welcome to our homestead we are glad
you're here we are continuing our series
on installing our eg4 6500 ex inverters
today we will be doing all the wiring
and showing you just a few basic
programming parameters to get you
started and then in the near future we
will be doing additional programming
videos and load testing videos for this
system let's get going with that wiring
[Applause]
[Music]
so we had a nice cool day the other day
and we ran our 4 gauge through our
conduit in our attic
and we cut back our original conduit as
you can see up there to accommodate for
this new setup on the wall so first
things first we need to add our safety
switch and then we need to add more
flexible conduit for our other inverter
and the safety switch
this stuff is super easy to cut with a
razor blade just cut it to the length
that you need it so they have several
different types of fittings for the ends
buy which you think is necessary for
what you need for your system all the
other electrical conduit i ran is one
and a half inch and we're only going to
have three wires running from each
inverter because they're 120 volt
inverter so we will have one hot a
ground and a neutral coming through this
conduit and then when we come to our
load center for us this is a sub panel
we're running back to our main panel and
i'll show you how to do that when we
come and land here we're gonna land on a
double pole 70 amp breaker let me show
you all the tools that we are using for
the project today and if i accidentally
leave one out i will put a full list of
them in the description below the video
so you're going to need some wire
strippers and wire cutters this stripper
is for large cable this one's for
smaller cable these are probably the
best cutters they are insanely sharp
they're japanese and they're amazing of
course screwdrivers pliers crimpers
and
razor blade cutters potentially a feral
crimper if you put ferrules on the ends
of some of your wires as they go into
the inverters and then this bad boy
right here this is the crimper for
your battery cable and i told you i'd
show you how to do that so down here on
the floor
got our terminals our for our four oh
battery cable our two out battery cable
and then we've got some heat shrink
we've got our crimper that needs to go
on something solid so we've got this
weight here because if i try to do it on
the floor we destroy the floor so get
something super solid and you're going
to need a hammer to slam that thing to
crimp those terminals onto the wire and
you need a heat gun to
do that
heat shrink onto each of the wires then
of course socket set and whatever else
you need to connect
things like your batteries etc make sure
when you buy these three quarter inch
connectors for your flexible conduit you
get the three quarter inch to one inch
spacers because the holes are too big
for these connectors on the inverter so
that's no big deal these are like 50
cents 60 cents a piece something like
that here's a little trick this little
plate for the pv connectors needs to
come off for you to insert your pv wires
and that is because there is hardly any
space to get your fingers in there to
connect those pv wires to these
terminals
and
taking this off is way easier so take it
off slide it in there like that
let it hang
connect your wires and then slide this
up into place and screw it into the
bottom of the inverter so unlike the
growths these eg4s will run just off
solar or just off the battery so what we
are going to do to start these up is
connect the solar and then connect the
batteries after that the gro watts
wouldn't do that
[Applause]
not an electrician i'm just trying to do
this efficiently i'm just a diy guy if
you need to consult with an electrician
please do so so i have a good friend
who's an electrician and he taught me
what to do i did it on my own grow out
system so i'm confident doing it on this
one so here i am with my main panel you
can see it's kind of a pain to get to
but this is the generator interlock kit
it doesn't allow the grid power to be on
at the same time as the solar power that
solar power is coming in right here on
this 70 amp breaker i'll have the l1 and
l2 the two hots run from that sub panel
and it's one from each inverter my
ground and my neutral and this is where
i'm going to make my ground neutral bond
is in this panel and not the sub panel
and everything here is grounded out to
our grounding rod and it's grounded to
this panel so i'm going to get into this
panel connect these wires make sure
they're the proper length because i just
yanked them through the ceiling they're
kind of all over the place then i can
pull back the excess to the other spot
again that's how i'm doing it that's how
i was taught consult with an electrician
if you need to
so make sure when you're running through
your whole system back from your other
breaker through your safety switch and
to this breaker that the l1 and l2
remain consistent or you're going to
have problems everything's connected and
you can see we've got slack in the wire
so i'm going to go back the other
direction and pull it and i've got one
of these knockout protectors here
tightened down and that wire is not
going to pull out and go anywhere okay
our wire is pulled down through the
attic properly we've got it cut we've
got it in our safety switch in our panel
and onto our first inverter let me show
you what i did and then over here with
this inverter i'm going to go through it
again so you can see it as i do it so
depending on which safety switch you get
neutrals to neutrals line one to line
one line two to line two grounds to
grounds and so on so down into here
we've got our neutral on our neutral bar
grounds are on our ground bar these two
grounds come over from each inverter
this
is line one from one inverter line two
from the other inverter i kept them
separate color you can't have them both
black but i wanted to differentiate
between the two so that i know by the
color back to the main panel which one
it is over here we have our battery
cables all set got our positive positive
negative to negative
positive comes down through our breaker
and negative we'll go back to our
negative bus bar we've got our positive
over to our positive bus bar and that's
the two watt cable and then the other
two ought will come from this inverter
over to this bus bar and then this is
four oct cable
over to the bus bar on our battery
cabinet
all of our batteries are connected to
that bus bar
then obviously we'll be doing the same
with the negative side so i'm not going
to go over again with this build how to
connect these batteries all together i
did that in the video linked at the top
of the screen for my grow out system and
for this first inverter that i connected
we have our hot our line
our neutral in the neutral and our
ground in the ground now these are
extremely tight with the four gauge wire
if there's
any deviation in the shape of the end of
that wire it's extremely difficult to
get them into these terminals and that
is the same case with this
square d panel so i know that the
