My Favorite 12V Off-grid Systems for 2024!

so the year is 2024 and people are still using 12vt batteries and inverters unfortunately most people have switched to 48 volts even for mobile application systems which is fantastic especially today it's easy to use 48 volt batteries they're cheaper they last longer they're more efficient and we have Boost converters so that if you have a small solar panel array you can still boost that voltage so it's usable by a 48 volt battery but some people are still using 12 volts I'm not sure why it costs more money a lot more money bigger conductor size larger solar charge controllers the inverter requires more copper for all that current handling but some people are still using 12 volts so in this video I'm going to give you Hardware recommendations for best performance or for a budget system so if you don't have that much money so I think you guys might find this interesting if you are building a 12volt system also I'm going to show you some alternative methods to build a 48v system to work for you and that will be at the end just in case you keep thinking that you need 12 volts you probably don't now 12 VTS works really well for small systems if you have an inverter that's under 1,000 watts and you're just trying to charge a laptop inside of a minivan or a work truck I get it that works great and you probably don't need anything else but if you are building a large system I strongly suggest you consider 48 volts so let's get started the first system is for the best performance possible if you have a high vibration environment high moisture you want it to last for a very long time and you want zero issues at all I would recommend a victron inverter 12 volts and a epic battery 12 volts this combination is pretty much the best thing you can buy on the market today this has integrated uh victron communication and all of the wiring and it's all waterproof this whole thing's waterproof and it has a t-class fuse in the BMS is from the same BMS manufacturer that makes golf cart batteries so inductive loads are not an issue for these at all and when you combine it with the victron inverter you're going to have zero issues just the design of this circuit I know these are very heavy but this design will last a very long time compared to the cheap lightweight inverters this should last this combination for decades to come the failure rate of both of these products is ridiculously low especially compared to the competition that costs even more specifically for the batteries there are other marine grade lithium iron phosphates with less features and more problems and they cost more money so this is like the best bang for your buck performance battery but this is expensive I understand that not everyone can afford this this thing's like 122 or $1,300 and this is $2,000 but if you're going for 12 volts and you want it to work for a very long long time this is how you do it now this is an inverter and a battery charger and this is a battery but we need a solar charge controller for this system and guess what I recommend a victron I love victron solar charge controllers just the monitoring and the data logging alone and the failure rate um these things are fantastic you will not be let down by victron components and you don't need these to communicate you don't need all those other special things you don't need the shunt and all of that it's nice to buy the whole victron energy ecosystem but you don't have to have it if you just have this with some solar panels and you have a victron inverter you can just let it run flip this switch turn it on and let this do its thing and you're done some people get intimidated by victron so that's why I'm saying that I also have a beginner video if you want to hook up communication with victron if you have some extra money and you want all the pieces to work together um that is an option and it is as well beginner friendly so yeah this is the best performance system I can think of victron components and epic batteries now let's move on to a budget system now for my budget package for 2024 we're going to go with a lead time battery we've opened up like eight or nine of these and they have been fantastic lots of people like these and they are a fraction of the price of most of the competition but it's only like 25% cheaper than an epic battery that epic battery though is really good I wouldn't mind buying an epic battery and maybe a cheaper inverter if you can't afford the victron because the battery is where it matters most these do work really well and they make a lot of people happy but it's not nearly the same quality as an epic battery and the Epic batteries just a little bit more this is a fraction of the cost of a victron inverter so instead of spending like you know $1300 these are like $300 and they both have pure sine wave this doesn't have any of the fan FY features of a victron no communication at all um it has a remote switch if you're installing it in an RV or a van but this is going to be lower quality and in theory it shouldn't last as long as a low frequency victron inverter this is high frequency so it weighs less it's less weight but it's cheaper quality you'll notice that these terminals one of them broke on one of my recent videos and this just looks cheap I mean if you look inside you'll see the components are not nearly that of a victron inverter but I haven't been able to kill one gu andales are fantastic for the money also they have a high efficiency for being