EASIEST WAY to Charge Solar Batteries

today we're going to be talking about the easiest way to charge your solar power battery bank in the winter time when you don't have any sun this right here is our current system we are using an ames power 24 volt inverter charger and using an inverter charger is really one of the easiest ways to do that today we're going to be upgrading to a new inverter charger a 3 000 watt 70 amp charger from victron the victron multi plus oh check it out right here bam 24 volts 300 volt amps or 300 watts basically you could say with a 70 amp charger and one of the things that's really cool is it comes pre-programmed that is one of the awesome things about working with battleborn right not only do they sell batteries but they sell like whole custom kits and all of the different components for that viktron is what we're going with charge controllers inverter there's a couple more little components that we would kind of like to add to our system as we go along but in working with battleborn a premium company right there in nevada you can call them on the phone and you can talk to them they pre-program your stuff for you right i mean like they want to take care of you and make sure that you have a good experience and that your stuff works for your application let's go ahead and get this thing unboxed so as you can see it has been opened that's because well they had to pre-program it so of course they've got to open it they've got to get it ready for you let's see what we got here ah package of goodies here let's open this guy up see what's in there information one more component that i would really like to get is this guy right here the control center yeah but that'll come later and then we've got the uh mounting information sheet some stickers in different languages quick installation guide beautiful oh the manual it's only in english it looks like and fairly detailed some kind of plate we're going to need for something and screws take a look at the beast right there all right how are we going to get this thing out of here it is not light there we go there you go kind of see the front of it there see if we can lift it out of this show yeah close and personal all right so here's the front of it there we go switch here led lights not sure what all that means yet we'll figure it out as we get going in the install down here we've got all of the uh connections like we got a little wire connected in there this is the back it's seriously heavy we should weigh it on the bathroom scale and 45 pounds the first thing we're going to have to do is disconnect the solar panels from the charge controllers so we can disconnect the batteries and all that kind of stuff but this right here is our solar panel array we've got um 10 panels total here and two different arrays basically we've got six panels in this array right here these two are wired in series series series and then each set of these is then wired in parallel and then back here or down here i guess this is our second array right here four panels these two are wired in series these two are wired in series and then those two sets are wired in parallel but what we need to do right now is just disconnect them and i know i should have like uh an official disconnect for them i don't have that yet it's in the plans we're gonna be getting that but for right now what we're doing is just unplugging them like that disconnected now not that we're going to be making a lot of solar today anyway but you always need to disconnect those guys and then down here on this set disconnect that guy oh it's frosty out here man where's the other one oh it's over there okay all right completely disconnected now we're not gonna be damaging anything in there on your charge controllers you always want to connect them to the batteries first and then the solar panels and when you're disconnecting them you want to disconnect them from the solar panels and then from the batteries as you can see it is a mighty cold day here man but we're in the we're in the solar shed the tool shed the generator shed and it's not that cold in here now it's time to start disconnecting all of this and uh moving it around [Music] breakdown [Music] so we've got this mounting plate we put right here made sure it was level and i think that's really a smart idea from victron because that thing is 45 pounds and you just i think we're gonna see here but i think we're just going to pick it up set it up there on the wall slide it down and it's going to just hang there i think it's going to be nice rather than trying to have to hold it up there and put a screw in at the same time that'd be a pain all right all right let's see what we can do here oh man i don't think it's in there maybe it is yeah wow okay huh well that was pretty easy huh yeah it's back there i mean it's hooked on there we got a couple holes right here to put in more screws go ahead and do that and then we'll take the front cover off so we can see what's inside all right so we got the other two mounting screws in there go ahead and open up this panel oh fancy little wiring diagram here on the inside of the panel this is like this is pretty thick pretty thick stuff i don't know what it is maybe aluminum i'm not sure but it's it's pretty thick i mean look at how thick this is these things are definitely sturdily built is sturdily a word hmm i think so give you