🛒 We Recommend Shopping At: • Signature Solar: signaturesolar.com/?ref=thesolarlab • Use Code: THESOLARLAB50 for $50 Off Your Order • Shop Solar: shopsolarkits.com/?ref=TheSolarLab • Use Code: THESOLARLAB50 for $50 Off Your Order 🤓 Watch the rest of the videos in this playlist: ruclips.net/p/PL23_m8HBj7OJQSt1fGveO_rQgn4-zYBB0 0:00 - Intro 0:29 - 60 Second Electricity Lesson 1:39 - 12V Batteries 3:06 - 24V Batteries 3:53 - 48V Batteries 5:31 - Summary Curious about the differences between 12V, 24V, and 48V batteries for your solar power system? In this video, we break down the pros and cons of each voltage, how they affect performance, cost, and which one is best for your setup. 🔔 Subscribe to our RUclips Channel: @TheSolarLab ⚡ FOLLOW US: instagram.com/thesolarlab/ www.tiktok.com/@thesolarlab 👨🏼💻 The Solar Lab: www.thesolarlab.com We maintain an affiliate relationship with some of the products reviewed, which means we get a small percentage of a sale if you click our links, at no cost to our viewers.
I built my system back in 2020 48v components were hard to find and expensive. Back at that time Will Prowse was recommending 24v system for medium system like my 250 square ft cabin. I bought a Big Battery 24v 170ah lifepo4 ,2000w inverter and 1000 watts of panels. I use it about it about 120-150 days a year and I'm using the exact system I started with and no down time.
Also charge controllers are far more effective at 48V than at 12V. A 20A charge controller at 12.8V can handle up to 256W worth of solar panels. That SAME controller at 51.2V can handle over 1000W (assuming a controller that does 12/24/36/48V of course, but many do these days). Just as an example. Convenient kitchen appliances... Microwave, induction tea kettle, toaster oven, induction "burner", well pump.... the list goes on. Best to just go straight to 48V (51.2V LiFePO4) in most situations. In fact, I would only consider 12V at far lower wattages than the channel recommends. If its less than 500W then 12V is an option. If its more, or you might scale higher than 500W, then I'd go straight to 48V. At 48V, 2 AWG main battery and inverter wiring nets you 100A @ 51.2V = 5000W of continuous power without anything even getting warm to the touch, let alone hot. And all the solar panel string and charge controller output wiring can be 10 AWG. The only real gotchas with 48V is that (A) You need to be a bit more up on your electronics skills. (B) Getting any fusing and breakers right is more important. And (C) you need to pay more attention the solar panel topology. The best charge controllers are buck controllers (Victron's for example) which means that to work properly with a 48V system the solar strings have to generate roughly 65VDC or higher "operating voltage". --- For string voltages I shoot for at least 70V. Higher if partial shading might be an issue. My go-to charge controller is thus something like a Victron 150/35 for the voltage range it supports rather than a Victron 100/20. A single 150/35 can handle 1800W worth of generation all by its lonesome. You can do this with any solar panel wattage but you need to figure out how many in series you need to get decent results, plus one more to help deal with partial shading situations. Even 25W panels would work, but you would need 4 x 25W in series to develop a decent voltage for a 48V system. Similarly for other small panels. When you get to more serious panels... 100W you typically need 3 x 100W in series (but if they are low-voltage 100W panels you'd still need 4). 200W panels you would also typically want 3 in series. Higher than that the voltages are higher so typically residential panels would need only 2 in series. My go-to is always 48V. I only consider 12V for very very small systems and only consider 24V in very special cases. My default is 48V these days. -Matt
I’ve been running a Trace 4048 at our remote cabin for over 23 years. The batteries lasted 22 years. With a higher voltage there is less current going through the battery so the batteries internal resistance is less. We used only 48 v inverters in telecommunications. I worked in electronics most of my work career.
