SOLAR INSTALLATION 200 Watt Premium Kit | WITH FUSE BLOCK

okay i'm gonna cover that bad boy up luckily they make the connections really easy so you actually just can't mess it up disconnect the negative here we go this is the last one oh my god i'm so nervous [Music] all right let's go see if this is pulling in energy it turns on i think it just started raining hello everybody welcome back to the van build i know that you are not used to seeing me in puffy and boots but here we are this has taken a while for a few reasons and for that i'm sorry my charge controller was shattered on arrival and about a week or two after that there was a windstorm and my solar panel also shattered so i've had a lot of shattered things in the last month the solar system is complete and i'm really excited to share with you the process and what i learned first of all i am installing the 200 watt premium kit from renigi with this kit plus a 1000 watt inverter i will be able to charge my laptop charge my phone use my lights my fans my 12 volt fridge and run my coffee grinder i'm not going to be running blenders or having any other really electrical appliance other than what i already listed so this is a great place to start for people that are looking to be off grid and it's a pretty basic setup you will first see me put together just my 200 watt premium solar kit and then i also throw in my inverter there then you will see me kind of take that system apart so that i can include my fuse block once that system is complete you will see me place my solar panels on my van i did do it in a little roundabout way but for me that really helped me understand all of the separate systems that are really fitting together here so i would suggest doing your research other than this video if you have a larger system with multiple batteries and you've never done anything with electrical stuff before maybe it's a good idea to pay somebody even just to come in and look at it or show you um what not to do i've seen a lot of videos where people get in some pretty sketchy situations and the last thing you want is to burn on your van you know i think that is enough of an intro let's get right into it here's a little bit of what my kit looks like bluetooth module charge controller mounting brackets here's one solar panel here's the back of one i just mounted this z bracket over here that's my inverter and then this is my new charge controller because the other one is broken and my battery can stay here for a week just watch all right i am going to try my best to walk you through each step that i'm taking which is a little bit difficult because i'm figuring this out as i'm trying to teach it so i am also going to link below the youtube video that i used for my specific premium kit so i'm going to show you what i've done so far i have put on all of my z brackets i have my rover charge controller here and i did connect my little bluetooth dude in here so the next thing that i'm gonna do i'm using these two cables that come with the kit and inserting them in here so right now i'm loosening this to lower the little home [Music] okay those feel pretty solid all right i'm moving everything to the back of my van that way it's not super hot and sunny and then i don't have to move it all around for me to actually put it in the back of my van so i'm gonna do that real quick and now i'm moving on to using this fuse so i'm connecting my positive this is pretty much just annoying the out of me and now i'm going to connect my negative to my battery which freaks me out a little bit so the negative cable coming from the battery negative over to the negative terminal on my battery [Music] this is what will connect from here to the positive terminal on my battery i hope i get electrocuted at least i'll be doing something that i love i'm going to cover this before i do anything else because i don't know why it just feels right now i'm going to connect this to my positive battery terminal one really important thing that you have to remember when connecting all of this stuff is you want to do it in a specific order the biggest thing is that you want to connect your charge controller to your battery first if you connect your charge controller to your solar panels first you can burn out your charge controller and it'll ruin it so make sure that your charge controller is connected to your battery before you do anything with your solar panels all right i am now going to work on hooking up my inverter here is my 1000 watt inverter and here are just a few things that come with it and then these cables so my charge controller is over there it is still connected to the system like we just did make sure this is in the off position now it's important to connect both of the um cables to the inverter and then you connect them to the battery this is where i want it i think so okay i'm gonna cover that bad boy up okay now i'm gonna do the negative okay from what i've listened to this is gonna make a spark and that freaks me out a little bit it didn't spark [Music] if i could try the inverter out i think that'd be cool so this is the remote so i can put this in my wall so i can turn my inverter off and on what that means is that i can set the back of this inverter so i can have it on off or have it set to the remote but i'm gonna grab my solar panels and try to hook those up so here are the backs of my solar panels and i first started with connecting the positive and negative like so so renigi gives you a fuse this is to be put in between your positive cable that will run down to your charge controller and the other positive that comes off of your solar panel luckily they make the connections really easy so you actually just can't mess it up this is the negative cable running from the negative connections on my solar panels and i'm going to connect this to the pv negative here is what will attach to my positive with the fuse and this cable will now attach into my charge controller into the positive and now i should start seeing my battery charge i'm a little nervous it's working so we have negative connecting here this is all negative and of course it is running into my negative power and then positive and negative are connected and then you have the positive with the fuse that's provided and then that is connected up here into the positive and as you can see it is working so this is showing that the solar panels are indeed working okay so since the system is working i am going to turn on my inverter and see if it works so i have my computer up here that i've been looking at videos and making sure i'm doing everything right with um so i'm gonna unplug that and i'm gonna plug it into my inverter and see if it works so i'm gonna turn this on it's working that is freaking cool so now that my solar system is up and running i am actually