Bus Power Overhaul: 48V Upgrade, Battery Swap & Solar Rewire

https://youtu.be/xQGpxKVITpk

In this episode of Occupy the Land, we finally overhaul the bus’s aging electrical system on our Arizona desert homestead! Ernie clears out outdated 24V inverters, glitchy charge controllers, and tangled wiring, replacing them with a powerful 48V inverter and high-capacity batteries for simplified, reliable 120/240V power. We bypass failed rooftop flexible solar panels, prep for better connections, and organize tools for efficiency, ensuring no downtime during the swap with portable EcoFlow backups and a heat gun for shrink wrap. With family holidays approaching, this upgrade promises robust power for appliances and tools, marking a major step toward energy independence in our evolving off-grid setup!

Transcript:

Well, I came out to work on, you know, some of the solar stuff found Donna playing, you know, trash woman. And, we just fill this up and put a lot of stuff in the back of a truck, and we have this covering that just, rolls on it and goes over it, so it’s no muss, no fuss.

When do you plan on taking it to the dump? Tomorrow. So tomorrow she’ll just, you know, while I’m doing a show or something. She’ll go where? Very interesting. Last night, yesterday, you know, our inverters finally took a dump because they were just. They’ve been kind of glitchy for a while, but they were working. We had backup batteries and stuff, and we got generators.

So when it was time, we knew. Well, it’s time they gave up the ghost. Well, what happened was we have, nine panels back here, but the inverters that we have, we had to split into two to have 3000 watt inverters, two of them. So 6000W to power, like, you can do the microwave and heat the water and, coffeemaker.

And we were always manager. Whoa. Don’t turn that on. And, I really didn’t like I just like, you know, like a home. Don’t have to worry about just flip everything on and glow. But, it can only take four panels that were in two in series and another two in series. And then they would be put in parallel, and they go through this combiner box here.

And we had four wires coming out and it was a thing. So this the way we got the new inverter, I could put all nine panels on. So I’m going to get a lot of power, especially these big ones here. But what was I’m building up to? What was the most interesting about it now? We had pictures and some video of us, putting all of our equipment out.

We put some tables out here to spread out the batteries and get everything all organized. And while we’re working on it, in case there’s the problem, we had our backup to our backup generator, because even the generator on the bus, without going through an inverter, it wouldn’t invert the, power the way it was set up into the, breaker box.

Now, what we did is, you know, like, cleaned it all up. I mean, you know, this is a lot better now. This is from the rooftop solar on the the bus that those panels went to. Crap. But, we had a lot cleaner. We had two battle boards over there, and we had sounded like a gunshot. It was like a 12 gauge rifle, 12 gauge shotgun went off about 100 yards away or something, you know, boom.

And I’m like, the hell was that? Donna felt it, heard it and would come out. There’s nothing going on. And we were wondering, I mean, it could have been somebody shooting, but, I think it was one of the batteries that we had two Battleborn. These were the only lithium ion phosphate band at the beginning of it, like five years ago.

And that technology first came out and they were very popular and thought well made. But then they started finding out they were having that kind of problem or, you know, going bad, heating up. Exploding or, you know, whatever. And it was because these bars here are not really secure inside any where, especially in mobile applications, to where they go out.

So out of the four that I originally had, only one of them is good. But you know, you got a good one there that’s running our 12 volt system, which is why I got this little, you know, trickle charger just to keep that up all the time. That runs like the water pump and and you’ll some, you know, little 12 volt lighting around.

And so on, you know, from the original, when the bus was used originally as a passenger bus. So it doesn’t need that much, but you do need it. So I just, you know, got a trickle charger and just plugged it into one of the outlets is down here. Problem solved. Because we had a big device up here that was the 24 volt system that we had.

Would convert down the 12 volt. That’s how it was set up when the retired plumber first built this for recreational use. Now then we had, you know, the generator and so on. And that power. Now this is the new inverter. This thing is 6000W. It’s, capacity of the two watts put together there. And it can do a lot more powerful.

In fact, it needs a lot higher voltage from the solar panels for it to recognize it and work. So I got to use all nine of my panels, did, five and series and four and series because it has on there two strings of solar can go into this inverter. So it’s better. That’s not the the issue. What happened was last night I go through this manual.