electricians are probably saying well
duh so what i found a little trick is to
leave the
insulation on until you are absolutely
ready to perfectly push it through one
of these holes and that's the same thing
i found with these nader breaker
terminals right here that two walk cable
barely fits in there so you need to be
gentle when you're putting it in there
so the wires don't get all frayed or
else it's going to be extremely
difficult okay let's work on this
inverter there are three screws
underneath right here that you need to
remove and then one on each end for this
front panel to come off
don't let this just fall down because
there are three connection cables right
here that you need to remove so you
don't want those to yank out so you can
see i left the insulation on these
because you want them to be completely
round and undamaged when you put them up
into
these terminals make sure you back that
screw out as far as you possibly can to
get it up in there
[Applause]
now we'll move on to the battery cables
and then we will connect the solar so
when you're doing your battery cable you
actually want to put the gland on first
because once you have your terminal in
on there especially on this black cable
it doesn't matter with the positive
cable because you've got some open ends
on that where it connects to the breaker
but on the negative cable you're not
going to be able to get this gland over
the top
of your terminal end so this has to go
on the wire first
this is easy just put it over the top
on that line you just made
you can set the blade depth right here
and run it around
don't go too deep you're going to cut
too many strands we're going to put our
heat shrink over the top first put our
terminal on try to get all the strands
in there usually if you put it at the
side and kind of try to twist it a
little bit it has a flared bottom so
that helps
there this crimper is spring-loaded
place it inside
push it together the best that you can
hammer time
push your heat shrink up just over that
point not too far up
and you'll need a heat gun to shrink
that
[Applause]
done do all your cables like that
you have your cable installed we are
going to measure for
the breaker cut that and then insert it
into the terminal on the breaker
but make sure you give everything a
solid tug to make sure
it's tightened properly we are going to
reconnect our front panel here
and there's no way you can mess this up
each one of these connectors is
different and they connect in a
different place
before i show you everything connected
we need to take this plate off right
here
which exposes the paralleling ports just
like
this over on this one the paralleling
cables have two different ends on them
and so do the connection points on the
bottom of the inverters so there's no
way you can screw it up it goes outside
to outside and inside to inside so here
we go here is our battery bank connected
to the other bus bars here on the walls
and our inverters
batteries connected to those bus bars
we've got our pv connected to each
inverter we've got our communication
paralleling cables right there
and
our
ac outlines over to our load center
which is our sub panel
safety switch and then back to our main
panel and we have additional breakers
here between we do have breakers on
these batteries but i'll show you how to
start this up in a minute so your system
might look exactly like this or it might
look a little bit different but the
concepts are just the same
so if you're interested in any of this
equipment click on the link in the
description below to signature solar and
that really helps out our channel a lot
so for our initial setup we're going to
focus on three protocols the first one
is protocol 28 which is going to set
these for split phase the second is
protocol 5 which is going to tell it
which batteries that we do have and the
last one is protocol 1 which is we are
going to set for our use
solar battery utility in that order sbu
so the best way to get the inverters to
wake up in standby mode is to turn on
your solar so we turned on the solar and
you can see the inverters are not on
there's no colors going back here on
this led bar and the inverters are
physically off but we've got power to
the screens and we need to get in here
and change these so that they are split
phase so we're going to go to protocol
28 first now this indicator here is
telling me that i don't have any battery
hooked up currently which is correct
and i'm going to go in the enter here
you can turn these beeps off later and
it's kind of annoying but
now we've got into our
our options menu here we're going to
scroll down
to 28
and i've already done this but we are
going to set our master inverter as 2p1
and then we are going to set the other
inverter as 2p2 so this is our 2p2 over
here you can see it and it's set at 180
so you want these 180 degrees out of
phase i don't know why it has a 120 but
do not use the 120. use 180
2p2 so next is protocol 5 this is our
2p1 inverter and this battery is going
to be set to eg4 so if we go in here and
we see
li-6
lic
agm i believe flooded lead acid you want
to be
on eg4
for the bat or the inverter that is
connected to the battery via the cable
so you can see our communications cable
on this cable there is a little white
label some of these cables are reversed
so you're going to have to figure out
which cable you have
some you will put the little label next
to the inverter right here but in my
case the label is here next to my master
battery plugged into the rs485 port so
if you get an error 61
flashing and beeping on your inverters
try that cable switch and it'll take
care of the problem so here on my 2p2
inverter we are going to enter in
and we are going to set the battery on
protocol 5
to user
so remember on your 2p1 inverter set the
battery to eg4 and any other inverter
that you have parallel to it set it to
user we're gonna get out of that we're
gonna go up to
number one like i said before and set it
for solar
battery utility i didn't mention at the
beginning of the video but this is a
crucial piece of equipment you need a
clamp meter for doing work like this
it's listed with the other tools below
the video so now i'm going to turn our
batteries on and the first thing i need
to do is turn on our external breakers
and then i am going to turn on our
battery breakers each battery has its
own
pre-charged resistor inside and built in
and once i did that you can see that our
battery is indicated as being on right
here and that fault that six
a fault i think it was has disappeared
and you can see it indicates the
batteries are charging well that is the
basic wiring and programming for this
system in the future we're gonna do a
little bit more on the programming talk
about that and then do some load testing
with it i'm excited to have this thing
up and running and it was super easy to
do i know you can do it as well now go
check out these videos right here which
is our entire playlist on our solar
system installations on our homestead
have a great day we love you see you
next time bye