12V Beginner Friendly Solar System Packages! Budget and Performance

*12V Budget Package:*

*12V Performance Package (affiliate links):*

*48V System for Beginners Parts List and Schematic:*

0:00 Intro
0:20 Budget System
1:26 Performance System
3:36 Fusing And Scaling
4:23 Solar Panel Voltage
5:01 Beginner Setup Tips
5:24 48V Systems for Beginners

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*Does off-grid solar confuse you?*
Check out my DIY friendly website for solar system blueprints and current product recommendations, and so much more!

*Join our DIY solar community*
#1 largest solar forum on the internet for beginners and professionals alike:

*Check out my Book*
Best-selling and beginner-friendly guide to 12V off-grid solar!

*My Favorite Online Stores for DIY Solar Products:*

*Signature Solar*
Offgrid One-Stop-Shop. Best Value 48V LiFePO4, Victron and Offgrid Specific Heat Pumps:

*Current Connected*
SOK, Victron, Mr.Cool Heatpumps and High Quality Components. Fantastic customer support:

*WattCycle*
My favorite 12V budget battery!:

*Epoch Batteries*
My favorite high-quality 12V battery:

*Watts247*
Need international shipping for large batteries and big inverters? Check them out!

*Renogy*
A classic 12V solar store that has been around for ages! DC to DC Chargers and more!

*Rich Solar*
Renogy's biggest competitor! Similar products, but at a better price:

*Battery Hookup*
Cheap cell deals
5% off code: diysolar

*Contact Information:*

*FTC Disclosure Statement and Disclaimers:*
Every video includes paid promotion or sponsorship. Some links on this youtube channel may be affiliate links. We may get paid if you buy something or take an action after clicking one of these. My videos are for educational purposes only. Information is subject to change/update at any time. Electricity is DANGEROUS and can kill. Be smart and use common sense :) DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program,

[WillProwse]

*12V Budget Package (affilliate links)*



*12V Performance Package:*





*48V System for Beginners Parts List and Schematic:*

0:00 Intro
0:20 Budget System
1:26 Performance System
3:36 Fusing And Scaling
4:23 Solar Panel Voltage
5:01 Beginner Setup Tips
5:24 48V Systems for Beginners

*Does off-grid solar confuse you?*
Check out my DIY friendly website for solar system packages and product recommendations, and so much more!

*Join our DIY solar community*
#1 largest solar forum on the internet for beginners and professionals alike:

*Check out my Book*
Best-selling and beginner-friendly guide to 12V off-grid solar!



*My DIY Solar Equipment Recommendations (Constantly updated! Check here first):*








*My Favorite Online Stores for DIY Solar Products:*

*Signature Solar*
Offgrid One-Stop-Shop. Best Value 48V LiFePO4, Victron and Offgrid Specific Heat Pumps:

*Current Connected*
SOK, Victron, Mr.Cool Heatpumps and High Quality Components. Fantastic customer support:

*Litime*
My favorite 12V budget battery!:

*Epoch Batteries*
My favorite high-quality 12V battery:

*Renogy*
A classic 12V solar store that has been around for ages! DC to DC Chargers and more!

*Rich Solar*
Renogy's biggest competitor! Similar products, but at a better price:

*Battery Hookup*
Cheap cell deals
5% off code: diysolar

*Contact Information:*


*FTC Disclosure Statement and Disclaimers:*
Every video includes some form of paid promotion or sponsorship. Some links on this youtube channel may be affiliate links. We may get paid if you buy something or take an action after clicking one of these. My videos are for educational purposes only. Information is subject to change/update at any time. Electricity is DANGEROUS and can kill. Be smart and use common sense :)

DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program,
An affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com

[dukeman]

Will, finally a beginner video, us dummies can understand. You have to understand that not many viewers out here have the ability you have. To you, this is 2+2=4 stuff, to me and others we come up with 2+2=5. So please continue to make this type of video, it is such a great help. Especially when you showed the 48 volt array, wow, I had no idea the simplicity and the much lower cost one can build such a system for. Had you not shown it, I would have never known. I implore you to continue educating us with this type of video. Thank you and see you in the next one Will.

[NikeHM]

This is going to help A LOT of people! Thanks Will. 👍

[thefpvlife]

Looking forward to when you reach 1, 000, 000 subs. You deserve it and more for all your help.

[pyronmasters]

Love the budget one not for the price, it’s the simplicity.

[mrratskins]

With beginner videos like these you are providing the low rungs on the ladder which is very helpful to people who aren't already halfway up the ladder. There is an art to explaining concepts in greatly simplified terms. It is not as easy as people think. I say that as a former college math teacher. There were a few absolute beginner opportunities that I think could be included in this video. You know and I know what an inverter and charge controller are, but maybe an extremely short definition would be helpful to the neophyte. BTW, got your book a year or two ago. Good stuff and written in a very understandable manner.