a lowcost inverter and they have a good peer sign wave unlike others they'll say that they have a pure sine wave but it's actually a modified Square wave but yeah I would stick to gandale if you are on a budget if all you need is 1,000 WT inverter just buy a gandale and you'll be good to go also you might not need this large of a battery but this is the best bang for your buck so if you're on a budget I would highly recommend buying the biggest battery you can the first time around because usually what people do is they buy a small 12vt 100 amp hour battery then they buy a second and a third and then a sixth and eighth and they have all this wire that they had to buy to put them all in parallel save yourself some money and just get the biggest battery the first time and if you need more buy two big batteries and then connect those in parallel so you can save money but this combination would work for a very long time and you would be surprised at the performance now what solar charge controller do you think I would recommend for this system oh no I lost it and I cannot find it I had a rich solar and a reny one but I'm pretty sure I gave it away to my Forum members so solar charge controllers I have some recommendations on my website the cheap ones actually work really well and I've not had any issues with them at all they're also the easiest to program with the on screen display in the buttons below it so I do recommend those a lot but these are really nice I know they cost more but you're not going to have any issues and the quality of this device versus those cheap solar charge controllers is a night and day difference but they've never broken on me so they are good but I would still probably buy this especially with PV conductors and the voltages they operate at and I just like these better especially for monitoring and it has Bluetooth built in so you can see what your system is doing and if it's even charging which is the most important thing you need to know I mean you always know if your loads are working or not and you don't really need a shunt if you know that your battery is charging if you see that the current from your panels is making it into the battery this is all the monitoring that you really need in my opinion so this is ideal but there are other options and they do work well now something that you don't want to cheap out on is the conductor size from a cheap battery to a large inverter you need to use high quality expensive conductors that's pure copper okay don't cheap out on the wires and buy those inverter hookup sets with copper clad aluminum you want to buy the nice thick expensive stuff so you don't catch anything on fire also the issues that we have with cheaper inverters is because people use the wrong gauge wire or they're using copper clad aluminum or the terminations are not done correctly so again buy the large thick gauge copper cables and you'll be set now I don't think that this would last as long as a victron and an epic battery but these last a very long time the failure rate for both of these is very low so again if you're on a budget this is probably the best you can do right here and I've been recommending both of these for a very long time now and I haven't had anyone complain at all now for the final part of this video we're going to talk about why people still choose 12volt systems for even large stationary systems so first thing thing that comes to mind is they are familiar with 12 VTS they start with a car battery you know they have a secondary battery and their RV that's also 12 volts they hook up a pulsewidth modulation solar charge controller to charge the battery and they're done it works and they're like I like it it charges off the alternator great but I'm telling you right now that 48 volts is just as simple if not simpler than 12 vs it's less current so they're easier to build the cables the sizing the cost everything else is easier also with 48v batteries they typically have better bms's in an on andof switch most 12volt batteries are just raw terminals that can short out on anything with pretty much every 48 volt battery I know there's on and off switch so the terminals are not live you connect it with some nice copper cables typically it comes with it because they're so much smaller and cheaper that the manufacturer just throws it in with the 48 vol battery and then when you're all done connecting everything you turn on the battery and then you have a solar power system right nice and simple it's not like that with a 12volt battery with 12volt systems you have to use t-class fuses because of the amount of current and the low internal resistance of those batteries when you put lots of 12vt batteries into parallel the amount of current that those can deliver is massive and if you look at the marine guys they have these massive t-class fuses these massive bus bars four O gauge cables going everywhere it's expensive and it's not good you need to step it up to 48 volts but they're not doing that because they're not familiar with 48 volts so all you really need to know that's different from 12 volts is that the compatibility of devices is dependent on the voltage so if you buy a 12volt battery you have to buy a 12volt inverter okay that's it if you buy a 48volt battery you need to buy a 48 volt inverter and you also need to buy a 48volt solar charge controller as long as all the components are rated for the same voltage you can connect them together just the same as you would a 12volt