Charging Your Home Or Mobile Solar Battery Bank

This video training course from Steven Harris covers a tremendous amount of how to properly charge your home or mobile solar battery bank.

This overview video goes into more detail:

Below is a transcript from the above video if you prefer to read the information instead of listen:

My work, the amount of update I have, that’s underneath the solar charging and more updates for all the battery bank videos is incredible. It’s just over four hours, it’s broken up into many videos, I’ll go over to solar charging which is into for section on sections on its own boss, we’ll have an entire hour on powering your stuff off your vehicle, from under the hood to stuff inside the cab to clamping on and running the wire into the cab and how we did it when I was a development engineer how other people do it in the field. And I do an overview of all of the current 120 volt plug in the wall chargers out there for charging up your battery bank. I am on Amazon, eBay and other places. But your main focus is solar charging. And I was at a buddy’s place and we got him 26 340 watt solar panels. And he wanted to do a bunch of stuff with them. And I utilize that as an opportunity to make some videos as well as we go into charging non 12 volt power banks like 48 volt golf carts. And I’m also in rural North Carolina in the middle of nowhere, running my bugout trailer off of foldable solar panels, flexible solar panels. So the solar update really covers a lot. I got to watch the first section video in here. And it covers what I did what I’m doing it also covers and explains to you what is an MPPT charge controller multipoint power tracking charge controller. What does this do for you from the old way the pulse width modulation of silver tracking how does now I can put all my panels in series get a higher voltage use a much smaller wire. In fact, I use extension cords and run that DC voltage back to the MPPT charge controller which goes I don’t care you got 12 volt 2436 48 volt battery, or a custom lithium, I’ll charge it makes life a lot easier. And they fall in price a lot and gives you lots of flexibility. So we got to watch me first, we got the North Carolina logging road I was camped on literally a mile from any house. And the solar panels that I put out on the road there, if you call a road and trees blocked a lot of my solar so I only had X number of hours I have today was usable solar for me. Let’s put it that way. And I show you exactly how much I got from that and everything, how I used it. And my other methods of charging, it’s really good. I go into a lot of showing you a lot of things about charging the 48 volt golf carts out a golf cart as a 48 volt battery bank. Well, we’re using 48 volt inverters I show you how to convert from 48 volts to 12 volts to use a 12 volt inverter and we’re doing this on the middle of a gun range in the middle of nowhere. And we got fans and lights and charging and everything else going on off of 120 and off of 12 volts off the 48 volt golf cart, it doesn’t matter it could be a 36 volt golf cart 48 and odd ball voltage, this little item off of amazon it costs about 35 bucks just as I don’t care what you’re giving me I’m going to give you 12 Point to five volts DC and my inverter goes oh I got 12.25 volts DC here’s 120 It’s awesome. I also show you something that you’re not going to see hardly anywhere else I go directly from solar panels to an inverter no battery and I show you this and what is the advantages and disadvantages and what applications you might want to be using this and so I go into this extensively All in all, if you add everything up there’s over $8,000 in hardware that I show you that is in this video now my friend bought a bunch of it and I bought the other portion of it all the flexible solar panels are mine the charger everything with the blackout trailer as mine golf carts or his solar panels that he got her he is and you know some of the one of the charge controllers is 900 bucks and he wanted specifically that one because it’s a much higher voltage Gen and we can run them up to 250 volts DC have solar panels into it, whereas a lot of the other ones are 145 volts open circuit or less. And yes, I explain to you exactly what is solar voltage open circuit and what solar operating voltage and minimum voltage and everything else And you get to see me run three kilowatts of solar directly into a grid tie inverter directly into the grid of his shop, because he’s got voltage issues in the shop because it’s so much more remote. So the same thing that’s using the golf carts for the mobile battery banks and the solar charging of the mobile battery banks, I eat the golf carts. Also, when it’s not charging those, it’s it’s this is not done for saving money in the frickin least Okay, his solar panels are powering his shop with the grid. And that’s because his shop only has 100 amp service