[josephwheeler]

I have been following you for years. I still am not ready to get my own system but it's not because I don't know enough. Your videos are simple but give all the information necessary. Thanks for your hard work.

[sarahloy]

Thanks. These simple systems are great for those of us who have no experience working with any of this. I really appreciate it.

[zilfondel]

Holy guacamole, you are the man. You are providing a treasure trove of information for people to be self-sufficient… just amazing how many equipment reviews and DIY configurations you are providing to people.

[BradCagle]

People love these beginner friendly DIY videos. Great job!

[egomaniac]

Thank you for posting this. I don't think people who are into this sort of thing remember how big the learning curve is. With SO MUCH info out there it's hard to know where to start and sometimes you just need it explained to you SIMPLY on how to begin

[paulclinton]

Your channel provides incredible value to people wanting/needing an honest/educated review of solar focused products! This channel along with Project Farm are such treasure troves that I truly appreciate. Truly thank you for doing what you do!

[JohnnyNubs]

I just sent your video to like 10 ppl i know! You broke it down so well even they can understand....ooops i mean you did a great job thank you for your videos we appreciate them very much!😁

[goingagainstthegrain]

Thanks, Will! We've always relied on the adage "you always get what you pay for." 👍

[mckrunchytoast]

I bought your book and sir, you're such a thorough and insightful individual. I dealt a lot with AC power in my life but, solar and DC I haven't had to touch much. Your book is indispensable in my adventure of building out a solar setup for my new bus conversion.

[ChaJ]

A good travel voltage missed is 24V DC. The reasons I have for 24V are:
1. You can easily get electric coolers / portable fridges that can handle up to 30V DC. Seeing you are going to want to have the cooler / fridge hooked up to the battery the whole trip, you really don't want any lossy conversions, just straight into the battery. I have never seen an electric cooler / portable fridge designed for 48V DC. Especially if you are car camping, you want minimal stuff to bring and a cooler directly connected to a battery is simple and running off of a 24V LFP battery directly is very efficient for these electric coolers / portable fridges, meaning less bulk to lug around and fill your car / truck / SUV with. The portable fridge I have for example, which is a bit on the larger of the portable side while running off of a 24V LFP battery I got back in 2009 uses from 25 to 30 Ah a day (~30W continuous average) depending on weather when directly connected to the LFP battery.

2. If you have hobbies like R/C aircraft, cars, boats, or the very popular multi-rotor drones, the common hobby charger can take up to ~30V DC. Even if the max is 28V, LFP batteries go down from 29.2V to 28V pretty quickly. Just dump a few Wh of charge overboard out of a kWh scale LFP battery and it is down below 28V. (My old 24V LFP battery has been re-wired to be charge-able by the hobby charger, so I adjusted the charging profile to stop at 28V instead of 29.2V. It is just this is not the only way to do it and have balanced cells.) So now you can hook your hobby charger into the battery directly. Especially if you have a high powered charger and you charge multiple battery packs for your hobby R/C stuff in parallel, you really want a direct battery connection to your charger. These hobby chargers are just buck-boost converters with resister banks for the balance leads to balance the cells out. With a 24V LFP battery (29.2V max) and 25V max 6 cell (6S) LiPo packs, these buck-boost converters in the chargers hardly work at all to charge the batteries. I have done 1 kW charge rates on a compact charger and the fans on the charger didn't even kick on until the end of charge when it was balancing the cells when charging off of a 24V LFP battery pack. If however you try using 12V with these chargers to charge 6S battery packs, the charge rate slows down by a lot and the fans kick on as the charger has to boost the voltage instead of basically just letting it flow across to the battery being charged. If you decided to go AC power from the battery, then you have all of this crap you have to bring like a high powered inverter and a power supply to supply the hobby charger with the correct DC voltage and sized up to kW scale for fast charging of packs. It makes no sense to do it this way when you can just have a direct hookup to the LFP battery.

3. You can get USB DC buck chargers. If you are going out somewhere, often you don't really need AC power at all. Say you are car camping. Often it is the case that you just have some USB powered / charged by USB devices with you. So leave the big AC inverter at home and just charge up your USB devices like your cell phone, flashlights, head lamp, LED lantern, etc., off of a USB DC buck charger. You can get these that run off of 24V DC just fine. Actually, if you want to do USB-C PD charging of a higher powered device, say you brought your Nintendo Switch with you, you kind of need 24V to do the buck conversion to 20V to properly power the device. Granted USB-C PD 24V DC chargers at this point are their own single port devices, so you still need a separate regular multi-port USB charger.

4. If say you are car camping, you may want to setup a portable solar panel to keep the LFP battery charged, especially if you are camping for several days completely off grid. While some camping places are going to be completely covered over in trees, there are plenty, especially if your starting place is Los Vegas, that have a clear view of the Sun. Say your primary power draw is the cooler, your second most is periodic use of a hobby charger, and then a little more is used by USB chargers, you don't need than much in the way of solar power to keep the battery from going dead on a multi-day trip. If you are camping, you probably have propane or another fuel like white gas for other things like cooking and heating and maybe even a bundle of firewood for the heating part.

