Every instruction in this article comes from one source video — Will Prowse's Beginner And Budget Friendly DIY Solar Power System! Anyone can build this!, watched more than 2.9 million times on his DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse channel. The host builds a complete 5kWh solar backup system for a first-time builder: a server-rack lithium iron phosphate battery and a 3,000W all-in-one inverter, connected in under an hour with a couple of screwdrivers, a 10 mm socket and almost nothing else. If you would rather watch the build before reading the breakdown, the video is right here:
What makes this guide different from most solar build videos is how little it demands of you. No battery assembly, no bus bars, no fuse holders to buy — the battery ships with its own overcurrent protection, its own shunt and its own state-of-charge lights, and the inverter, charge controller and AC charger live inside one small box. The whole project is a connection exercise, and the connection order is what protects everything. That same discipline — protected battery first, solar second, loads last — is the architecture behind every pack we assemble at Dajiu Energy, just at factory scale.
The host opens by naming the real audience for this build: someone who wants a working backup power system but does not want to learn battery assembly, bus bars and fuse sizing before they can power a refrigerator. A 5kWh system is a genuinely useful size — it runs a 1,000 W load for five hours — and it is large enough for a refrigerator, an air conditioner or the essentials of a home during an outage. The all-in-one format removes the hardest decisions: the inverter, the solar charge controller and the AC charger are already matched inside one unit, and the battery has its own breaker, shunt and indicator, so there is no separate protection hardware to buy or wire.
The other half of the pitch is time. The video builds the entire system in less than an hour, and the tool list is honest: a couple of screwdrivers, a 10 mm socket, and an impact gun or screwdriver only if you are mounting the equipment to a wall. There is no soldering, no crimping tool required and no custom cable making, because the two battery cables are bought ready-made from an automotive store. For someone deciding between a solar generator and a real system, this is the middle path — a true 5kWh LiFePO4 system with separate components you can repair and expand, at a price close to a big power station. It is the same sizing logic we apply at Dajiu Energy: match the battery to the loads you actually run, not to a marketing category.
The build is built on two boxes. First, the battery: a server-rack lithium iron phosphate battery with 5kWh of capacity. The chemistry alone matters here — LiFePO4 is the chemistry that lasts 10 to 20 years in solar service, far longer than the 300–500 cycles of a typical lead-acid pair, and it does not gas or need watering. This particular unit adds three things you would normally buy and wire yourself: an overcurrent protection device (its own circuit breaker, sized for this chemistry), a shunt (the sensor that measures current in and out) and a state-of-charge indicator on the front. The host's point is that this battery costs almost the same as building the same pack yourself — so the DIY labor buys you nothing here, and the factory build buys you a warranty.
Second, the brain: a 3,000W off-grid all-in-one system from Growatt. Inside that one box live a 3,000W pure sine inverter, a solar charge controller, an AC charger and the control screen. "All-in-one" means the AC side can also charge the battery from the grid when solar is not enough — a feature you lose if you buy a bare inverter and controller separately. The host connects the two with a pair of 2-gauge battery cables from any automotive store, positive to the red terminal and negative to the black, tightened with a 10 mm wrench. Two cables, two terminals — that is the entire battery connection.
The wiring sequence matters, and the video is explicit about it: connect the inverter to the battery first, connect the solar panels second, and attach the loads at the AC output last. Battery first gives the charge controller a reference — most controllers will not begin charging until they see a battery, and connecting panels first on some units can send voltage into an unloaded controller. Solar second means the array can start feeding the battery the moment it lands. Loads last keeps you from switching on appliances while your hands are still inside the box. On the Growatt, the battery cables go up into two terminals inside the unit, and the solar wires connect to a second pair with a small screwdriver.
The same order is the safe order at any scale. When a customer asks us how to hook up a home storage battery, the answer is always the same sequence: battery to inverter first, panel string second, loads last — and disconnect loads (and usually the panels) before you open anything for maintenance. The order costs nothing and removes the two most common sources of damaged controllers and shocked fingers.