@@Chris_at_Home The old trace gear is some of the best ever made. Unfortunately when the company was bought out, the gear quality went down a lot and they created a lot of confusion by using the same product names. The closest you can come to that old pre-buyout trace gear these days would be something like the Victron Multiplus II series of inverters, and Victron charge controllers. Which I love. -Matt
What about safety considerations for the beginners that this video seems aimed at? Is it much easier to get yourself in trouble/danger handling 48V stuff? What are the most important safety cautions for the beginner? If that kind of info isn't in that playlist you mentioned, perhaps it would be a good candidate for another video.
Like getting hurt wise everything under 60volts is pretty much the same level of safety. Starting fires type safety the voltage really doesn’t matter 12v will burn down a house just as good as 480v.
Appreciate the video. Good info, explained in a simple and clear manner. What if I can save several hundred dollars on a multi battery setup and just run the batteries in series to get 48V?
I wish 24V was a lot more popular than it currently is, makes a lot more sense than 12V for ~1kW stuff 24V is ideal for affordable and efficient DC-DC power conversion in the 500W-1.5kW range: heaps of cheap MOSFETs and integrated power stages to choose from that don't compromise much on switching performance and ON-resistance compared to what you'd need for equivalent 12V systems. It should be a no-brainer upgrade from the manufacturing side of things apart from more cells in series being more potential points of failure. Of course, that will never compete against the vast market for 48V stuff that stems from telecomms using 48V switchgear for 70+ years to dodge needing to get all of their techs fully licensed for electrical work.
The one down side of higher voltage is the battery packs get heavier to the point where you can't pick them up i.e. 100lbs or more for 48 volt 100ah battery. Also the battery management needs to monitor more cells in series so there are more little wires running around and more connections between cells to keep tight. Then there's the arcing at higher voltage with DC you need to be really careful.
Also higher voltages require less guage/thinner cables for the same wattage.. thats clearly wisible when using from heat... when voltage increases amperage decreases if watts stays same... thats why..
I can 2x this information. Don’t waste your time with 12v or 24v. Just go straight to 48volt batteries and inverters etc. If you need 12volts then use a step down converter from 48v to 12v. The options for 48v stuff is huge compared to 12v. JUST GO WITH A 48VOLT SYSTEM!!!! DONT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY. like me…. “Oh my rv and lots of its stuff is 12v so I’ll just buy a bunch of solar panels(6-200 watt) and 15kwh of 12v eg4 batteries and just a little 2000watt inverter to run my fridge 100% in a hurricane or if the power goes out.” Flash forward 7 months. “Man, I can fit like 11 more solar panels on my roof and prolly get rid of my generator and add 3 more batteries and then prolly power 2 air conditioners with all that solar. Oh goddamnit I need 0000 size cables and I can only get 3kva inverters and now I need 2 and gotta put them in splits phase and get a lynx distributor and more cables and. Fuck!”
Great video, you guys are fantastic. So if I purchase a small Sprinter RV with a 12 volt ac, a 120 volt refrigerator, propane cooktop, a tv, 12 volt led lights and some 120 outlets would I benefit from a 48 volt system?
Odd question… I want to boost my RV’s capacity as I use PC, Monitors, NAS, and other 120v devices like AC for months while traveling. What about inverter drain on a 48v system? I’m guessing that in addition to a step up inverter, I would also need to have a step down inverter too, as the 12v RV systems, refrigerator, lights, etc. run that. I know that I’ve powered everything down for the night and forgotten to turn the inverter off, and the drain is noticeable by morning. Does a 48v system require an inverter to be on 24x7 for the 12v RV systems?
