EASIEST Off Grid Solar Power System Battery Bank

today we're going to be doing the biggest upgrade to our off-grid solar system we've ever done let me show you what we've got here first at the heart here we have got four 230 amp hour six volt flooded lead acid batteries those are your basic golf cart batteries we've got a 2 000 watt ames 24 volt inverter charger we have got a midnight solar classic 150 charge controller and we've got the shunt that goes with the victron battery monitoring system plus we've got a fuse right here that takes care of the inside of our system but the outside of our system check this out right over here we have got six 300 plus watt solar panels and we're gonna be upgrading and expanding it all let me show you what we got we have got a pallet of goodness right here these are 100 amp hour battle born batteries they're lithium batteries and going to be a major upgrade to our solar system we've got eight of them let me just show you really quick how they come packaged when you order them they come like this and check it out they are they are light right this i mean this is a plastic bag bam 100 amp hours at 12 volts right there you can pick it up with one hand those things are so much lighter than flooded lead acid batteries what do we got in here bam bam bam okay we've got a brochure information about their batteries right here on top nice thick foam protection thing and then down inside right here we've got the battery you just grab it by the plastic bag and pull it out what's cool about it too man check it out see how those are sitting just like that no worries it doesn't even matter there is no liquid in there like a flooded lead acid battery right you've got to mount upright otherwise it's all going to spill out there's no spilling on these man you can mount them any way you want let me show you what else we got to go along with those this box of goodies right here came along with them and we have a bluetooth monitoring system and these are the charge controllers that they actually really recommend using on look at that so nice let's see right here right these are victron uh charge controllers right here this is a 50 amp charge controller five year warranty nice right and check it out they're become pre-programmed for the battery so you don't have to mess around with all the programming stuff then right here this is the big one this is the 70 amp charge controller right here got some cool merch as well in here some t-shirts for the family oh look at that cool and the back of the shirt there led is dead of course in order to install our new batteries and new charge controllers we got to disassemble the old stuff let's start off by being safe and disconnecting the power first things first disconnect the solar panels uh yeah okay let's see what we got here disconnect the solar panels one and two beautiful so no power coming into the solar shed let's go cruise on in and see what else we got to do next let's go ahead and just turn the power off uh-oh that means we lose our light all right that's going to be hard to make the video with no light um that's why we got this we've got the blue eddie from max oak right here let's go ahead and turn this guy on turn on the ac on now we'll take our light right here plug it in oh did you see that man we got some light we've got two lights now all right so we've got the power turned off next we need to disconnect all of this and take it down off of the wall [Music] ah [Music] that inverter is not light man all right we've got it all cleared off here gonna go cut some more osb make the shelf and then we will start installing our new components this right here is where we are going to be mounting everything this right here is the shelf for the batteries this is the compartment for the inverter charge controllers fuses bus bars things like that will go on that side over there let's go ahead and get the batteries and the inverter in place and then we can figure out how we're going to wire everything up [Music] wow man that looks cool doesn't that look pretty cool it's not all about looks though there's some function behind the way i'm doing this for one is we're going to make these 24 volts so we're going to go from this positive to this negative this positive to this negative this positive this negative like that and then we will connect all these together and all these together and so basically setting the batteries up like this is the most efficient use of wiring but there's also another thing this inverter puts off heat all the time whenever it's like plugged in and working which is all the time 24 hours a day here in our homestead this little bad boy is putting off a little bit of heat that little bit of heat is going to rise up through that space right there and the space in the very back right there and it's going to rise up through these batteries and you know what that's going to do it is going to keep these babies a little bit warmer in the winter time their minimum operating temperature is negative 4. so it gets below negative four sometimes here in north idaho where we are but we are in the shed and we have this little heat source right below them to keep them warm should we need to keep them a little bit warmer all we have to do is enclose this area right here and then that inverter will keep them nice and toasty warm in the coldest parts of winter let's go ahead and open this guy up this is the larger charge controller we've got a little booklet and a big fat booklet but thankfully it's in a bunch of different languages so let's see english oh it's only that for english sweet and let's get this guy out of the box huh cool oh nice man huh i thought this was going to be plastic just from the pictures but this is not plastic this is like cast aluminum or something sweet look at this giant cooling fence back here and super big logs for your batteries or your cables to go into so this will be for our big array of solar panels we have another smaller array that we're going to be setting up here real soon and it is actually going to be controlled by this one right here only that much is english then this guy right here again this is aluminum or some kind of metal looks like aluminum probably and uh big cooling fans lugs for your batteries to connect right here and then your screws here lights right here tell you kind of what's going on you might be thinking there's no display on those things that's true right there's no display you can't see anything on here but check it out man it's bluetooth so it all connects with your phone in other words you i could be in the cabin and check with bluetooth out here and see exactly how much we're charging and with this guy right here we'll be able to see exactly what our state of charge is how much power we're pulling out of the batteries how much power we're putting in the batteries that is a really cool monitor so this guy right here