The hardest part of designing this system, the host says, is not wiring — it is making sure the solar array voltage stays within the unit's limit. The Growatt all-in-one accepts up to 145V DC on its PV input; exceed that and you can burn out the charge controller. On the trailer in the video, 800W of panels are wired as a single series string producing about 85V, which is safely inside the limit. If the array had come out at 160V, the host would either remove a panel or rewire the string to a lower voltage — you cannot simply plug in more panels and hope.
There is a second design decision hidden in that sentence: one series string means exactly two wires coming in, and no combiner box. Parallel strings, by contrast, need a combiner box and a circuit breaker or fuse per string — more parts, more connections, more places for a fault to hide. For the simplest possible system, the video's advice is one series string, two wires, done. When we size solar-ready battery systems for customers, the same constraint applies in reverse: we ask the panel count and the panel's open-circuit voltage first, because that number decides whether the charge controller survives.
The step most beginners find fiddliest is the AC side, and the video shows it clearly. On the bottom terminal block (the AC output) there are three terminals: on the far left the ground (green conductor), in the middle the live or hot (black), and on the far right the neutral (white). You strip a heavy-duty extension cord — the video uses a 12-gauge cord — and tighten each conductor into its matching terminal with a small screwdriver. The top terminal block is the AC input, used only if you want grid charging; a solar-only setup can ignore it entirely.
The video makes one honest limitation explicit: that 12-gauge extension cord is rated for about 2,000W, while the inverter can output 3,000W. If you want the full output, you either wire your own outlets on the side or feed a small sub-panel. For a beginner running a refrigerator and an air conditioner, an extension cord is genuinely enough — and the moment you outgrow it, the upgrade path is a sub-panel, not a new inverter. That is the expansion-first thinking we build into every portable power station and wall-mounted unit we ship: leave headroom in the inverter, add outlets when the load list grows.
The same all-in-one units are sold in 24V and 48V versions, and the host's advice is practical. This build is 24V because that is what he had on hand, and for a van or RV the 24V model is fine — especially if you charge from the alternator through a step-up converter. For a home backup system, he prefers 48V: the battery cables carry the same power at half the current, so they can be thinner, and efficiency runs a bit higher. Either way these units sit around 91–92% efficient, which is normal for an all-in-one.
One number in the video deserves a warning of its own: standby consumption is high on these all-in-one units, so if you plan to run the system 24 hours a day, the host recommends a solar array larger than 600W to cover the idle draw and still charge the battery. A system that is only used during outages can get away with less array. When customers ask us whether to pick a 24V or 48V battery, the answer is the same: match the voltage to the inverter family and the cable run — 48V wins for longer runs and bigger loads, 24V wins for small mobile systems.
The Growatt ships with AGM battery settings as the default, and the host's first piece of news is reassuring: those defaults will work fine with a lithium iron phosphate battery. If you do want to tune the profile, the video walks through the menu: option 5 puts the unit in User mode, option 19 sets the absorption voltage, the float voltage is just below it, and option 21 sets the cut-off (low-voltage disconnect) voltage — the point where the inverter turns off so the battery is not pushed into protection mode. For a 24V LiFePO4 battery he keeps the cut-off at 24V; for 48V he sets it to 48V, because lithium sits slightly higher than lead-acid at the bottom end.
Two extra notes round out the settings. There is a communication board on these units that can talk to the battery and show state of charge on the screen — the host does not think it is worth wiring up for a solar-only setup, since the battery's own lights tell you the same thing. And the cycle-life math: a LiFePO4 battery like this one is good for 10 to 20 years, and with solar the host expects calendar aging to end its life before cycle count does. That is why the charge settings only need to be "good enough", not perfect. The same tolerance is why we recommend our drop-in LiFePO4 batteries even to owners who are not ready to tune a controller — the chemistry protects itself within generous settings.