gonna figure out where i want all this stuff hopefully next time you see me it'll look a lot better so after i completed attaching all the basic things for my solar system i paused for a while there's a lot of traffic i realized that i don't know where my breaker box or fuse box fits into the whole system so i can connect my solar panels and watch it my battery charge via my solar but i don't know how to install my my fuse panel for all of my dc appliances i got in touch with my friend eric i had met eric years ago in california and i asked him if he happened to know anything about solar setups and how to install a fuse box and he said you know i do so i called him up and it turns out that he and his wife own a build-out company and he was able to get on the phone with me and walk me through everything that i needed to make this happen so eric if you are watching this thank you so so much i'm going to put their information below he's a really amazing guy so i highly suggest if you are looking to get a van built out for you check them out this is my current setup my battery is connected to my charge controller this is the fuse that protects it my charge controller has this little bluetooth dude here this funky wire is just the um temperature thing so that shows up on my app as well the temperature of my battery and then i have these two cables just connecting my battery to my inverter that is upside down because it just fits better like that the only thing that is not connected are my solar panels let's go over what i purchased dc switch four aug ring terminals 10 to 16 aug spade terminals five amp fuses for my lights and my fans a positive and negative bus bar 10 to 12 aug terminals 16 to 14 butt splices for my switch four aug battery cable and heat shrink all right let's get to it i'm just gonna start by de-assembling a lot of this because i'm gonna have to move stuff around and i'm on hold with energy right now that's what you're hearing me in the background up up up in a painted cup i would pull my love from a cloud above so bright i can see the lights taking you up you would never want to do this if you had your solar panels hooked up you always might want to make sure your solar panels are unhooked if you're working on your system right in the sky like a firefly so this 20 amp fuse i'm going to use this still just in a different spot it's so awkward i'm gonna start with placing these where i want them to live probably somewhere up there one other thing i noticed is that this is caving in a little bit in the middle so i'm gonna remove this top and um what's the word i'm looking for re uh reinforce there it is reinforce it with paraglide across the sky let flowers and tiny hearts shaping the line of the copper all right what i'm gonna do right now is connect my charge controller to my bus bars so this left one is a 10 gauge wire and it is positive i don't need this 10 gauge red wire anymore um this had been connecting the charge controller to the battery so i'm going to change this out for this positive so that they can be more color coded and i need to cut and strip this wire this is another way you can do it it's not as safe but whatever comes from dreams boom terminal's already on there so this is all ready so i'm going to slip this in to the positive side positive positive bus bar cool so i don't love how long this is so i'm just going to cut it down i sound really confident right now i'm not sure if i feel that confident [Music] [Music] to get these boxes down i'll link everything that i'm using below as always so i need to put terminals on both of these i could not find a hammer crimp but i'm gonna try these i made my own hammer crimp i just laid this on a metal um file i hammered it it was very crimped [Music] all right so my battery died and i've done a little bit of work since you saw me last down here i just got done finishing up putting terminals on some more my four aug battery which will bring us over here so i currently have my charge controller hooked up you saw me do that to my bus bars i then threw on a terminal with some heat shrink onto four aug battery cable and that is heading from my positive bus bar to the positive end of my fuse box and now what i need to do is connect the negative to the negative bus bar and my fuse box so let's do that right now a really limited light here i hope that you can see i need to be done for the night i counted wrong i didn't get enough terminals i need one more so it looks like i will do that good morning today's the day shall we so like i mentioned yesterday i wanted to kind of fix up my wheel well to make sure that i was super strong to hold my battery so i'm actually going to do that now [Music] all right so i just reinforced this a little bit by putting some some wood pieces some chunks of wood right under this lip now i'm going to kind of set up my battery on here where i want it and create the box and the battery did come with some styrofoam so i'm going to reuse this and just put it around the battery so that it's more protected with like bumps and stuff [Music] and i am done with my little box and this will give me a good mounting surface for my fuse so it is time to finish connecting everything so on the positive there will also be a 20 amp fuse this came with my renegy setup my 200 watt premium kit [Music] now i'm basically connecting my bus bar to my negative battery terminal and at this same time i'm going to reconnect my inverter because the inverter is still going to be connected directly to my battery here we go this is the last oh my god i'm so nervous oh i wonder if this is even going to fit this is going to reach it won't reach i want you to know that every time you're away [Music] so when i touch this to the positive my renigi charge controller should turn on it turns on oh holy scared the out of me jesus okay it didn't hurt don't worry so if it's all hooked up what should happen is my lights should turn on i have my fuse in oh my gosh oh my gosh all right today is finally the day where i put my solar panels on the top of my van it feels like it's been a long few weeks to get to this point after having my charge controller shattered and then my solar panel shattered but here we are and this is also perfect timing because i am traveling for about a week and a half and i'm leaving tomorrow this will be great because everything's gonna work out beautifully nothing else is gonna break and then i'm gonna have power for my travels right yeah okay basically the first priority right now for me is to grab a ladder and plan out where my solar panels are going to fit just kidding i actually have to transfer all of my stuff from my shattered solar panel onto my new solar panel so that's what i have to do first [Music] and now i can bring them to my roof and start planning [Music] i am going