🔋 Victron Quattro + EG4 & AO Lithium Battery Bank Upgrade | Split Phase Off-Grid Power System

Hey, what's guys? Welcome back to the channel. This video I want to talk to you about this system and just this quick update. So, anybody who's following the channel knows that we have two Victron Quattros here.

They're uh 10 KVA systems and we've set them up in split phase and we've connected this indoor wall mount battery to the system. And anybody who, like I said, following the channel knows that one indoor wall mount battery is not enough for the system. and on multiple tests uh the system had to cut out mainly because it was more than one battery could put out. So we've then somehow uh you know made improvements on that system by adding a stack of AOL lithium batteries to uh the system and that also wasn't enough.

So, what we did was we added uh the eco worthy uh rack mount battery to the system. And now we have a Frankenstein of batteries to kind of test the system with. I've already tested it and it seems to work much better. Now there's additional capacity for the batteries to pull or for the inverters to pull from the batteries.

But in order to make this, you know, less Frankensteinish, uh, one of the things that we did was we added another indoor wall mount battery. So, this right here is uh what I would call 1. 5 generation. This right here is the first generation because we ordered this battery as soon as it came out and it was delivered just a few days if not a week later.

And then uh this battery we just ordered a few weeks ago and it was just delivered. And then as I was picking it up and installing it, I noticed just very very subtle differences. And for the record, they do not refer to this one as 1. 5 generation and they do not refer to this as the first generation.

It's just my way of referring to it. All right. So, uh, the reason I'm saying that is because, uh, this one came with, I think it was, uh, Z something something and then, uh, 02 firmware, and this one came with, uh, Z04 firmware. Uh, so that's one small thing.

Obviously, you know, as they make updates, they're going to continue to update the firmware. So, that's great. Thank you, EG4, for some of that. Uh, but the main differences that I've noticed on here is that if you look on this battery here, you see little plastic uh, handles that are there that were built into the battery.

and also here which are which are just really a plastic cover for the handle as you can see there. And then on this battery um they just decided not to do that. I don't know if they're just trying to you know maybe reduce some of the cost or something like that but you know now it's just no plastic handles. And the reason I noticed cuz I stuck my hand in there to pick it up and I was like wow it feels like a lot more sharper than what I would remember because sticking it on here was a lot more plastic edge and you didn't necessarily have that.

So, I don't know if that's because, like I said, a comfort thing or a cost cutting thing or maybe the handles since they're plastic, they would break on some people or whatnot, but now this thing is completely metal and you don't have the issue of that of that breaking. Uh, so this edge is not necess it's maybe filed down just barely, so you don't have a super sharp razor sharp edge, but it's still kind of sharp. But on this top side, they've kind of rolled it over a little bit um so it's not as sharp, but I did notice that right away. The other thing I noticed right away because this battery is ridiculously heavy just trying to move it on these feet here is that on these feet now.

See if you can see it. Now there's rubber on these feet, right? You can see the rubber here and the rubber there. So there's rubber on the bottom of those feet and there is no rubber on the bottom of this feet.

Let's see if you can see that pretty well. Um bring even closer and you can see there's no rubber on the back of that feet. So on the bottom of the speed. So that's something that I noticed right away as I was just moving this battery.

I'm sure they probably made some small minor subal changes as they uh improved the battery. But that's kind of why I called this one 1. 5 and then that's one first generation mainly because you know that's the first one I got and this one is not necessarily big enough changes to be second gen but very small changes. Uh so I know somebody was wondering previously how did I get all the systems connected?

Um so just do a quick recap is that there's four uh bus bar quick connect ports on here and two of them are used one pos two for positive two for negative to connect directly to the battery here and then one of each um is brought out and connected to this links power in here. Um and what I've done is I I ordered the uh quick connects uh for these they call them anthanol connectors but I think that's just kind of like a Kleenex type deal. They're Dexon connectors, but Anthol kind of made them popular. Um, but they're quick connects made by the company I think Dexon or the Dexon lineup.

I've just bolted pretty much the quick connect onto this power end. And that way I can, you know, easily just use the parallel cables for this battery and connect it here. Okay. And then uh this has four uh terminal or there's technically five, but you're using four.

Two comes out of here. Um, and these are all two watt cables and connects to this uh stack of AO lithium batteries which are all connected to bus bars. Uh, two of them are set up in parallel and then the battery is connected to the bus bar. Same difference down here.

