ROOKIE 12V MISTAKES that are KILLING your offgrid system SILENTLY! 3 easy cheap DIY tips Caravan 4x4

today i'm going to be doing a video on the mistakes everyone makes when it comes to their 12-volt system whether this be in your car four-wheel drive caravan boat wherever it may be i'm not only going to tell you the mistakes everyone makes but i'm going to show you why the mistakes happen and how you can go about fixing them a lot of these things you don't even know are happening in the background and people think they're getting everything out of their 12-volt system but in reality they could be getting a whole lot more by the end of this video hoping to get 30 to 50 more out of your 12-volt system so let's dive in so the first tip i'll talk about and this is probably one of the most crucial ones this is happening you can't see it's happening you can't hear it and you certainly can't taste it vault drop is occurring in every circuit that you have in your car and caravan so what is vault drop vault drop is a potential difference between the source of energy and wherever the load is for instance the battery in percy the prado is charging keith urban through a dc to dc charger meaning that is your source of the uh electricity and by the time it actually gets to your load there will be a potential difference in voltage so voltage is the amount of charge given to each electron flowing through the circuit and i'm not going to dive in too much into the nitty-gritty scientific stuff but i'm going to show you exactly how vault drop occurs and how you can fight against it so here we have two different sets of cable one a lot girthier a lot larger with a larger cable diameter and a six mil pretty well the resistance in this cable is far greater than this cable voltage equals resistance times current so v equals ir and there's a few different factors that result in volt drop the first factor being your length of your circuit so the run size of your cable the longer it is going back to resistance the more resistance in your circuit so your resistance is the opposition to current flow so that is a big one also choosing the right size cable obviously a smaller size cable is going to have a lot more resistance than a larger size cable that's why you need to choose the biggest size cable you physically can and i'm going to show you that in a minute but also the amount of load running through your circuit so if i was to run 10 amps from the battery of person the prado 2k the urban only 10 amps there probably wouldn't be much volt drop however when i dial my dc to dc charger up to 50 amps that's when a lot of the vault drop occurs and what i'm about to show you is a real life situation of how that occurs so situation you're going to run a 12 volt supply from your alternator to your dc to dc charger whether this be in your car or caravan you walk into super cheap auto you ask the employee there what size cable do i need for a 50 amp load because your dc to dc charge is putting 50 amps in your batteries you ask them the right questions they will turn around and tell you that six mil cable is good enough to run 50 amps and that is true six mil cable can safely carry 50 amps but can six mil cable efficiently carry 50 amps i'm going to show you exactly what i'm talking about so i've jigged up a little run of cable using six mil cable all the way from the alternator all the way to the dc to dc charger and this is to prove how crucial it is to choose the right size cable to get the most out of your 12 volt systems and i'm going to show you if you don't get this right the first time it's going to cost you not in time but also in money because cable isn't cheap so let's turn it on and i'm going to show you exactly what vault drop is so we're at the bonnet here i'm going to test the voltage at the starting point and then i'm going to test the voltage at the ending point which is where the load is the dc dc charger inside the caravan so what we should see here is around 13.3 13.4 volts and that's alternator charge coming straight down the alternator into the starting battery so watch the voltmeter and let's have a look all right so like i said you've just installed this six mil cable you've thought you've done a fantastic job you get to the dc dc charger you turn the system on once you've installed it and you realize it's not working the way it should and that is purely because you've chosen the wrong size cable the person that super cheap was right it can carry 50 amps however it can't efficiently carry 50 amps so like we showed you there was 13.5 volts at the source let's see what it is at the load all right so we're seeing 11.6 i don't know if you guys can see that but 11.6 volts at the load which is shocking and that's on 50 amps imagine if you bump that up even further you can see how much load plays a part in it but also choosing the right cable size plays a massive part in it so straight away out of the box your dc dc charger will not function the way it should you're going to have to rip this whole circuit out that you've paid 100 bucks for so now that i've showed you volt drop in a six mil cable circuit let's bump the cable size up to what we've actually run underneath the car the same length circuit and see what the vault drop is then all right so now we're plugging in the much bigger cable you can see the girth on this cable it's a lot larger now we've connected it all up i'm just going to show you guys that it's a fair test we should get around 13 and a half volts again from the alternator all right so at this end the load end we're seeing a vault drop of under a volt which is epic that is perfect you don't want to see much more than that because what the dc to dc charger will do is actually boost this voltage however when it is a big volt drop such as 11.6 for the dc to dc charger to boost that up to 14.2 which is what you needed a bulk voltage charging phase it's just not going to happen bumping the charge up from 12.7 to that bulk charging phase of 14.2 is very doable for this dc to dc charger so keep that in mind all right so i've showed you the voltage side of things and you're probably thinking big look like what's even vault drop going to do to our output on the output side of our dc to dc charger well i'm about to show you when the dc to dc charger has to work really hard to boost that voltage that 11.6 volts up to 14.2 which is what you need to bulk charge a lithium battery it's working really hard it's trying to get almost three volts extra out of the input side but i'm going to