pairs with this guy pairs with this guy and then in the bluetooth app you have you can see everything you can program everything with the app as well it's a pretty cool setup all right let's open up the battery monitor here another oh hefty manual but again just a little bit of it is in english all right so not too bad this right here is the shunt this is what you hook the negative up to and all of your negatives have to go through here okay so we got that we've got the cables in here we've got the little computer right here bam little computer okay and a little cover for it let's go see where we need to mount this bad boy all right so i'm thinking somewhere in here this is gonna say load and chargers battery only okay so the battery's gonna hook to that side our load and our chargers are gonna hook to this side right here that'd be a good spot for it right there yeah all right so that'll work right there now let's check out our fuse our main fuse here for positive we've got everything placed basically where we want it now we need to wire all of the batteries together these are 12 volt batteries and this is a 24 volt system which means we need to wire these two in series these two in series these two in series these two in series and then wire them in parallel so that we get all of the batteries working together at 24 volts which means we need to do a lot of cable cutting and crimping for the connectors this is a double gauge cable here this is really flexible like welding cable battery cable so i cut a bunch of pieces right here that we're going to put connectors on and then they are actually going to join these two right here together the way you add the connectors to these it's really pretty simple i'll show you how we do that right now and i will put links to like all of the tools that we're using today uh the components for our solar system and things like that all the links that you're going to want are going to be down in the description below so you can go ahead and check out those tools and resources like that all right so what you're going to do is you're just going to take your connector here and open that bad boy up make sure you get the size connector this is double lock connector for double lock cable and what you're going to do is just take it and figure out about how much you're going to want to cut off there then you're going to take your knife or your stripper whatever you're using and you're going to cut it then you're going to pull it off like that perfect huh all right then you can see here that it slips right on there beautifully like that then you're gonna take this really fancy crimping tool put it on something very solid like a stump put your cable in there like this and you can see these has a flare on the end right here yeah put it in there until the flare hits get it all lined up just the way you want it and hit with a hammer all right so we got it started right it's the crimp has started and so basically you're going to hit it a few times until you hear it really change sound and that's going to tell you basically that you've got it crimped as far as it's going to go and so it really changed the shape of that right there right and that is it is locked on there solid then we're gonna do the same thing to this side here go ahead and get it kind of how you want it notice here it gets a little longer right because it's it's bent alright so we've got it basically how we're gonna connect it in there take this guy here and we kind of mark where we're going to mark it yep right about there so you kind of if you're if you're making something small like this you're going to want to pre-bend it before you actually put the connector on there because it's going to make it more difficult later when you're trying to bend it and it's just not working you're gonna wish you bent it prior okay so we've been to some got it ready yep they look good open this guy up put this guy in there slide her forward all the way yep just about like that don't hit your thumb all right here we go we got her crimped so bend just like that to a nice little u-shape so now we just do that to the rest of them and we'll have our connectors to get our batteries in series then we just bolt them together like this right here with the hardware provided by battleborn all right i'll just do that to the rest of those going up let me show you where we're at so far we've got all of the batteries hooked up in series and parallel we've got the negative hooked up this will go up right up here nice and tight coming into our negative shunt here for the battery monitor okay we've got our charge controller negatives hooked up to negative and up to negative here positive hooked up and positive hooked up right these will be laid in there nice and neat then we've got our positive coming into our 250 amp fuse and then this bad this cable right here going up and it's waiting to be connected to the positive side right here and right now we're trying to install this guy you have to drill a hole somewhere for it to go and if you're like me and you don't have a small enough hole saw they make this little this little uh cover thing for you so you got this little guy right here you just attach it with four screws and then you snap on this little cover plate there we go then this guy will fit right in there like that and it just has this kind of big nut right here that hook screws onto the back to hold it in place there and you got a couple wires and cables to hook up to it and it should be ready to go so let me button this up we'll hook up the power and see if we don't smoke anything all right we're ready now final connection right here the positive battery cable to the batteries charge controllers are all hooked up positive to positive positive to positive battery to fuse battery monitors hooked up all hooked up here negatives to negatives negative to inverter inverter is switched off i think we're ready to go if anything smokes like usual don't blame it on don't blame it on the company i'm the one that did it all right here we go spark maybe there'll be a spark okay guys let's just get ready for it oh yeah oh yeah there's a spark you always got to be ready for that spark man there's always a little there's always a spark a couple of days and a haircut later we're back out here in the solar shed we've got everything hooked up and working perfectly now let me show you what we did to the outside and notice guys oh it got a lot colder here in north idaho it's chilly man it's been raining for a couple of days smoke coming out of the chimney yes we've got a fire going today you saw these panels earlier but we've also added these four panels down here as well so there's one two three four panels and if you're wondering how we built our racking system or our solar panel mounting system out of unistrut like this well i made an entire video on how to build those things and that link will be