guys kind of a close-up here of what we've got we've got battery connector positive negative we got line in line out and line out two line outs we've got different sensors and stuff to connect down here like network connectors right here for some kind of communication thing which we don't have hopefully though in the future we will have that and we'll be installing that bad boy looks pretty simple so far so one of the things that i'm trying to figure out is how to not have to buy more cable this is all of the big battery cable that i have so what i need to do is try to figure out how we can rearrange all this stuff and use the exact same cables that's my goal but we'll see if we can do it nothing gets to me [Music] this is what we've gotten so far with kind of our rough in install here we've got our shunt here on the negative side just roughly placed here i mean maybe permanently here but we're working on it and then our positive fuse here and so this is going to come across like this and then we're going to be using this battery disconnect switch so many of you guys suggested that we install one of these thank you very much for that suggestion it really is a good idea so we're going to be installing this it is a blue c battery shutoff switch rated up to 48 volts and 300 amps continuous use it'll be plenty big go ahead and open it up here for you real quick i'm surprised that it didn't come with any mounting screws but i don't know didn't come with any so there you go mount this guy to the wall input output goes right in there be perfect my day you are the moonlight shining my way this is where i call home you are the fire [Music] finally finished getting it all wired up the sun has already set ah so now we can finally show you everything over here in detail turn it on and give it a test run to make sure everything works right but before we do that let me answer a couple of questions all right number one is why do we have two charge controllers well that's because we have two separate solar arrays that are um they're not the same they're not the same voltage and they're not the same wattage and so to be the most efficient we actually run one of the solar arrays which is six panels i believe yeah six panels goes through this one it's 70 amps and then the smaller array which is a lower voltage and a lower wattage goes through this charge controller right here which is a 50 amp charge controller so we run it like that and they're smart right you don't have to worry about it just hook them up and they work they like they just do what they're supposed to do you can have more than one charge controller also uh we have 3 000 watts of solar panels out there which is right around 120 amps going into the batteries and so right here notice 70 and 50 120 amps we can charge with so that's why we have two if you buy all of your solar panels and they're all the same and you buy them all at once you may not need to sold two charge controllers like we have but you might if you have too many and then you're gonna have to have two charge controllers because you're trying to charge with too many amps for your charge controller to handle so you just gotta figure out what what you need for your setup and your situation for us we need to another question that is really asked a lot is how much does it cost well there are links in the description of the video where you can check the current prices because sometimes there's sales sometimes the price goes up sometimes the price goes down you know and if i tell you the price today that may not be relevant next week and so i just put all the links in the description you go ahead and check and you can see what the current price is for all of the components that we have here all the batteries inverter charger charge controllers switch bluetooth thingamabober here that monitors everything right it's all it's all down in the description below another question that's asked a lot is how many watts is your inverter well our inverter was 2 000 watts that's with the old ames inverter this inverter here is 3000 watts so we stepped it up a little bit and we can charge a lot faster as well that's the main reason that we're upgrading here we were getting by with the 2000 watts the 30 000 will be nice and you can pair these together and actually uh get 220 out of it we don't need to do that right now but in the future if we want to now we can upgrade we're going with all victron and battleborn batteries and so it'll be a a beautiful system that all works good together all right so just to review right we'll come out here real quick solar panels right out here okay 10 solar panels two separate arrays from the solar panels it comes in and up into the solar shed we come up out of here i know it's still a mess i haven't cleaned up yet from hooking everything up i got to get this done before it gets dark we come up out of here we come up and we come into the charge controller here and then we come into the charge controller here as well we come out of the charge controllers right here and here come up to the positive right here 250 amp fuse and then the negatives go over here to the load side of the shunt this shunt right here is what gives this guy right here it's information from here right the positive comes over to a disconnect switch which is turned off right now it goes up and goes into the positive side of the batteries