You know I, I make fun I never read the manual but I do you know usually so I go through this manual. It’s pretty straightforward. And you got to do a lot of the, you know, you set up it’s wires coming in from the two strings of the solar. You got a bunch of, you know, cabling to the batteries, and then it comes out and goes, you know, through this into the breaker box inside.

You know, that’s not the deal. What’s of interest is that we were I was really interested in. Upgrading the system. And then we had a problem. You can’t I’ll turn on now with the camera. You can see it maybe. Okay. You can kind of see that the camera can see it, but here in person, unless you’re looking straight at it, it’s almost like it’s not even on.

You can’t see it. I need way more contrast than that, especially being an old man. So what I had to do is I was running this thing, hold my camera up the whole time, going through all the settings. Now it was when I got it all done, double checked, everything created. Yeah, my old wires did all the terminals.

I went through it. By the time I got done it was, oh, you know, ten or something. I thought I was done and it would come on, green lights on, everything’s on, but it wouldn’t generate power. It would recognize it for a little while. There you go to zero. Go up and go to zero. And I’m going the heck is going on.

So what do I do? I get grok involved and I go, all right, grok, this is what I got. This is the thing. This is, you know, and you have that conversation, that list that threaded conversation on the solar, the battery. So they already know, you know, what you’re talking I’m going to call her she and her because it’s a female voice, but now it’s a computer.

But the, So what happened was I’m going, all right, what, me through this stuff? Because a lot of these things in here, these screens, they have different definitions, you know, Greek talk of. What the hell is that mean? So I go, all right, explain, what this means to me. What’s the setting for? Why would I have this?

So you got that kind of thing. Now what happened? It wouldn’t work. And I’m going, all right, this is what I’m doing. So I had a lot of good suggestions, you know, recycle this, reset that. Dude, you know, make sure you get them, evenly charged or balance on the thing because inverters it like that. Good job.

Down on, I go through all that. Well, it still wouldn’t work, so I’m going. All right, what are we going to do about this today? What we did is we, you know, had our extra generator run on propane, and we have a backup, extension cord that’s, ten gauge that comes in and goes out and we use a power strip to keep the refrigerator, you know, from, you know, melting everything and that kind of stuff.

So overnight, we had to do this all yesterday I had yesterday, today is the day. So we got out all the equipment, everything I knew I’d need, you know, got taken care of. When I get with the grok, I go through this long conversation. We go through all that stuff. Nope nope nope nope nope. Because they’re going by the manuals.

They’re going by the forums, you’re going by people complaining, talking about it, whatever on x. Now, one of the common complaints was how dim the, display is, but, you know, we made do with it. Then today we use all our backup stuff. I get a couple of shows done, I’m all doing that, and I had just enough time this afternoon because you’re, you know, the West, side of the country.

So. Signature. So one which is in Texas. I had to hurry up, get to him before it would be too late, and then close up. And I won’t get customer service, so I get to a human being. Explain what’s going on. He knows. Are you off grid? Yep. He got pregnant. Nope. He had you. Have you got the app you got?

Nope nope nope nope. Don’t want surveillance on what got y’all stuff. And he goes, okay, change the setting on step 25 or whatever it was, and change it to lead acid and not lithium ion, lithium ion batteries. And I’m going, okay. He goes, yeah, because it’s kind of a, you know, phone home clandestine surveillance of we know how and you can access on your phone and that kind of thing.

And I go without that, but you’re not going to be able to use that, you know, anywhere from the world. Guy go. No, I don’t care. You know that. Whatever. So we could have gone through. But stuff to fix that. But all I did was change it. The lead acid and it fixed it. Cool. Everything’s working. It was all done.

Everything cleaned up. Boom. You know, hero. But this is what was interesting to me. I tell you all that to get to that, I go into that thread with grok because they don’t have a, recording of your conversations. It’s all private. They’re going up. We pinky swear we don’t have any, recordings or logging or anything, you know, say anything.

Don’t worry about it. You know, we’re not recording pinky swear. All right, so I ask, and I go. I found the solution. You know, we went through all this, and it was because of the communication between the batteries and the, you know, Ethernet, corded and yada, yada, yada, yada. And, if that’s not exactly the way they want it into a grid tie utility and you’re off grid, well, you got to know to set it to lead acid.

Well, this is like four years old that we I think we got it in 21, you know, ready for the bill we’ve been planning for a long time. Well I had this and it’s a nice and burner thing that does what I needed to, but, we kind of had it, you know, in storage. So he broke out the battery to put it on.