show you the result on the output side in the current and what actually charges your battery is the output side of the dc to dc charger so we've dialed i've actually set this dc to dc charger up for my system which is 35 mil so what we should see on a circuit that's healthy and efficiently running is 45 to 50 amps on idle when the car's just idling show you how many amps we're getting and how many amps we should be getting all right so i'm filming inside here right now and we're getting 9 amps 8.5 to 9 amps out of a 50 amp dc to dc charger i haven't changed any of the settings it's still on 50 amps i'm still trying to get the most out of this system and yeah we're getting we're getting 9.1 amps 8.5 to 9.1 amps on vehicle idle which is for a big system you can just say it's not enough even a small agm system that's probably not enough i'd have to drive this car for almost 50 hours you heard 50 hours before i actually get enough charge into my battery to the point they're full so you can just see there how crucial it is to actually run the right size cable and how vault drop actually affects the output current side on your dc to dc charger so just to prove a point i'm going to plug back in our system the one that we've actually got run underneath the van the 35mm cable and i'm going to show you the result on the output side of the current and what you should be seeing if your system is running efficiently and healthy all right guys so i've plugged in the 35 mil and the results are just you know clear as mud um you can see straight away the difference i'm going to get my phone out and film again haven't changed any of the settings all i've done is plugged the anderson plug in and we've got a 35mm 35mm runner cable and the runs about 15 meters the same as a six mil test and we're getting a whopping 45.5 45.5 amps on idle that means when we do drive the car and the revs go up a little bit we're going to get just under 50 amps i reckon so you can see just there how important it is it's making six times more difference if we were going to take 9 amps as a 100 we're almost seeing 550 percent increase in gains in output current which is just staggering to to see and i've shown you not only how it works but i've explained the principles behind it so some key takeaways are the longer the circuit length the bigger size cable you need to run you also need to pick a size cable that's going to carry the load not safely but efficiently like i've shown you and all in all just run as bigger size cable as you physically can because it's going to pay dividends you're going to get way more out of your system and it's going to work the way it should so yeah this is how we run off grid and i think that it's crucial if you do want to do off-grid stuff for a long period of time that you do get that cable size correct because it is the foundation of your whole 12-volt system and it's probably the number one thing people overlook and they get wrong i hope i've explained it well enough to you guys so you can understand it um like i said i could bore you to death with a heap of scientific sparky but i'm not going to let's move on to the next point and that's regulators if you guys are getting something out of your video and you're enjoying it make sure you hit the like button it helps us out a lot it helps youtube recommend our video to other people so hopefully we can help a lot more people let's talk about cost because obviously the cost between running such a big diameter cable and a small cable is a lot however if you were the person to run the six mil cable install the whole thing realize that it's wrong have to pull it out and then go buy this bigger stuff it's definitely more expensive if you're the poor man paying twice but if you get the right size cable the first time you're not only going to save the the money but you're also going to save the time to to reinstall it old drop only ever occurs on circuits that have a lot of load going through them so testing this not under load you're going to see not much volt drop at all but as soon as you connect it to a load that's when you're going to see your vault drop the same principles can be applied to solar and anything that's circuit that is carrying a load even like your fridge or your air compressor anything like that so if you are having weird funny issues with your appliances maybe you have run the smaller size cable bolt drop is not going to be the only thing that's going to occur you're also going to get a lot of heat in the cable especially if you run 50 amps through six mil for a long time it's going to heat up and you better hope that you fuse the cable because if you haven't the first thing that's going to go is the wire it's going to burn through and it might end up burning your car down so another little handy tip all you always fuse your circuits because that's your protection against something like this happening all right so let's move on to tip number two and this one is crucial if you do have solar in your 12 volt setup so choosing the right solar regulator is crucial and if you choose the wrong one you could be sacrificing up to 30 of your efficiency um and effectively you give it you could be getting 30 more out of your panels the way your solar panels work in sunlight they produce energy that energy coming out of your solar panel isn't fit or safe to get pumped straight into your battery normally it comes out at around 20 to 24 volts which is way higher than your safe voltage that you should be charging your batteries at so that's where a regulator comes in now there's two different common types of regulators on the market there is this one which is a pwm regulator pulse width modulating regular regulator and this one comes with pretty much every solar panel solar kit solar blanket that you buy you can get them for about eight bucks off ebay they're very generic very cheap and the way they work is very simple the second regulator you can buy is called an mppt regulator which is a max powerpoint tracking regulator this one actually comes in most dc to dc charges that you can buy if you get a solar compatible one that is and the way that works is it actually tracks the the max power point it's exactly what the name suggests in both cases pulse with with modulator simply modulates the width of the pulse that's going into your battery and mppt max power point tracking it simply tracks the max power point that so pretty much it takes the highest value of charge and then it's two different separate circuits so there's an in circuit