No, inverters generate AC power. 48VDC to 12VDC does not use an inverter. You use a DC-DC converter though my recommendation for RVs is to have a DC-DC (48V to 12V) DC-DC charger instead of just a converter. With a DC-DC charger you add an additional 12.8V LiFePO4 battery on the 12V side. These are called "downbuffers". This helps a lot because then the charger only has to trickle-charge the battery (relatively low amps) while the battery sources all the power necessary to run the 12V systems... which depending on what you are running, such as auto-levlers and slides, might need a hundred amps to get going. The second reason for using a downbuffer battery setup instead of just a DC-DC converter is that any sort of failure between the 48V and the 12V busses will blow a fuse instead of putting 48V on the 12V bus and destroying all your 12V equipment. -Matt
1. A 120V battery could kill you; 120V DC is more likely to electrocute you than 120V AC, because the latter crosses zero 120 times a second. 2. You’d still need an inverter to power your AC appliances, so 120V DC doesn’t have a ton of benefit. 72V batteries are fairly common, but are also more likely to electrocute you than 48V. 50V DC is right around the threshold of “it might kill you, it might not”. 120V DC is well in the “it’ll probably kill you” territory.
@jimothy4j Yes, Nicola Tesla figured all this stuff out first!! He is the goat. Thomas Edison was a charlatan/business guy taught to us in elementary school.
The functional difference is that the 4 x 12V (12.8V LiFePO4) batteries in series are far, far less reliable than 4 x 48V (51.2V LiFePO4) batteries in parallel for the same storage capacity (assuming all else is equal and the batteries have the same storage capacity in watt-hours). For example, 4 x 51.2V 50Ah LiFePO4 batteries in parallel is comparable to 4x 12.8V 200Ah LiFePO4 batteries in series. Same weight, same overall capacity, but vast differences in reliability. -- * When you have four 12V batteries in series you need additional wiring for a whole-battery balancer to keep the four batteries balanced. Also, if you ever hit a LVP or OVP situation and cause one or more of the batteries to disconnect, it can actually take some effort to wake it back up. (when batteries are in parallel, they recover automatically from such disconnects, but not usually when they are in series). * Also, most people are going to have more than one battery and paralleling batteries adds a lot of redundancy. It is better to have (for example) 4 x 48V batteries in parallel than it is to have 4 x 12V batteries in series. * It is easier to scale the higher-voltage system because you only need to add one battery at a time whereas with several batteries in series you have to add N batteries at a time to scale-up your system. So with LiFePO4 while you CAN put batteries in series to generate the higher voltage, and doing so appears to work well at the beginning, it is not ideal and has a lot of potential problems. Unless you are retro-fitting an older system, you really want to use the proper native voltage battery to construct the system. -Matt
It seems like your animation and the way you described watts might be out of sync. Watts are Joules per second. Saying it’s like the total water in the bucket is not quite it. Like your animation, watts are more like how much water travels out of the hose in a second. The amount in the bucket is Joules or watt-hours.
![Why a 48V System is Better than a 12V? [Vatrer Power]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8ukQ9wQfMIY/mqdefault.jpg)
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🤓 Watch the rest of the videos in this playlist: ruclips.net/p/PL23_m8HBj7OJQSt1fGveO_rQgn4-zYBB0
0:00 - Intro
0:29 - 60 Second Electricity Lesson
1:39 - 12V Batteries
3:06 - 24V Batteries
3:53 - 48V Batteries
5:31 - Summary
Curious about the differences between 12V, 24V, and 48V batteries for your solar power system? In this video, we break down the pros and cons of each voltage, how they affect performance, cost, and which one is best for your setup.
🔔 Subscribe to our RUclips Channel: @TheSolarLab
⚡ FOLLOW US:
instagram.com/thesolarlab/
www.tiktok.com/@thesolarlab
👨🏼💻 The Solar Lab:
www.thesolarlab.com
We maintain an affiliate relationship with some of the products reviewed, which means we get a small percentage of a sale if you click our links, at no cost to our viewers.
FINALLY……someone illuminated volt, amp and watt in a way my tiny mind can see!
48V is good for long term invest.
48V is the way to go! Nice vid, thanks.