5. If you have a 24V battery that works well for all of this other stuff and it does the job a lot better than 12V, then you want to hook up an inverter to the 24V battery for whenever you do want / need AC power. So then you are looking at a 24V inverter, not 12V and not 48V. I am finding something like a 3, 000W inverter is actually a pretty useful size to have around the house for emergency backup power as what you really need is to keep a handful of things going like your fridge (granted a fridge can easy go 10 hours with no power as long as you keep the door closed), some basic electronics for communication and such, maybe even to watch some YouTube videos to pass the time, and say a small inverter based window AC or small 115V mini-split heat pump for single room cooling. It could also be mentioned that you could convert 24V down to 12V as well, but really for a portable setup the goal is as few conversions as possible and especially the big ticket items are direct to device, not intermediary conversions. For all of this other on the go stuff, something like a 24V 100Ah battery is a pretty nice size to have. For the emergency power use case while hooked into a 3, 000W inverter, something like a window AC will still drain it down pretty quickly, but it is still useful if say the power outage is only going to be a few hours or say it is longer, maybe you focus on powering your fridge for a while. Then you can also put power hits on the inverter like running a toaster oven or microwave oven to cook / heat some food. Or maybe as you can get this 24V 100 Ah LFP batteries for as littles as $450 on Amazon, you get a second one and primarily use the second battery for additional capacity during a power outage and maybe even bursts of power all the way up to 3, 000W where with one you need to limit down to 2, 500W due to these batteries having a 100A max current draw from them.

Another thing to consider about the emergency power scenario is say instead of a second 24V 100Ah battery for another $450 - $550, you pick up a small inverter generator for say $600 (which there are 3200W continuous capable generators out for that price point), maybe you still want the battery - inverter setup in the loop, but a charger (or two) hooked into the generator charging the LFP battery while other things draw power from the battery simultaneously. A common example is most things in your kitchen, old hard starting fridge, blender, microwave oven, toaster oven, etc, are very bursty in their power consumption and even inverter based generators struggle with this even after turning off ECO mode. With such a charger - battery - inverter deal hooked into the generator, the generator can be set to ECO mode where it will burn far less fuel and then the charger - battery - inverter setup will handle the bursty loads in the house while the more gentle loads can be directly hooked to the generator. Also say you are using a 29.2V max 20A charger, well that can produce the extra 500W to max out a 3, 000W inverter with a single 24V 100Ah LFP battery. An example setup is you have your portable inverter generator outside with say an RV / travel trailer style higher amperage (say 30A) extension cord coming into your house into one room. That room has your Internet router, maybe some other electronic stuff in it, and an inverter based window AC. So you hang out in there, get the window AC blowing on you, and watch YouTube videos during the power outage. Then you have an extension cord going to your kitchen leading to a 24V LFP battery charger. That hooks into the battery which has a 3, 000W inverter hooked to it, and then your kitchen stuff is hooked into that. So you periodically go into your kitchen and get and make food and such. The generator outside is happy with all of this and purrs along in ECO mode. For night time for a multi-day outage, you shut off the generator for the night and a 24V 100Ah battery hooked to a 3, 000W inverter should go all night powering your fridge.

6. The wire gauge for doing this stuff with 12V gets pretty insane really fast. What I am talking about here is most stuff isn't drawing all that much power and even when you do get into drawing more power, the wire gauge for 24V is a lot less than it is for a 12V setup. Maybe another way to put it is 12V is really only good for low power and then it quickly becomes a cumbersome hassle, 24V I am finding is actually really practical for a lot of stuff and a big part of that are easier to work with wire gauges, especially when you still have portability in mind. Then 48V tends to narrow you back down to big high powered applications that are largely stationary. That large inverter and large server rack battery on a dolly setup may be something you wheel around a house, but when it comes to sticking it in the back of your car to take somewhere, it doesn't work out so well. If instead you have say a 24V 100Ah LFP battery, a wiring harness and associated standardized quick connectors hooked up to it allowing you to quickly hook up whatever you want to the battery, and then some portable devices to connect directly to the battery, that is something you can easily stick in the back of a car.

So maybe a future project, show a very portable 24V system with multiple things hooked into like described above. I think this could have a wide appeal.

[sevans]

Thanks for going back to the basics with updated information

[geraldwatkins]

I love this video. These kind of videos of yours got me started. This content is great for the beginner and can help convince regular people to dabble in solar. You are the leader in a solar revolution for the DIYer.

[shawnr]

Thank you for the lesson.

As someone who has built a couple of small off grid systems for lighting etc.

I recommend putting a switch between the panels and charge controller.

You can turn off the power coming in from the panels in the event of needing to do maintenance.

For me this makes me feel safer.

[habibifather]

Thank you for all the videos you've done, and thank you for so many beginner builds.