device there's no difference now one thing that will confuse people is the solar charge controller voltage so if you have a 12vt battery and you have a 24volt solar panel it will work if you have a 24volt solar panel on a 48v volt battery it will not work so if you have a very small solar power array and you want to connect it to a 48 volt battery you're going to have to use what's called a boost solar charge controller and these special devices are really cool and they use them for golf carts and all sorts of other applications cuz you could have a single 20 volt solar panel that's 100 Watts really tiny and you can charge a massive 48 volt battery for a golf cart or for a solar power system or anything that you choose so you need to find a solar charge controller that will boost the voltage Vol instead if you do not use a boost controller you're going to have to put your solar panels into a string with a voltage high enough to charge a 48 volt battery and most of them can charge with like an 80 or 90 volt string but typically I recommend 120 volts minimum that works for most all-in-one systems and most large solar charge controllers for 48 volt batteries just keep it above 120 volts and you'll be good to go now if any of that confused you and I talk too fast I have a schematic on my website for a mobile 48v system it is as simple as you can get I also have multiple videos on how to do that so check out those resources it will make sense to you when you build your first system and you'll realize hey this is a lot easier and better than a 12volt system now the next reason people buy 12volt systems is for alternator charging they have a 12volt alternator inside of their car RV or van and they want to charge their solar battery on cold rainy days with a DC todc converter so they're going to regulate how much current is going into their deeply charged solar battery so that they do not destroy their alternator because those alternators are only designed to charge up a shallow depth of discharge starting battery it's not designed for charging a lithium iron phosphate that's been deeply discharged and that's how people run into all sorts of problems with alternator charging so typically you have to have a DC todc regulator and again that costs money and that will regulate how much current comes from the alternator to put into your 12vt battery now what you need to do instead is use an externally regulated or a dedicated 48 volt alternator that's designed for charging deeply discharged lithium ion batteries that is the way you're supposed to do it and this will effectively turn your vehicle into a generator for your solar battery and you can run this all day long and you'll have a lot more current when you're pulling 20 or 30 amps from a 12 12 Vol alternator that's not going to charge up a 5 KW hour of battery very quickly it's very slow it's not very efficient the charging system of your vehicle is not designed for it and it costs more money you have to buy the DC to DC regulator and some of those are very expensive so yeah do it right the first time take all that money you would spend trying to make your 12volt alternator work and buy a 48 volt alternator and get it professionally installed the amount of current that that thing will output for for the money is much cheaper than trying to use 12 vs stop trying to use 12 VTS it's not good unless you have a very very small system like I said if you have a th000 watt inverter you have a tiny little battery and you want to charge it off the alternator with like 10 amps then sure why not who cares right but if you're building a big system and you're trying to charge off a 12vt alternator that is completely illogical and very expensive and it's hard to build you're going to be running four Rock gauge cables from one side of your vehicle to the other side it just does not make any sense to do it that way and is there any other reason people would use 12 volts the alternator charging and how familiar they are with the voltage is all I can really think of why would you not I can build a 48volt system with these small little cables in a matter of minutes with the 12 volts I have to bring out the big crimper and all these big fuses and if one of the termination is not perfect it's going to get really hot like why use 12 Vols it's just more work and more money so yeah I hope this convinces you guys try building a small 48volt system we have one that I talk about all the time it's my mobile system it's a server rack battery with a $700 all-in-one on top it can handle 5,000 watts of solar it outputs 3,000 Watts also there's new 48 volt products all the time look at this 6,000 XP imagine throwing that into an RV with a massive array that would be incredible you could have a 50 amp uh 240 volt plug connected directly to that thing you can charge Crazy Fast imagine how much it would cost for a 12vt battery charger for that same input capacity it's just too much money and it's illogical it's inefficient so yeah give 48 volt a shot even for mobile systems and stationary and I think you guys will be a lot happier and you can buy 40 Vol inverters so if you want a system that works for a very long time you can buy one of those so yeah I hope you like the video and I will see you in the next one bye

Channel: DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse

Views: 254,940

Keywords: off grid solar, will prowse, diy solar, cheap lifepo4

Id: dKNUtk3jLwQ

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2024