Thanks for watching ⚡️
agree
I built my system back in 2020 48v components were hard to find and expensive. Back at that time Will Prowse was recommending 24v system for medium system like my 250 square ft cabin. I bought a Big Battery 24v 170ah lifepo4 ,2000w inverter and 1000 watts of panels. I use it about it about 120-150 days a year and I'm using the exact system I started with and no down time.
impressive
Almost the same situation for me. 24 is fine but there's no upside. Need to convert to 12v for dc use so there's added expense.
now this is a good video explaining voltage.
could never understand voltage but now i do.
next video for amps.
Also charge controllers are far more effective at 48V than at 12V. A 20A charge controller at 12.8V can handle up to 256W worth of solar panels. That SAME controller at 51.2V can handle over 1000W (assuming a controller that does 12/24/36/48V of course, but many do these days). Just as an example.
Convenient kitchen appliances... Microwave, induction tea kettle, toaster oven, induction "burner", well pump.... the list goes on. Best to just go straight to 48V (51.2V LiFePO4) in most situations. In fact, I would only consider 12V at far lower wattages than the channel recommends. If its less than 500W then 12V is an option. If its more, or you might scale higher than 500W, then I'd go straight to 48V.
At 48V, 2 AWG main battery and inverter wiring nets you 100A @ 51.2V = 5000W of continuous power without anything even getting warm to the touch, let alone hot. And all the solar panel string and charge controller output wiring can be 10 AWG.
The only real gotchas with 48V is that (A) You need to be a bit more up on your electronics skills. (B) Getting any fusing and breakers right is more important. And (C) you need to pay more attention the solar panel topology. The best charge controllers are buck controllers (Victron's for example) which means that to work properly with a 48V system the solar strings have to generate roughly 65VDC or higher "operating voltage".
---
For string voltages I shoot for at least 70V. Higher if partial shading might be an issue. My go-to charge controller is thus something like a Victron 150/35 for the voltage range it supports rather than a Victron 100/20. A single 150/35 can handle 1800W worth of generation all by its lonesome.
You can do this with any solar panel wattage but you need to figure out how many in series you need to get decent results, plus one more to help deal with partial shading situations. Even 25W panels would work, but you would need 4 x 25W in series to develop a decent voltage for a 48V system. Similarly for other small panels. When you get to more serious panels... 100W you typically need 3 x 100W in series (but if they are low-voltage 100W panels you'd still need 4). 200W panels you would also typically want 3 in series. Higher than that the voltages are higher so typically residential panels would need only 2 in series.
My go-to is always 48V. I only consider 12V for very very small systems and only consider 24V in very special cases. My default is 48V these days.
-Matt
Good point Matt
I’ve been running a Trace 4048 at our remote cabin for over 23 years. The batteries lasted 22 years. With a higher voltage there is less current going through the battery so the batteries internal resistance is less. We used only 48 v inverters in telecommunications. I worked in electronics most of my work career.
@@Chris_at_Home The old trace gear is some of the best ever made. Unfortunately when the company was bought out, the gear quality went down a lot and they created a lot of confusion by using the same product names.
The closest you can come to that old pre-buyout trace gear these days would be something like the Victron Multiplus II series of inverters, and Victron charge controllers. Which I love.
-Matt
@@junkerzn7312 thanks for the great insight you shared.
@@Chris_at_Homethanks for the great advice
What about safety considerations for the beginners that this video seems aimed at? Is it much easier to get yourself in trouble/danger handling 48V stuff? What are the most important safety cautions for the beginner? If that kind of info isn't in that playlist you mentioned, perhaps it would be a good candidate for another video.
Like getting hurt wise everything under 60volts is pretty much the same level of safety.
Starting fires type safety the voltage really doesn’t matter 12v will burn down a house just as good as 480v.
ready made 48V is the best option for you.
One caveat to your skip 24V statement is if your setup is running DC load components w/o an inverter.