to go under and open this fan all the way and make sure that my solar panels aren't too close to the fan and right now i'm working on this deciding exactly where i want to place this okay so this is the device that my two cables will run through and then down into my van through so this is just a really protective piece and it has these nice little cable like inserts so that it's really waterproof and protected this does not come with the 200 watt premium kit i had to order this separately this does come with the other kit the 200 watt not premium kit which is kind of annoying renegy you're great i love you you've been so helpful i will use you again if i need any more solar and i think that you should include this with the premium kit all right so i am going to go under i'm going to open that fan and i'm going to also see if this is an okay space for me to drill into and i'm going to try to reach you and turn you off all right i'm going to start with drilling a hole here [Music] everything under there is looking great all right i'm just finishing working in this rubber grommet that is wonderful so this one is my positive i'm gonna go under there pull it through a bit and label it cool so that will be like that this is my my negative oh wait is that right yeah so i think i'm ready to put this down on here i'm just gonna go for it because right now i don't know if that's a good idea or a bad idea but i'll find out after the fact and then we'll figure it out i have a damp cloth here just to make sure everything is really clean and will stick well so i am going to put a whole lot on the bottom of this i want it to be super super sealed no turning back now a little wet finger trick and lick your finger and kind of adjust some of it okay i'm gonna let that chill for a little bit so what renegy provides you with are they're self-tapping screws ouch and they're really hot ow so they provide you with self-tapping screw with this little plastic washer which is cool and i think that they're going to work fine so instead of just relying on two screws per bracket i did purchase some of this really strong construction grade 3m tape this is supposed to be really really good stuff there are individuals that will not use the screws at all and they will only rely on 3m tape i'm not that confident in this tape so i'm gonna do both i will link this below unfortunately i think i ordered the smallest size tape possible i'm basically gonna prep all of my surfaces and then i'm gonna put this tape down and then i'll screw my brackets in right now at this point nothing is connected that's what i think is smart and don't only take my word just watch other videos too [Music] oh no oh no oh no my connection is under there oh my gosh this is like this is like the fan incident all over again all right where i'm at currently i just got that second solar panel glued down taped down so right now i'm working down here with my electrical system i just want to clean everything up once the wires are organized then i will connect the positive and negative to my charge controller and then i'll connect my solar panels on top if everything's working well i will screw them in and then it will be done yay just because of the space and how things were moving through my walls it made sense for me to bring my solar panel cables through here i attached them up here i decided to leave um just an organized loop here and then i did attach the positive negative here to my charge controller just like i did before all right here we go last connection [Music] all right let's go see if this is pulling in energy and if it is i'm going to tuck this connection under my panel but i'm so nervous what if it's not working okay you see that little sun solar panel going into my battery okay i'm gonna look at my little bluetooth app and see if it all shows up on my app found it connected it and so now i'm going to hit monitoring and i don't see anything okay oh oh check that out it's all working so well now that everything is working and it's pulling in power and all that good stuff now i just need to finish attaching my panels to my pants [Music] i'm gonna top every single one of these screws with sickaflex and around each of the brackets and then i'll show you the uh the the final result okay so i put a lot more on it than i intended to but that's okay this is what kind of the final brackets look like so i think i'm done up here i'm super happy with it everything went really well as it should have because it hadn't gone well for the prior three weeks i i am just so excited to have power since that last clip i have traveled 1 000 miles across the country to wisconsin that's where i'm at right now it's also why i'm wearing a coat and why it's not 80 degrees outside throughout that travel i was able to work from my van charge everything that i needed to i checked out my solar panels after the travels and they are very secure they are not going anywhere all of my electrical system is still working beautifully and i absolutely love my setup it's exactly what i need i hope that by breaking down each of these steps it has helped you understand and know how you want to fit together your own solar energy system so i got my 200 watt premium kit there's a little sale going on i ended up getting it for about 914 dollars and that included my inverter and my battery so just under a thousand dollars there that brings the total for my van build so far to 4 162 and 48 cents that was a big investment for me and i feel really good about it being installed and working well and unfortunately i had to spend a little bit more money because of my solar panel all right guys thanks so much for sticking around watching another video of the van build akilah's not out here with me but she says hello she also says thank you for all of the compliments on how cute and wonderful she is if you are not already subscribed make sure that you do subscribe to keep up with the van build and all of the adventures that will happen after i think that's all i want to say the rain is starting to uh fall a little bit harder so i am going to go and i will see you next week for a question and answer video when we wake hear [Music] just begun

Channel: Linnea & Akela

Views: 107,764

Keywords: how to install solar campervan, how much solar power do you need van build, solar power van build, how to install fuse block van build, how to install breaker box van build, 200 watt renogy premium kit, how to connect solar panels van build, campervan solar installation, campervan 200 watt solar install, van build 200 watt solar install, fuse block with solar set up, fuse block and solar set up, solar install for dummies, DIY solar installation van build, DIY campervan solar

Id: RpB_Z3rtCI8

Length: 25min 26sec (1526 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020