down in the description of the video as well all of those panels add up to 3 200 watts right on a perfectly sunny day which as you can see today is not a perfectly sunny day but that's okay our solar system is doing okay so before i show you the final connections here and show you how it's actually working with the app let me go ahead and tell you why we chose to go with battleborn batteries one of the main reasons is this right here man designed and assembled in the usa these are made in nevada there are a few other reasons that we went with battleborn batteries besides the fact that they're made in nevada one is is that of course they are lithium iron phosphate batteries and these batteries right here you can actually use 100 of the 100 amp hours per battery so when we put all of these together like this we have 400 amp hours at 24 volts which means we can use all 400 amp hours from these batteries these batteries right here were 230 amp hours at 24 volts but you could only use 50 percent of that right so that is like 115 amp hours this is 400 amp hours okay and so of course we doubled the number of batteries but we pretty much almost quadrupled our storage capacity with these guys so that'll let us go a lot longer in between sunny days another thing is that you can charge these things at like five times faster than lead acid batteries and they have a three to five thousand cycle lifespan meaning that's like 10 years right if you cycle these things every 10 years meaning charge them all the way drain them all the way every day they're going to last almost 10 years we're not going to do that these are going to last way over 10 years in our system but they're rated for 10 years that's just a few of the reasons we chose to go with battleborn i will put a link down to them and you can read all about their batteries and check out reviews and see how other people are using them besides just us down in the description below so we've got our panels coming into the solar shed right here two sets of wires because we have two solar panel arrays coming up through the floor here behind the osb and then coming out this hole right here into the charge controller and this is in bulk mode right now meaning it's charging to the max the other ones come up behind the osb through this hole and they come into the bigger charge controller and it's charging at bulk right now as well this guy right here has one wire coming out of the back of it and that's this gray wire right here plugged into here it's basically just a network cable it looks like a large phone jack plug then you've got this little red wire right here that's plugged into here and goes to the positive side right here it just doubles back in there and comes back out to the shunt and so that's basically how we've got it all wired up of course don't forget about the fuse and the fuse cover here so how's it been working we've been going a couple days now we've had a couple days of rain right as you can see it is all wet and muddy out here now we've got kind of mostly cloudy skies so let's see how the system is doing using the app we just go right here to the app click that guy and it opens right up so right now our batteries are at 57 if you notice right down here where it says power that says 166 watts right now right that means that we are putting 166 watts into our batteries we're not actually taking power out of the batteries so that means that our solar panels are producing enough for whatever we're using in the house plus they're producing extra to charge up our batteries all right so let's look at the charge controller here let's look at the small charge controller first and so the small charge controller is producing 140 watts at 62.89 volts right around there okay it goes up and down with how much sun it's actually getting how thin the clouds are and stuff like that so that's good right that's almost everything that's going into the batteries right now right so let's go look at the big one big charge controller that's our six solar panels and we're producing 305 watts right now at 76 volts now that may not sound like a lot but remember that's what we're looking at today right we're gonna get some sun probably in just a little bit as these clouds move over but we can also charge it with our generator and i'll show you how that works okay when you look back here it's pretty dark but you can see those three wires all the way in the back back there those three wires connect to the generator when we start up the generator it's gonna backfeed through here through here through here and come into the batteries let's go ahead and i'll show you how that works first of all we go ahead and plug in the inverter because we actually want to use it right now and then go and start the generator so the generator is running it'll take just a second and you'll see this switch over to from inverter mode it's a fast charge mode look at that all right here we go so now let's go ahead and check the app and see what we're actually producing here all right back on the app go back to the monitor and we're at 57 but check it out we're now charging with 1 000 watts all right check it out the sun is out right now you can hear the inverter running so we're using a lot of power inside the house but we are charging and we're putting in 2600 watts into the house right now that is pretty good right i was saying about 3 000 watts so we're using a bit in the house and we're charging a bit it's going good and check it out we're already up to 59 we really want to thank battleborn batteries for partnering with us in this project and guys i will put links to everything that we've talked about in this video down in the description below go ahead and check out battleborn batteries see if that's something that might not work for your off-grid situation whether it be an rv a cabin like ours or even outboard trolling motor whatever you need a lead acid battery for you can do with these bad boys right here you can do it a lot better and a lot more efficiently with these guys if you want to see what else is going on here in our homestead there is a video right over there you can go ahead and check out otherwise i hope you have a really great day keep smiling and i will see you over in that video in just a second you

Channel: Martin Johnson - Off Grid Living

Views: 2,056,945

Rating: 4.8986154 out of 5

Keywords: building an off the grid solar cabin, battle born batteries, battle born batteries install, battle born batteries in parallel, battle born batteries cold weather, battle born batteries in series, battle born batteries 24v, lifepo4, lithium batteries, battle born, dragonfly energy, lithium ion, off grid, solar power, off grid solar, battle born batteries 100ah lifepo4, lifepo4 battery bank, off grid solar power system, solar battery

Id: lGs0VPKM1jU

Length: 24min 33sec (1473 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020