someone who knows what they're doing since with one wrong move here you could either fry your toaster or become a toaster [Applause] right here we have the acn from the inverter and the dc in from that same inverter the ac out right here is coming from when we plug the rv into the shore power we actually did find out what shore power means it's actually taken from when ships come into port and plug in on the shore so technically this rv is like a giant ship what's nice though is that the first six circuits are all remote controlled so those six circuits can be remotely turned on via the mobile app if my calculations are correct i think bryce is just about to finish cleaning up but his battery died i'll explain this more in a second shall we see if you can plug in your battery yes the only thing is i think the charger is back at our default there goes the whole shot the nice thing about having so much extra capacity and slots on the inverter is that if they ever are boondocking or out somewhere without electricity bryce can roll out the folding solar panels and double the capacity of what we have on the roof these as well are made by ecoflow doing a couple tests on the system right now we are bringing in a thousand watts with the solar on the roof as well as the solar fold-out panels we're powering one mini-fridge still charging the batteries see what bryce you're turning on that fridge yeah turned on output just jumped way up 700 watts wow that's a beefy fridge yeah let's keep going electric that's the best thing free energy yep what's cool though is you're pulling almost a thousand watts from the sun and you're only using 700 watts on the fridge so it's still charging the batteries even though the fridge is on the other big drains on this system are going to be the microwave as well as the ac unit go ahead and nuke something okay output 2 400 watts with 70 on our battery you could run the fridge and the microwave simultaneously for about five hours oh wow that's a lot of cooking in the microwave so we just barely turned on the ac so the blower just went on 1000 watts so now we're almost using we're 1.6 kilowatts with the ac and the fridge running and we can do that for about nine hours i'm so pumped about that everyone else i talk to that has solar they're like oh you could run at max like one hour maybe two all day on a sunny day and then on a cloudy day i mean you could probably last you don't even need air conditioning on a cloudy day so so we are officially done i'm gonna see if bryce can give the tour yeah i know all things solar now so teach me husband so our cubby that was just an empty cubby with no purpose what now gives us life we have two batteries from ecoflow here these are 3500 um girderaters powerful what are they 10 kilowatt hours okay these will last years years and years and years each of the batteries when he says that each of the batteries have 3 000 cycles because they're lithium iron phosphate so they're gonna last us forever so right here we have the inverter and it's locked and secure in there we have eight panels on top so basically when the world ends we're gonna be okay so everything's on solar right now without being hooked up when we're in the middle of the mountains i don't know i still thought we were like plugged in like a like we're not we're not plugged in this is awesome this is all solar yeah so the sun is compensating for about half of the fireplace and you can run the fireplace for about seven hours show me more okay magic man okay um remember how we always have to turn the generator on to like nuke something for like to make oatmeal or whatever no it doesn't work just the middle of nowhere it works yeah and the water water pump is also connected okay that's a big deal fridge is not running on propane anymore because it's on ac it really is yeah so the propane the only propane we use now is just basically a stove yeah so that's nice i had no idea before yesterday that this fridge runs on propane and i'm not going to pretend to understand how but it's very interesting if the fridge runs on propane yeah or electric or electric so we plug in the shore power then it would just switch over to electric but when you're not immediate goes to propane but it hasn't switched it's only on wait so how do you know so that's what it shows when we're plugged in for power but we're not in short power it's just running off of the solar panel that's wild so i'm excited to watch this video because i'm like how did you do all this how did you connect it to everything and all of the outlets all the outlets work all of them all of them does that one work yes did you test it no you did also we had to keep the generator on to run the ac but then we had to close the windows because the fumes are so bad from the generator but well this is the control system but this so yeah this is just powering everything so it's cool because it shows you charging time so in five hours the batteries will be totally charged so are they charging as we're using it yeah see right now input 1.2 kilowatts it's using half of that it's a gauge because like this rig is the biggest rig we've ever had and literally when we drive somewhere the batters are dead by the time we're in the long destination now they're going to be like more charged kind of food dock it was like not possible and then if we want more juice we just put them on the ground and it'll charge even more right wild and awesome this is pretty good this is the sick we're in the middle of the mountains we're good zach this is pretty cool thank you very much so these guys have been to all 50 states in their rv and now own an rv park in idaho yeah so they i've i've kept him here a couple days longer i told him this project would take about five hours and here we are three days later but the wiring running wires in through the walls was one of the biggest issues that's because our rig's big right on other rigs it'll be easier yeah but also you because we did that you can't tell and it doesn't look any different no it doesn't this right here yeah that's the only difference so it's all right here all the fuses for solar so everything that was here i don't even know yeah it's okay it's just it's styled i trust zach i trust everything speaking of which they are going to i mean obviously now we're super super excited about it but we actually haven't used it for any amount of time so in like a month from now they're gonna post a video on their channel detailing in a six hour long extravagant video of how the solar system is working no we can zach said maybe six minutes i already have a boondocking place in mind i've got it actually that's true she found a place the other day and was like this is perfect but we don't like having fumes and now we don't have to so what is where can they find you guys on your channel and physically in real life where's your park yeah so it's in swan valley idaho so just outside of the tetons and jackson hole we're close to yellowstone national park as well called bryce it's called the park at swan valley nice it's pretty awesome and then we're the jurgys their links right here and here if you have any questions leave them down in the comments anything electrical i can probably handle thanks a ton for watching and i'll see you around [Music] you

Channel: JerryRigEverything

Views: 966,871

Keywords: Solar power, solar, off grid solar, battery backup, emergency solar, solar generator, folding solar panels, solar panels, ecoflow, eco flow, how to install solar, what is solar, how does solar work, diy solar, van life, RV, Portable solar, off grid, off grid solar power system, Cabin solar

Id: OO23RTRIVGU

Length: 17min 52sec (1072 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 06 2022