Excellent vid. Thank you. I'm just starting my list. so 48v to start. What's next? I have a 900 s/f home.
Appreciate the video. Good info, explained in a simple and clear manner.
What if I can save several hundred dollars on a multi battery setup and just run the batteries in series to get 48V?
I wish 24V was a lot more popular than it currently is, makes a lot more sense than 12V for ~1kW stuff
24V is ideal for affordable and efficient DC-DC power conversion in the 500W-1.5kW range: heaps of cheap MOSFETs and integrated power stages to choose from that don't compromise much on switching performance and ON-resistance compared to what you'd need for equivalent 12V systems. It should be a no-brainer upgrade from the manufacturing side of things apart from more cells in series being more potential points of failure.
Of course, that will never compete against the vast market for 48V stuff that stems from telecomms using 48V switchgear for 70+ years to dodge needing to get all of their techs fully licensed for electrical work.
Thank you for the explanation.
The one down side of higher voltage is the battery packs get heavier to the point where you can't pick them up i.e. 100lbs or more for 48 volt 100ah battery. Also the battery management needs to monitor more cells in series so there are more little wires running around and more connections between cells to keep tight. Then there's the arcing at higher voltage with DC you need to be really careful.
Also higher voltages require less guage/thinner cables for the same wattage.. thats clearly wisible when using from heat... when voltage increases amperage decreases if watts stays same... thats why..
Thank you very much for the comparison explanation. You do great videos and give excellent advise. 🙏🏿👍🏿
Glad you find them helpful!
I can 2x this information. Don’t waste your time with 12v or 24v. Just go straight to 48volt batteries and inverters etc. If you need 12volts then use a step down converter from 48v to 12v. The options for 48v stuff is huge compared to 12v.
JUST GO WITH A 48VOLT SYSTEM!!!! DONT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY.
like me….
“Oh my rv and lots of its stuff is 12v so I’ll just buy a bunch of solar panels(6-200 watt) and 15kwh of 12v eg4 batteries and just a little 2000watt inverter to run my fridge 100% in a hurricane or if the power goes out.”
Flash forward 7 months.
“Man, I can fit like 11 more solar panels on my roof and prolly get rid of my generator and add 3 more batteries and then prolly power 2 air conditioners with all that solar. Oh goddamnit I need 0000 size cables and I can only get 3kva inverters and now I need 2 and gotta put them in splits phase and get a lynx distributor and more cables and. Fuck!”
110% agree.
Thank you For These Videos. I Learn A Lot
No problem! We love to hear it ⚡️
Super useful video
Glad you found it helpful!
You are clearly living true to your ideal. Thanks for your explanations. (DoMore)
Any plans to test the Dabbsson line?
Hmmm. Could one create a 120volt system by series connecting 2 x 48v and 1 x 24 volt batteries? Does that make any sense to do?
Higher the woltake easier for inverter to do the job
The the Eco flow wave 2 can run continuously on 24v battery.
Great video, you guys are fantastic. So if I purchase a small Sprinter RV with a 12 volt ac, a 120 volt refrigerator, propane cooktop, a tv, 12 volt led lights and some 120 outlets would I benefit from a 48 volt system?
Odd question… I want to boost my RV’s capacity as I use PC, Monitors, NAS, and other 120v devices like AC for months while traveling. What about inverter drain on a 48v system? I’m guessing that in addition to a step up inverter, I would also need to have a step down inverter too, as the 12v RV systems, refrigerator, lights, etc. run that. I know that I’ve powered everything down for the night and forgotten to turn the inverter off, and the drain is noticeable by morning. Does a 48v system require an inverter to be on 24x7 for the 12v RV systems?
No, inverters generate AC power. 48VDC to 12VDC does not use an inverter. You use a DC-DC converter though my recommendation for RVs is to have a DC-DC (48V to 12V) DC-DC charger instead of just a converter.