the batteries are wired in series and parallel these are 12 volt 100 amp hour batteries but it's wired for 24 volts so this is 100 amp hours at 12 volts this is 100 amp hours at 12 volts but because they're wired in series it's a 100 amp hours at 24 volts the amp hours stay the same you double the voltage which means you double the watt hours as well so we've got 100 amp hours 200 amp hours 300 mrs 400 amp hours at 24 volts so these are in series series series series and then they're all in parallel and all in parallel the positive comes off of this corner the negative comes off of the opposite corner and it comes back over here to the battery side of that shunt i know it's a little complicated but hang on with me from the batteries then we come down through this switch through the fuse and up into the inverter yes there's a cover for the inverter we will put it on in a minute comes up into the inverter the negative right here comes down to the load side of the shunt so we have a 12 gauge wire right here coming out of there and we have a 14 gauge wire going into there this is the ac out this is the ac in the ac out comes out of the inverter goes into that hole goes behind the wall and comes out in here goes through this breaker right here 20 amp breaker comes out of the breaker and goes into the wall it goes up over here it comes right here to this gfi outlet it comes into the outlet and then it also goes out of the outlet which lets us run power out to the outside which is right here this extension cord right here is temporary and it actually runs over to the cabin that's how we get power to the cabin right now we will hard wire it all in it takes time but we'll get it this wire right here this is the ac in this is how we charge the batteries remember that i said the easiest way to charge your solar battery bank in the winter time when you don't have any sun is with an inverter charger so power comes in it transfers it goes through here goes out goes back to the house but at the same time it also goes backwards through here and goes into the batteries so we can charge our batteries from the generator when we have no sun all we do is we take this cord and we plug it into the generator start up the generator and it should start charging that's the plan anyway we'll see here in a minute all right here we go turn it on good nothing smoking yet okay so this is on let's go ahead we'll turn the inverter on inverter's on look at that we're green i think we might be inverting right now oh we could check right here minus 22 watts right now oh we got to turn the breaker on here we go now we're using 165 watts 170 watts and so that is not these lights these lights are just connected up to a little solar generator so that is the power that the house is using right now for lights refrigerator whatever happens to be running in the house right now 146 watts that means 146 watts is coming out of these batteries right now so let's start up the generator plug this guy in now we'll wait and see if something changes up here we're at 134 watts negative look at that oh buddy there we go notice here the lights change so we're over here now on these lights all right so we are charging right now with 1.21 kilowatts 1.24 kilowatts 1.25 kilowatts 1.25 kilowatts we're charging the batteries right now off of the generator way better way better than we were doing with the aims charger went ahead and shut off the generator so we can button this stuff up now go ahead and turn this off turn the batteries off and turn this guy off [Music] let's check it out one more time turn the batteries on battery's on turn the breaker on turn the inverter on there we go inverter's on another thing that's really cool about this inverter is it's a lot more efficient than the ames one as well so while it's just sitting here not really doing anything it's like self-consumption it's a lot lower than the ames makes the batteries last longer right now we're using 130 watts out of the batteries we're going to charge up these batteries tonight make sure that they're up 100 so we'll go ahead and get this guy going again all right now i want to see how many amps we're actually putting into the battery so we're putting in 1.23 kilowatts 45.8 amps this is supposed to be 70 amps so i'm going to have to go through the book again and figure out why it's only putting 46 amps now instead of 70. you may have to contact victron and find out what's up with that if you would like a complete tour of our off-grid solar system from solar panels to the batteries to everything to all of the appliances we run inside of the house like the completest tour that could ever be complete let me know down in the comments below if you'd like to see what else is going on here in our homestead there's a video right over there you can go ahead and check out otherwise i hope you guys have a really great day keep smiling and i'll see you over in that video in just a second [Music]

Channel: Martin Johnson - Off Grid Living

Views: 174,296

Rating: 4.9116511 out of 5

Keywords: charge solar batteries, charge solar batteries with generator, using a generator to charge solar batteries, solar charge controller for lithium ion batteries, solar power, solar, off grid, how to, battery bank, diy, energy, off grid solar

Id: 5ZC6hHDjU2I

Length: 20min 40sec (1240 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020