So a few months ago, we built a volt solar power system with a grow watt, all in one in a volt lithium, iron phosphate server rack battery, and this system has been running since I built it for that video. But in this video, we’re going to talk about volt solar power systems and how to set them up safely, and if you do it properly, never have to handle a high voltage conductor ever. And there are lots of benefits of 48 V over 24 V. So let’s cover some of the benefits. 1st off, massive cost savings. The solar charge controller in these units is limited by current, so whenever you have a higher voltage, you’re going to typically have double, or more than double, the solar input capacity for the same price. Next copper is not cheap. So when you’re running a higher voltage, you’ll have to carry less current, and that means that you don’t have to spend nearly as much money on wiring next. Having a higher voltage means all your system components are a little bit more efficient. Everything in your system will heat up more when you have a lower voltage. So keep that in mind. Now, the only downside in my opinion, of 48 V is that when the battery is fully charged, it’s above 50 V, and that can actually kill you. It can overcome the resistance of your skin and allow current to flow through your heart. If you were to touch both battery terminals with one hand and then the other hand, if it flows through your heart and you have more than, like, .1 ants or something like that, you’re going to be dead. So when these batteries are fully charged, you need to be very careful. Also, if you follow the protocol for building these systems, you’ll never ever touch 48 volt conductors ever. So all you have to do is know how to work with 48 V in your set. But keep in mind that when these batteries are fully charged, they can kill you. It’s very rare. And people will argue against me and say, oh, I’ve touched a hundred volts, no problem. But if you get enough current to flow through your heart, you are instantly dead. But that is the only downside, and it’s not that hard to build a system without touching high voltage. With these all in one systems. Previously, you’d have circuit breakers, you have your shun you’d have all this stuff on a board, and if you were to fall on that board, or if it wasn’t protected, you could get a shock, and that was dangerous. But now we have these all in one systems and server, right batteries with a circuit breaker built in. So all you need is two wires coming from this unit down to the battery, and then you connect your solar conductors, and that’s it. So let’s get started. We’re going to connect this 48 little grow watt to this 48 volt server, right battery, in the safest way possible. So step one is turn off the battery so that you do not have power at these terminals. Once a circuit breaker is off, there is no energy potential at either one. Now, if you’re a beginner and you want to ensure that this battery is turned off, use a volt meter and test the potential across the battery terminals. And you can see we have Millevolts, so this is safe to work with. This is practically 0 V. Now that the battery is off, we can remove these battery terminals. Next step is connecting cables to the inverter. You always want to connect the cables to the inverter 1st and not the battery. If something were to go wrong with the battery and you switched it on, you could have loose conductors, and that’s very dangerous. So always connect the conductors to the load 1st and then to the battery 2nd. And these two terminals are where the battery connects. And on this unit, positive is on the left, and negative is on the right. Now, the battery cables are attached, and we need to tighten it down with a ten millimeter socket, and do not overtight in them. Now, the next step is connecting these to the battery. Because the battery is off, it’s safe to work with. 1st we’re going to put the positive conductor on the positive terminal, and then tighten it down, and then the negative conductor, and then tighten it down. Now, you do not want to turn this breaker on, because it could turn on this Inverter, and then this inverter can create a high voltage. So do not flip this breaker on until you are completely done building this system. Now, the next step is connecting solar power to this solar input up here. And this is the solar input right here. We have a positive on the left and the negative on the right. And in my opinion, the solar panels are the most dangerous part of this system, because solar panels cannot be turned turned off like this battery, or like the inverter for the A-C output. So when you connect the solar panels, you have to do it in the proper way so you’re never touching a high voltage. And to keep this as safe as possible, I recommend people taking an M-C four extension cable, cutting it right in the middle, and then stripping the ends and then shoving these into the terminals, entitening them down. This way, you can connect any solar array that you wish with these adapters. The hardest part is knowing which one to put into, the positive and the negative. If you look at the solar panels, this is the positive and this is the negative. So you want to reverse that. So when you’re connecting it to this invertor charger, this is the positive in this is the negative. So we’re going to just shov these in here and tighten them down. So 1st I put the negative one in, and now we’re going to put the positive one in, and then tighten it down all the way. After you tighten them down, you need to test them by pulling on them to ensure that they have a good connection. Now, typically, I recommend a single series string for simplicity for these small systems. If you’re building a large system, you’re going to have to use a combiner box, especially with these grow odds, because they have a max input voltage of like 140 v DC. That means you’ll probably have two or three parallel strings, and you need a combiner box to put those together. Please watch my video on combiner boxes and how to set them up. Also for safety reasons, you can add a disconnect box to your solar power system. And all this does is it’s a switch between your solar panels and your system, and there’s an input and an output, and then a switch. Before you work with this, ensure that it’s on the off position. And then you can plug your solar panels and your input conductors. But for this one, if I plug it into the output and then I plug in solar panels over here, I’ll be able