Grounding Secrets: Auto Transformer Wiring Demystified! (Victron Inverter Setup)

what guys back to the channel in this episode I want talk to you about how to get 240 volt split phase power out of a 120 volt singlephase power source so on this episode we're going to be using this which is an eof flow Delta 2 but this system in set it will work with pretty much any power station that's currently on the market is just that we're just using this one for now right so there's infinite number of power stations Titans blue edes PEC runs uh you know whatever right so uh there is a reason why you may want to get 2 40 volts out so let's talk about that right so most of the power stations uh you know with a few exceptions are pretty much a point source and also 120 volts right some power stations may have ability to combine multiple ones where you get 240 and there technically is the ultra which is a single unit uh that does provide 240 but you know the common commodity thing is that most of the power stations are 120 right so uh there may be reasons why you want to get 240 and talk about that real quick because uh you know there may be some loads that you want to run like for instance in the power outage some things like you know your 240 uh AC Central AC will probably not run using a power station of this size but if you had a 240 volt mini split or like a DC powered uh mini split type system you could run that mini split off of this inverter for instance I have a 24 uh BTU uh Pioneer mini split and this this power station is able to run that uh uh mini split it can't run it for a long time but it can run it long enough to you know make it last through the days in case you had a hurricane or power outage or whatever it may be now it will not run this one will not run It On full turbo mode but it can run up to at least medium and high which is what I found so if you had something like that you could get it done if you had 12K 9k you could probably run those almost all day assing you also had solar panel coming into anyways point is as you can see here this ecoflow Delta 2 which is not sponsored they did not send this to us uh is putting 120 volt singlephase power out and as you can see here we are getting 240 volts split phase and just to prove to you that this works right right now we have the two hot leads connected so hot the hot you know split phase you're getting 240 but if I take one and go from hot to neutral you can see it gets to about 115 120 right so if I go to this other hot here this other hot is about 121 right so go back hot to hot you should see we're back at about 239 240 so like I mentioned this power station is able to run my living room mini split but anyways there may be any number of reasons why you want to do that but this uh Power Station has multiple ports on the back side that allows you to also get AC out 120 volts right so you don't have have to do it this way uh but there are other ways you could wire this setup to like a load panel load Station transfer switch whatever in case you wanted to do that so the secret sauce of this system is going to be that guy right there and that is the victron energy Auto Transformer and it does a ton of things first of all I do want to mention uh this is not meant to be a fewe review of this unit uh this unit like I mentioned does a ton of things can step up step down balance create uh you know neutral and all that kind of fun stuff uh but in this video we're only going to talk about uh taking 120 single phase in and take and getting 240 split phase out all right uh I do also want to mention this unit does come in two models which is a 32 amp model and 100 amp model obviously you know the amperage and stuff like that that it can load power and pass through it's going to be different but it can both both of those units or both models can only handle an imbalance across a two Hots of a maximum of up to 32 amps so that's something that's critical that you need to know uh so don't think that you can handle an imbalance of like 100 amps that's really just the amount of amps that's can pass through the unit right so uh just make sure you keep that in mind all right so like I mentioned uh this right here is Eco flow Delta 2 it's pretty popular a lot of people have this uh so you know we don't need to go too much into this but out of this AC it comes out of here there's two uh 20 amp outputs so we have a 10 gauge uh power cable coming out of the 20 amp uh AC output there this green cable it goes in to here right and then uh out comes here this a split phase 240 right so this is an extension cable we just cut off on I just have it this way to just make it portable and testing configurations and it just makes it easy obviously if you're going to do something like this wiring in it uh wiring it per permanently or a hard wire or stuff like that it's obviously the best solution but for demonstration purposes we're just using a heavy duty extension cables of the right gauge cut off and using them all right so uh with that being said uh this is a power switch that really just it's it's a breaker that it's it's a power switch and a breaker kind of the same way but they're they're different items I do want to point that out um this will cut the power to this this has an LED on uh ground relay on and temperature protection all that kind of fun stuff um the ground relay on we're not going to get too heavy into it but it has a relay that it can activate to activate the ground and other victron systems okay but like I said for the purpose of this the important thing is that it's on and temperature protected okay so if I turn this off this will uh LED will eventually go off and it will no longer be there obviously if you're doing any work like this make sure you have you know a tester to verify power and all that kind of fun stuff right so uh we'll open this up and take a better look at it all right so looking inside as I mentioned this side is the input uh this side right now is the output depending on