to it, it’s a lot more remote and the property and when the large air compressor kicks on, it drops the voltage down. All of the computer UPS is have to go off and hold the computer up until everything equalizes out. And that does not happen with the solar panels when they’re on there. Because they’re supplying so much extra power. It doesn’t pull down the shop when the air compressor which is seven and a half horsepower kicks on. Like I said, so it’s not dumb for economic or saving money. He’s feeding energy backward should the electric company the electric companies not sending them a check? The vast majority of that is bullshit. Okay, grid tie inverting and doing grid tie. But net metering is not easy. Many times it’s very cost prohibitive from the power company because they don’t want to pay you for the power. Nor do they want the extra headache nerdly want your system on their system at all. So forget about the bullshit of running my meter backwards, dude. Forget about it. Okay, it is a red herring, it is a distraction. It’s mostly bullshit, except for some people in some areas with high levels of expertise. And really, you’re never ever going to get your money back or your solar panels. Unless you’re a socialist place like California where they’ve artificially inflated the rates between 25 and 35 cents a kilowatt hour. Instead of like what we’re paying in Virginia 11.3 cents a kilowatt hour, or you’re in the Bahamas, or Hawaii or someplace where electricity is made with diesel fuel, and big diesel generators, then you can get your money back. But that’s only because your solar panels are made with three sun electricity in Japan or China, and then taken to an area by a ship where you have 45 cent electricity. So don’t be fooled by the faulty economics of such a thing. Now, if you wanted to talk about how much it would cost them, it would cost them over $30,000 to have had new electric trenched from where it is on the pole through his big house, and then out to the shop. Okay between you retrench relay cable retile that and everything else sealed all in that we’ve been over $30,000 Just to give him more power to the shop. So he didn’t have the voltage drop issue. And he solved this pretty much with about 3300 and solar panels and 1000 about 1300 and a grid tie inverter plus they’re doing their own mounting so they’re saving there. And out of the plus now, they also charge the golf carts. And again, it’s not for any economic it’s because they’re in an area that’s been hit by a cat three or cat four hurricane and he wants to have his own power source in the form of the golf carts. And whatever he’s doing. Plus, he can charge up the golf cart, put it on a trailer, drive it to a friend’s place and say here you go. There’s an inverter on the back of the golf cart. powered the person’s house from it. So don’t dismiss the ability and the power of the golf cart. I go over all the flexibility all the permutation all the combinations all the different configurations all the what ifs Harris diagrams and explanations hands on you see everything we do and everything me explaining and everything. You see me using inexpensive MPPT chargers expensive MPPT chargers, what the difference is which ones you can get away with and what situations and how we were doing it out there at guarantee you it is if you want to know about solar for your battery bank, this is it okay also does no such thing as a solar generator. It is a made up term to separate you from your money. It’s bullcrap. There is no such thing as a solar generator, it is a false made up word. You can use solar energy through solar panels to recharge your battery bank, you can do this to save on your stored gasoline, but in no way shape or form is that really truly a generator. And the only and I go over a lot of different ways of recharging your battery. You see me charge my battery bank on the North Carolina login road off of 1000 watt inverter generator that I’m running out about 400 Watts majority of the time and how I just put sometimes a quart of fuel in it and let it run empty. All it does is put energy into my battery banks. I did that on days where I didn’t have enough solar. God forbid you know what, those solar panels don’t work with a crap when it’s cloudy. I guess that’s why they’re not called Cloud panels or rain rain panels, or shade panels or nighttime panels or moonlight panels or star light panels. I guess there’s a reason why they’re called solar panels. And so you’ll see me go over this extensively in the video and you are going to learn a lot. It is worth every penny. I will save you so much time so much effort so much money from watching this. You’re going to know exactly what to do exactly what not to do and exactly how to do it and hook it up rather than hitting every limb on the tree as you fall all the way down and then hit the ground

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