to disconnect it whenever I please. Now we’re going to connect some solar power to this system, so these are connected to the solar panels on the roof of this trailer that produce 80 v But before you connect these, you want to test the voltage. If you give this unit too high a voltage, it will destroy it. So set up your little volt meter, and these have these are producing 94 V open circuits, so it will be about 80 V when we connect it, but 95 V is less than 150 V, which this unit can handle, so we can safely connect these to our system. We’re going to connect these solar panels to the input of the DC isolator switch, or the solar panel cut off, but do not turn it on yet. Leave it in the off position. Now, the battery and the solar panels are connected, but you do not want to turn anything on quite yet. We still need to attach our loads to the ac output of the inverter. That’s done with connecting conductors to these three terminals. Over here, we have the ground in the middle, we have line or alive or hot. And then over here we have the neutral conductor. This inverter can output 3000 watts in this, 25 amps at the output. So a good size wire for this terminal would be a tin gauge wire. And you can use that tin gauge wire to supply a small panel over here. Now, if you do not plan to use the full output capacity of your inverter, you can safely use an extension cord. I do it all the time. It’s probably not to code, but if you do not exceed the max audit rating of your cord um, so for a twelve gauge extension cord, it’s going to be 18 hundred watts, you should be good to go. And for my system, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m only using this to power an air conditioner, so we’re going to wire it up with this extension cord as an example, push it up through this little hole. Now we have the ground, the live or the hot lead, in the middle, in the neutral, or white on the far right. And it’s hard to see the black conductor, but it’s right in the middle. Now we can plug this air conditioner right in. Now that everything is connected, we can safely turn the battery on to a flip the breaker. Next, we want to turn on the all in one system. There is a small switch down here, so you want to flip it on. Now the screen is on. It shows the voltage of our battery, and after about a minute or so, it will turn on the inverter output. So now these terminals are alive with high voltage, so you should be very careful. And just now, it turned on my air conditioner. It’s actually working. Now. We’re going to turn on the solar panel power by flipping the switch on the D-C isolator. So just turn it until it’s in the on position, and it shows the voltage that’s coming in from the solar panels. But it’s not charging quite yet, and I think it’s because these batteries at too high of a state of charge. So let’s go through the settings and see what we have, and try to set it up a little bit to hold down the interbutton. Now, for study number one, we need to change this to S-B-U, and then press enter, and then go to setting two. 60 amps is good to go down. Setting three Appliance. that’s good. So go down and then read the manual and see what you need for your system. For me, the most important thing that I like to set is the low voltage disconnect net, setting number 21. And it set at 42 V, which is fine. So when this battery goes down to 42 V, it will turn off the loads, or the inverter output. And then study number 19 is the charging absorption in 56.4. Is perfect. And then the next study number 20 is the float voltage, which is 54, which is totally fine. That’s pretty much it. We are running in an air conditioner, and we’re charging the battery with solar when the battery becomes depleted. Now, there’s more settings I can talk about, but I’m going to make another video for that, because there is a lot that I can talk about here. And every single system is very different, so everyone should read the manual and go through every setting and set it up for what you want. Now, if this battery is too small, you can always add more in parallel, but you need to ensure that everything is off. So disconnect the solar, turn off every single battery, and turn off the inverter, then you can connect more batteries, and then flip the batteries on 1st, flip the invertor on 2nd, and then flip on the solar 3rd. And I don’t think it gets easier or safer than this. These batteries nowadays are so easy to use because you don’t have to wire anything up. Each battery pack has its own shunt, has its own communication in its own breaker, so it’s only two battery cables going up to the unit. Now, one thing to know is, if you have more than two batteries, I recommend using A-T class fuse. The amount of current that these can produce when in parallel can be quite substantial, because the internal resistance of this chemistry is very low, so you can have a huge rush of current. It could be tens of thousands of amps, and it will still disconnect. Also, if you have multiple batteries connected in parallel, it’s a very good idea to use a bus bar system on your server, rock or next to your system, however you see fit. So however, you connect the batteries to this inverter, you want to slap A-T class fuse on those supply conductors as close to the bus bars as possible. But yeah, I’ll make another example system of that when I have more batteries. But yeah, you should always use T class fuses for lithium are in phosphate. For large sized systems. These small breakers do work well if you use just an individual pack with one of these batteries. And if this is all you need, you’re good to go. But keep in mind, if you start building large battery banks, you need tea classifuses. No matter what, this pretty much it. I don’t think it gets any easier than this. This is a very simple system, and if you follow the protocol, you’ll never touch a high voltage that can hurt you. So yeah, I hope you guys like the video. Please let me know in the common section below. There’s lots of variations to the system and lots of things that we could add on here, but I want it to be simple for beginners, and this is a stand alone system. This is all some people need to know how to build, so we can make it very complex. And I could go into all the details, but I wanted to make a basic 48 volt system in this video. So please be nice in the common section when you try to criticize this. And that’s pretty much it. Thank you so much for watching it. And I will see in the next video bite,