And if you're wondering why we're doing this and then not uh inserting them into the rack, you're going to have to follow a previous video that we've done in the past. Um, these uh this is the EG4 uh rack um server rack. And these are AO lithium batteries and they do not fit inside the server rack because the ears or or the uh height of the battery is just too big. So what we've done is we've kind of stacked them this way on the side.

Um I know someone's going to say, "Oh well, even though you're using LVL, this could fail. " That's technically true because the lateral force of LVL is like this way or the strength of it is that way. So just in case you might say that we stack some wood under there. Yes, I know someone's going to say, "Oh, wood is flammable.

" all that kind of fun stuff. Yes. So, don't do that. Just wanted to point that out.

Uh we did kind of bolt um the batteries together using aluminum bars. So, they're bolted together and then this one here just kind of holds it from falling forward. Sure, it could, you know, eventually still fall out, but just wanted to point that out. Aluminum bars here mainly because just ran out of this uh rat gear material, but that kind of holds it there.

Anyways, we have this uh Anderson connector to charge uh the batteries uh pretty quick in case we needed to charge them or whatnot. But each one of these batteries is allegedly uh what do you call it? Uh can output 100 amps continuous and it can charge I think it said like 50 amps continuous or something like that. Uh but it's recommended to charge at like 20 C as you know most batteries are these days.

But you know these batteries are connected in parallel to this battery. uh using the links power in and then uh we ran out of red cable here. So this is not two watt cable. I believe this is four gauge cable which is connected to this uh ecoorthy battery here positive and negative.

And just in case you were wondering if uh these connectors on the uh ecoorthy battery are the same size as this connector. The answer is no. It is not. How do I know that?

I know that because I tried to install this connector on here and it does not fit. Um the bus bar that's inside of there is um at a certain location. So this connector sticks out a little bit more and you would have to drill some things out and do that. And I was like it's just not worth the effort for me to do that.

If it's worth it for you, you can do that, but it's not for me. So I didn't do that. Um so I just left these on as is. But I did take it apart to try to figure out if I could do that.

Uh just a drop in replacement. And the answer is no. Okay. Um so obviously with this system you're going to go ahead and see oh actually uh two of the ports are used to pull out of here.

These are two watt cables um bolted onto this Victron Quattro system. Uh but you know that's how that works. But the point I was going to make earlier is that the communications is only set up with this battery. So uh that may or may not cause a problem because the Serbo GX may say, "Hey, you're pulling too many amps out and may cut it off.

" I'm not sure what the deal is. Uh but you know it is uh have that potential issue. So um we already went over the wiring of this uh load panel, but just in case you missed it, we bolted on these I think it was six gauge or 4 gauge um conductors here, right? Using ring terminals.

This one I didn't ring terminal it. Uh we just kind of wired it as it would like an outlet. a white one here for neutral, black for ground on this one. White for neutral, red for ground, and it's kind of fed into here and feeds that breaker.

So, uh, this entire system is off right now, but the reason we even have this battery is so that we can put this battery right here. And as you can imagine, with this battery there, um, you don't technically need all this Frankenstein system and it will just look cleaner. Okay, so this way would work if you needed to do it, but if you want like a clean, nice look, it's probably better just put this battery there, then wire them in uh parallel, and then eventually you probably want to just add I'll probably just keep this a lithium stack of batteries in here just so that uh we have additional capacity uh to output, right? Because this is 100 amps out, 100 amps continuous out.

And if you have a 100 amps continuous out of each one of these batteries, that's 200 amps, 400 amps continuous. Someone's going to argue two cables may not cut it, but you know, we're not going to pull the entire amperage out of there at one time because it's going to be in parallel with two batteries. So, uh, that's the latest update on this system. This system for, you know, uh, uh, loads that are within range of what it's designed for actually works perfectly fine.

Um, if you're questioning how well these Vixron Quattros work, they work really really nice. Cannot explain how nice it is or when you're using it. Um, and if you don't, um, want to do all this wiring and hackery and and jackery and, you know, just try to connect alligator clips to charge stuff, just put Anderson uh, quick connects on there and you're going to be pretty fine. When you do that, I'd highly recommend make sure you get quality genuine connectors and uh, good cables.

This right here is 4 gauge cable connected. So you can just quick connect like a charge vertter which is 100 amps continuous. So 4 gauge is perfectly fine there. All right.

So uh that's the latest update on the system. Um on a later hopefully sometime in near future we'll get this battery connected here and get everything working. But uh if you're curious what's going on, that's what it is. That's how it's connected.

Thanks for watching. Have a good day. Get back to work and I'll see you guys next time. Heat.