what you use the auto transformer for um it's going to depend on how you need to wire and unlike I I don't want to say everybody but victron has a lot of great documentation on how to wire it up on what you need but I would say for this exact product the manual they ship is actually terrible so there are uh online versions of wiring diagrams you can find which I think are from victon I'm not entirely sure if they are or not that really helped out and make it super clear on what needs to connect to what I'll throw maybe a few examples of of those right but the what manual that comes with this unit is actually terrible and I would say of all of my experience with all the victron items that this unit has the worst documentation provided with the unit all right anyways enough ranting there let's get into it right so power comes in here on this one so the Hot Leg goes here the ground goes here um the neutral actually connects here which also combines with the neutral on the out hot leg is here and another hot leg is there this is the coil right and like I mentioned earlier whether you get the 32 amp unit or the 100 amp unit the coil imbalance that it can really handle or absorb is 32 amps so make sure you keep that in mind but also it's got the breakers and the relays and stuff like that in here to make it uh you know pretty simple and easy to use if you did need to use the advanced features of you know grounding relays and stuff like that the ground relay that you would connect wiring to is right there it does have a fan to push air right so the air will push up from the ground or From Below go up here where this gets warm and it'll come out through the side uh so you know this is a pretty hefty unit um it mounts on the wall pretty well but anyways the point is power goes in using this green cable and then 240 split phase comes out into this cable all right so just to recap real quick 120 volt uh single phase out going into here uh the auto Transformer comes out of the auto Transformer 240 volt split phase right here comes uh into this eg4 charge verter which is a 240 volt split phase charge verter technically Al you can wire it for 120 but I have it wired using the original plug for 240 volt split phase um and then this thing is taking the AC output going into here and taking DC charging these batteries right this is something I would highly recommend you not do there's all kinds of issues with this mainly because uh we're going from you know DC in converting it to AC convert stepping it up making a split phase technically uh going into here changing AC back to DC so this is not something you should do this is only for demonstration purposes okay uh but the point is that this is a perfect load to put on it mainly because it's 240 and we can change the uh variability in how much we need to put like generate the load right so it's a perfect thing to use to test this system and as you can see here this is putting out a consistent uh 1,200 Watts as you can see it works really well and has been pretty solid and for me like I said this unit can run 24K uh mini split right um so that's something to know as I mentioned earlier won't run It On full cool mode because mainly that mini split uh will take more than I think 1,800 Watts which is what this is rated for continuous but if you had a bigger Power Station uh that can put more continuous then you know you could probably get more power out of it anyways the point is that uh that's how you would get 240 out of a uh singlephase 120 volt power source mostly power stations which is this unit so let's go and talk about this unit right so this unit is going to cost somewhere probably around 4 to 500 bucks right so if you're thinking oh I can buy this unit and this unit yeah that's a terrible idea right so uh if you already have this unit and you don't want to step up to let's just say the uh Delta Pro Ultra or whatever it is then you could get this unit right but I would not go bu this unit and this unit to get you know let's say 240 uh split phase right that's not what I'm recommending here I did want to point out for a lot of people that do have these units that you can get uh 240 if you buy the victron auto Transformer right to make that happen because you know you're already using this for other things and stuff like that so let's talk about this victron Auto Transformer uh because like I said it's going to be between you know probably some between 3 to 500 bucks depending on which model you get and where you get it from I purchased this one from solar uh so just wanted to point that out if you wanted to purchase it we'll throw a link in the description below but the point is that you can get it done in case of a need or maybe you have a rare occasion or you have an advanced need for the auto Transformer like I mentioned earlier it can do a ton of stuff right so if I had two let's just say multipl two units and I feed it into there it can actually balance the loads across the multiplus right or I can make the Two Step Up in series and feed it into there and also take you know 240 outs you know there's all kinds of config configuration stuff you could do uh which makes this unit really neat we're not going to review this unit in this video we'll make this review go into a different video but for some reason if you had I don't even know if these exist let's say a European power station that has 240 single phase right you could send it into here and then you could get also 120 um uh single phase out you know two of them right and you can make that happen so like I said the wiring configuration is going to be different based on what you need in or what your installation requirements are in and out right so hopefully this will make it clear that you know you can do a lot of things with these two combinations and actually this and all kinds of stuff so hopefully this video helped you guys out if you have any questions let us know um have a great day get back to work and we'll see you guys next time oh