Well, you do it. It led acid fires right up everything. Not a problem, because it goes by voltage as opposed to state of charge, which is geek solar crap. Doesn’t matter. So I tell grok, I go, all right, found the solution. I wish we didn’t spend two hours going through all this stuff. It’s not that I’m blaming, you know, grok, because you know, she’s going, this is what the manual says.

This is what Ford says. When people talk about this system, we’re going to do this. But, you know, I go, I mean, I’m not going to, you know, dismantle everything. Okay, well, I’ll be here in the morning. You go get some sleep. It’s okay. You know, I love you long time. I’m. I’m here for, you know, so when I go back and I said I have the solution, I found out what it was.

And, And then, of course, what is it? What do you care? Because I wanted to test this. If you’re not recording everything, if you’re not, taking all this data, how are you learning from the conversations with clients? Okay. You know, or in public or free accounts, whatever. Well, she goes, well, they changed, you know, in the last year or something, which I talked to her before about this, and she didn’t mention this till I brought this up.

I go, how are you going to take this information, what we used. So the next guy like me that calls has the same problem. It’s two in the morning. Oh my God, I’m freezing. I’m dying. You know, my wife’s going to divorce me because I don’t have power. I mean, whatever, how are you going to take this information and, make it available to them?

If all this is private? Well, we put it in the memory hole. You know, it goes into a special. We can access it, whatever thing, so that we can add to our knowledge base and help the next guy. Reasonable. Cool. You know, I was expecting. In fact, I thought that would be a big advantage on stuff just like this.

So that something that somebody went through days and whatever the hell the problem was, find a solution. Look, we got a solution. This is the solution. We have a solution. Put it in the next time. Boom. The guy then I talked to literally two minutes and he’s like, you know, and he walked me through it and spent a little time with me, you know, before he I’d take another call before he got to go home.

But, so very nice. I got a human being to give me the freaking answer. Do I need a human being? Next time? Maybe not. If you have all the people with all the problem, all the things that I could not solve, and they find out what the solution was to billions of people across the planet, that is going to be a solution.

And they know it, but they’re recording it now, like, okay, well, it’s encrypted, it’s anonymized. It has nothing to do with you. Ernie’s not going to get any credit for, you know, saving the guy two hours or anything, but they have the solution. I’m good with that. I kind of expected that I would have designed it that way.

But I mean, to try and tell us from the beginning. Oh, no, it was totally private. We wouldn’t glean it. Which is exactly why I asked a question before. If you have all these people using it, they come up with a solution within, what, a year or two, you know, we’re going to do 97% of the troubleshooting of freaking every product.

So I’m going so there’s that. And the reason I’m doing this recording one, it’s working fine. But the I just want you to know they’re storing the data and some of it they’re making accessible for the future. Now, they pinky swear it’s encrypted, not tied to whatever, but yeah, they’re not being totally truthful with us from on everything from the beginning.

But once I, I told her, I go, I thought it was all private. How are you sharing this information with the next guy? Well, about a year ago, you know, then she explains. So I’m just going, oh, here we go. And then you put arms and legs on them and some dexterity. I always go, I got a little wire I need and kind of loop around and, you know, tie a cherry stem into a, you know, a knot with my tongue kind of thing.

I’m going. Yeah. When robots can do, this little thread needle kind of stuff. The other thing, press me. It’s common, it’s common, it’s common and grok with a female voice is going to be, I don’t know, you know, whatever they think I like. Or you can do it. Oh, you want to look like this? It’s a, you know, it’s only $195 a month subscription of.

You get to have a this robo babe that pinky swears won’t stab you at night. You know, you go walk into your bedroom and, you know, we we we we, you know, so on. This is scary. You know, my wife is concerned that I use like I get too dependent on it. You know, at 64, I’ve been around.

I’m not I’m not really that concerned. You know, I know where the lines are. But if you’re a teenager, a kid this I remember a lot of dystopian short stories that this kind of stuff is just freaky. So FYI, we’re good. Everything’s running. We’ve got much greater capacity. We’re going to be kicking butt even more than we were on solar power.

Bus Power Overhaul: 48V Upgrade, Battery Swap & Solar Rewirehttps://t.co/qU73DzR7Rz

— occupytheland (@occupy_the_land) January 17, 2026