With a DC-DC charger you add an additional 12.8V LiFePO4 battery on the 12V side. These are called "downbuffers". This helps a lot because then the charger only has to trickle-charge the battery (relatively low amps) while the battery sources all the power necessary to run the 12V systems... which depending on what you are running, such as auto-levlers and slides, might need a hundred amps to get going.
The second reason for using a downbuffer battery setup instead of just a DC-DC converter is that any sort of failure between the 48V and the 12V busses will blow a fuse instead of putting 48V on the 12V bus and destroying all your 12V equipment.
-Matt
Why does no one make a 120v battery?
Easy to make, a little tougher to carry though.
1. A 120V battery could kill you; 120V DC is more likely to electrocute you than 120V AC, because the latter crosses zero 120 times a second.
2. You’d still need an inverter to power your AC appliances, so 120V DC doesn’t have a ton of benefit.
72V batteries are fairly common, but are also more likely to electrocute you than 48V.
50V DC is right around the threshold of “it might kill you, it might not”. 120V DC is well in the “it’ll probably kill you” territory.
@jimothy4j Yes, Nicola Tesla figured all this stuff out first!! He is the goat.
Thomas Edison was a charlatan/business guy taught to us in elementary school.
have,
At 4:51 what is that cart and where can I get one?
24 volt batteries are used in heavy equipment. Dozers, loaders, etc.
Great info…. Thank you
Thanks for watching!
Good info.
Glad you found it helpful!
What's the functional difference between 4 12-volt batteries wired in series and a 48-volt battery composed of 16 3.2-volt cells?
The functional difference is that the 4 x 12V (12.8V LiFePO4) batteries in series are far, far less reliable than 4 x 48V (51.2V LiFePO4) batteries in parallel for the same storage capacity (assuming all else is equal and the batteries have the same storage capacity in watt-hours).
For example, 4 x 51.2V 50Ah LiFePO4 batteries in parallel is comparable to 4x 12.8V 200Ah LiFePO4 batteries in series. Same weight, same overall capacity, but vast differences in reliability.
--
* When you have four 12V batteries in series you need additional wiring for a whole-battery balancer to keep the four batteries balanced. Also, if you ever hit a LVP or OVP situation and cause one or more of the batteries to disconnect, it can actually take some effort to wake it back up. (when batteries are in parallel, they recover automatically from such disconnects, but not usually when they are in series).
* Also, most people are going to have more than one battery and paralleling batteries adds a lot of redundancy. It is better to have (for example) 4 x 48V batteries in parallel than it is to have 4 x 12V batteries in series.
* It is easier to scale the higher-voltage system because you only need to add one battery at a time whereas with several batteries in series you have to add N batteries at a time to scale-up your system.
So with LiFePO4 while you CAN put batteries in series to generate the higher voltage, and doing so appears to work well at the beginning, it is not ideal and has a lot of potential problems. Unless you are retro-fitting an older system, you really want to use the proper native voltage battery to construct the system.
-Matt
The 4 12v systems have 4 individual BMS. Better hope they're compatible. The 48v system is more compact (space efficient) and has one BMS
This application you should always choose 48V battery, that's it.
It seems like your animation and the way you described watts might be out of sync. Watts are Joules per second. Saying it’s like the total water in the bucket is not quite it. Like your animation, watts are more like how much water travels out of the hose in a second.
The amount in the bucket is Joules or watt-hours.
We neee a “Thick” counter
24v 3,500 watt inverters are cheap. Truckers use em.
If I don't want marketing and sales can I just go to Walmart for batteries?
When are you going back to cars?
What happened to robbie, will we ever get an update?
Robby? So this is where youve been. Hmm.
That's funny because I read a 12 volt system in my truck at 10,000 Watts
He didn't say you couldn't, he said it's not the best implementation
Lmfao not a very budget friendly system
I suppose it depends on the size of your system.