Inverter Project

This is a first draft. There is many grammatical and spelling error here sorry(deal with it lol)

This page is is a walk through on the assembly of a 4kw inverter for the Villa in DR to be a power backup unit. Eventually I'll be going Solar with this configuration.   

Ill be posting link to all the product i purchased and diagram on how I'm going be designing the system with battery. I'll also post simple explanation on voltage, amps and wattage. Remember always speak with a license electrician if you do not feel comfortable performing these setup and also please use a license electrician when connecting to the AC Power. min my diagram ill be explaining battery and inverter connection also ill put some documentation on creating your own battery. since the system I'm dealing with is a 24v system and ill be using 4 6v battery the danger in this is nominal but the always take precautions. 



The Inverter i choose for this project was the Sungold Power 4000 Watt hour inverter 24 volts. This inverter is a split phase inverter that support both 110/220 volts output.

I choosed this inverter since it is a pure sine wave inverter so the electricity coming out of it is more clean and wont cause issue to anything plugged in to it.

This is the Feature from thier amazon listing

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S4C702M?ref=nb_sb_ss_w_as-reorder-t1_ypp_rep_k0_1_13&amp=&crid=1VD172WW45O41&sprefix=sungold%2Bpower&th=1


Battery setup


I will be setting up in the in the beginning four 6 volt battery 225ah in series this should bring my battery voltage to 24 volts with 225ah. This will give me 5400 watt hours. This would be "good enough" for a few hours of a power outage but the end goal will be to 4x that and install 10 solar panel. Ill explain below how i would configure this.

This will be a simplified explanation on plugging in a battery.

The image above is a battery plugged in Series. What this allow you to do is plug in multiple battery together and increase the voltage of the battery but capacity doesn't increase. In my set up the four battery above will be 6volt each and when plugged in this way four 6volt battery will push 24volt. Since my batteries are going be at the moment 225ah.  The capacity will stay at 225ah.

This will be a simplified explanation on plugging in a battery in Parallel.

The image above is a battery plugged in Parallels. What this allow you to do is plug in multiple battery together and increase the Amperage(capacity) of the battery but voltage doesn't increase. 

So above is a quick explainer on 

It Recommended alway put the batteries in Series First and then Parallels when setting a series Parallels

So at the moment my inverter and the 4 batteries im adding is going be used a battery back for when there is a power outage. The 5400 Watt hour i get from the 4 batteries can cover the house without the Air Conditioner unit for around 6 hours.  This is a good solution for the 3-4 hour poweroutage we get but then electric bill there is extremely high. So this will be a temporary strategy.


The bigger picture get extremely technical. for most people the set up above is "good enough".

Going Solar is the best strategy since this setup is in the Caribbean.. For the time being my current 4kw Inverter could work but i think eventually i will need to bring this up to 6kw+.

Let start with the battery set up. in the current setup it 4 6volt battery with 225AH capacity the issue with this batter they cost 190$ each (which is much cheaper what they sell those battery here. 190$*4= 760$ which only give me 5400 Watt hours.

I'm going buy 32 3.3volt 200 amp Cells for 1235$ this should give me 19200 watt hours.


We are going take the cells and plugged them in series to create 24v/200ah and plug in a BMS since these are just cells and we need the BMS(battery Management system) to manage the voltage and charge and discharge of these cell. Every Battery you buy have a bms in them you just dont seem them since they are cleanly package.

So 8 batteries in series with one bms. Now take this set up and do it four time. Now you have four 24/200 batteries. Now we are going plugged them in Parallel to increase amp hours. Now we have a battery set up of 24volts/800Amp hour this will give us 19200 Watt hours; we have the batteries to pretty much run the whole house including the AC(the inverter at 4kw will not run it since a AC unit uses 1200watt hour continuously and we have 4 of them. That 4800 watt and my inverter can only push out 4kw total. so until we replaced this we will keep the AC on the Grid.


Let talk Solar. We will need a few things to set it up, we will need the panels for the system. I will be using 12v/ 200 Watt panels they cost around 200$. Ill will need 12 of these. 

12 of them will produce 2400 watt hour. we should be able to get 8+ hours of sunlight in the Dominican Republic. This will give us 19200 Watt hour for 8 hours of sunlight per day. All the panel will be connected in Series.

After the panel are connected in Series will need to make sure we have the right Solar Charge Controller that can handle the volatge since the panel will be at 144volts. The Solar Charge Controller i'm looking to buy is 150v/100Amps. Remember the higher the Voltage the lower the Amp. By buying this charge controller I'll be future proofing my system since my panel in series the amp didn't go up just the voltage. The  Solar panel are 12volt /16.6 amps (roughly). I can easily expand this system if i need more then 12 solar panel in the future by connecting the newer one in Parallel increasing the amperage so for example 24 panel would be 144v/33 Amps and the Solar Charge Controller can support 100Amps. 24 panel will be 4800 Watt hours which is insane i will have to double my batteries to take advantage of this lol. So what does a Solar Charge Controller actually do. It does what it says in the name "Solar Charge Controller". What the device doing is taking the power from the solar panel and charging you batteries. the charge controller will bring the 144v down to 24volt in my case but they support different volatge to charge the batteries.  

P.S. since my inverter is a 24volt. my battery will have to put out 24volt. so my solar charge controller will have to be configure for 24 volts since it charging the same batteries.


Back to my regular system this is the way it will be set up


4kw inverter 

24volt/800AH battery system.(32 cells connected Series parallel with four BMS) this will provide 19200watt hour of energy

12 solar panels 12v/16.6amp rated for 200watt hours

1 Solar Charge controller 150v/100amps.


The cost for this set up is 4500$-6000$ and this is with me setting everything up. if you hire someone else to do it the price is going to the roof. and in DR we don't have to go through the crazy permitting like here in the States.


So once all this is plugged the inverter will be set to battery primary and  AC(grid lights) secondary. Everything plugged in to the inverter will run off battery full time. The Solar panel will keep charging the batteries. The inverter will take the charge of the battery and convert to 110/220 and push it to the house, The inverter also if it detect the battery went down in charge  it will also recharge the battery using the grid.. but with the solar set up im planning to implement the solar panel should be able to fully charge the battery daily and keep them charged.