and out circuit and the mppt can actually boost the voltage a little bit to charge your batteries more effectively all right so the way a pulse width modulator works to make it very simple like i said before it simply modulates the width of each pulse so it's simply an on off circuit essentially so the it'll let um charge flow from the solar panels into the batteries in these sections then it'll turn off the the circuit will open and then it will come back on and that's how it pulses electricity and charge into your batteries and obviously with this regulator it can sense whether the batteries are full or they need a bulk charge and that's where it modulates its width so obviously on a bulk charge the onside will stay open for a lot longer letting a lot more electricity a lot more electrons flow into the batteries resulting in good good solid charge and then obviously when it's floating it will just simply pulse on and off um quite quickly because the batteries are fully charged and it's simply floating a float charge if that makes sense now an mppt charger the way that one works is that put simply again um pretty well it tracks it tracks the best point so instead of it looking like a pulse which modulator i can't even say that pulse width modulator it simply tracks the top point the most most wattage out of your system so in in simple terms it's tracking the max power point it's hard to draw exactly but it's a lot more technical and like i said it can actually boost that charge because it's got a difference between the inside and the outside in between there'll be some diodes and gates and that simply boosts the voltage up so you can get a better charge into your batteries so on a big system like the one we have on the urban armalite keith urban has 840 watts of solar we're running an mppt charger inside that dc to dc charge and for this itec world solar blanket they provide a pwm solar regulator in a situation of a 200 watt itec world panel i suggest the pulse width modulator probably isn't that bad for this application however once you start boosting your wattage up i would strongly suggest an mppt charger i'm not going to get too much into that because it gets really scientific and boring but that's just my personal point of view alright so the next sort of half tip is all about solar and where you put your regulator whether that be an mppt or a pwm in your circuit so a lot of people will get their solar system plug their pwm directly into the solar blanket and then run their lead out the output to the battery but i'm telling you that you need to put to get the most amount out of your pwm put this solar regulator as close to the battery as you physically can and there's a simple reason for that given volt drop you guys know how that works you want the highest amount of voltage so the unregulated side of the panel to go as far as you can before it becomes regulated because as soon as you step this voltage down the lower the voltage the higher the vault drop because v equals ir and it might not make a lot of sense to you um but in layman's terms put your solar regulator as close to the battery or the charging point as you physically can instead of putting it next to your solar blanket put this after you lead after your cable all the way next to your battery where you're trying to charge it because that's when you're going to get the most out of your pwm to summarize with the regulators i would choose an mppt a max point power tracking regulator if you have a large array however if you just have a simple solar blanket in your setup i'd definitely save your money and get a pwm because i don't think it will make too much more difference so the third one is going to be the most simple one and you're probably going to laugh at me here but this one is so overlooked and a lot of the times we have mates that want me to come troubleshoot their caravan or their car system because they're not getting much solar charge the first thing i do is get up on the roof and i have a look at the panels normally what i see is dirt and crud all over your panels that's not going to be helping you charge even the smallest amount of oily residue like and salt even salt build up on your panels they'll look clean if you give them a quick wipe i guarantee you're going to get a lot more out of your system and uh yeah so the third tip is to clean your panels um for example right now this itech world 200 watt blanket is dirty as all hell it doesn't look that bad it's just dust but i guarantee if i hit that with a bit of a wet wipe you'll be getting a lot more out of your system before you stand on your caravan roof though make sure it is structural for you to stand up there because some caravans composite vans don't actually allow you to stand up there all that scientific crap went over your head the main takeaways are make sure you get the biggest size cable you physically can for your circuits that are going a longer distance that are carrying a lot of current eg alternator to dc to dc charge circuit when you're choosing a pwm to mppt regulator if you have a massive solar array make sure you get the mppt it's going to pay itself off however if you have a small blanket definitely save your buck and and keep the pwm make sure you put your solar regulator as close to the battery as you physically can i can't stress that enough at sarah keel and travels we are affiliated with itech world we run all their gear around australia we test and we trial it and it works for us it's a cheaper option for sure but it's good bang for buck so if you do want a discount there guys we do have a discount code skt or skt10 that'll get you five percent off store-wide and uh yeah it'll save you a few bucks i can see a few midges on the screen so hopefully this has helped you if it did make sure you subscribe drop us a comment and a like and we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Sarah and Keelan Travels - Offroad Caravanning Aus

Views: 538,900

Keywords: offgrid, 12v, 12V, DIY, DIY SETUP, Lithium, Budget, AGM VS LITHIUM, Lead acid vs AGM, lead acid vs agm vs lithium, volt drop, cable size, lap of aus, Caravan DIY 12v setup, itechworld, urban, hybrid offroad caravan, off-road caravan, offgrid setup, full time travel, travel vlog, australia, solar, watts, amphours, solar panels, the best 12v setup, fishing, surfing, living, exploring, inverter, 3000w, 2000w, 200ah, 300ah, 400ah, 500ah, 600ah, 700ah, 800ah, 900ah, 1000ah, 1KW solar

Id: lrxY931blpg

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 13 2022