The video ends with an itemized cost, and it is worth repeating exactly: the all-in-one unit was $770, the 5kWh server-rack battery $1,500, two 2-gauge battery cables $20, and solar panels about $500 depending on array size — 400W on the low end, 600W or more if you want to refill quickly. The total lands around $2,800 for the complete system shown, and the host's point is that the price of the inverter-plus-controller alone, bought separately, would already eat a large share of that budget. The all-in-one is where the economy comes from.
What do you get for the money? A system that can power an air conditioner, a refrigerator, and effectively any load a household would need in a backup situation — built in under an hour, by a first-timer, with factory warranties on the two expensive boxes. The old rule that "one battery of any kind" needs its own external breaker no longer applies, because this battery's breaker is built in and matched to its chemistry and internal resistance. If you compare that number against the cost of a factory portable power station of similar capacity, the build-your-own path wins on capacity per dollar — and it is expandable in a way a sealed station is not.
The demonstration load in the video is an air conditioner, powered through that 12-gauge extension cord, and the host confirms the system can handle a refrigerator and essentially any backup load in a house. The practical ceiling is set by the cord (2,000W) before the inverter (3,000W), and by the battery's 5kWh for runtime: a 1,000W load runs five hours on a full pack, a 500W load ten. For outage use — a fridge, lights, Wi-Fi, a fan — the pack covers a full evening and morning without breaking a sweat, and the AC charger or solar refills it the next day.
It is also worth naming what this system is not: it is not a whole-home power system. The host explicitly notes that none of these mid-size units replace a house load center, and that solar-only running of a large home needs a bigger architecture. Knowing that boundary is part of choosing the right size — overbuying a giant inverter you will never load is exactly the mistake the video's "beginner friendly" framing avoids. When we talk to customers about sizing a backup system, we always ask the same two questions first: what loads must run, and for how long. The answers decide the battery, and the battery decides everything else.
The video is a build guide, not a sales pitch, and it leaves the build-or-buy question open in a useful way. If you want a system you can repair, expand and understand, this all-in-one build is the cheapest on-ramp that still uses real components — and the skill it teaches transfers to any bigger system later. If you want zero assembly and a sealed, warrantied appliance, a factory power station is the honest alternative. The middle path — which most buyers actually end up on — is to build the solar side yourself and buy the battery from a manufacturer who will stand behind it for a decade.
That middle path is our lane at Dajiu Energy. A customer tells us the loads and the runtime they need, and we match a LiFePO4 battery, a wall-mounted home storage unit or a portable power station to it, with OEM and ODM options for businesses that want the pack under their own brand. Whichever path you choose, the rules in this video are universal: battery first, solar second, loads last; keep the array under the controller's voltage limit; and let a matched breaker protect the chemistry. Get those right and a 5kWh system like this one will quietly run your essentials for the next decade. For more on the same fundamentals, our buying guides and build breakdowns go deeper on sizing and expansion.
Dajiu Energy is a Chinese manufacturer building LiFePO4 batteries for RVs, homes, golf carts and portable applications since 2017. From the 5kWh server-rack format in this build to drop-in replacements, wall-mounted home storage, portable power stations, commercial energy storage and battery swap cabinets — explore the full lineup in our product center, or browse more buying guides. Tell us your voltage, capacity and size, and we'll engineer the pack to hit it.
Dajiu Energy is a Chinese manufacturer building LiFePO4 batteries for RVs, homes, golf carts and portable applications since 2017. Our product range covers LiFePO4 drop-in replacement batteries, EV and golf cart batteries, wall-mounted home storage, portable power stations, commercial energy storage and battery swap cabinets — explore the full lineup in our product center, or browse more buying guides. Tell us your voltage, capacity and size, and we'll engineer the pack to hit it.
Source video: DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse — "Beginner And Budget Friendly DIY Solar Power System! Anyone can build this!" (youtube.com/watch?v=adFGmOlDM-Y). Comment excerpts are quoted verbatim from the video's top comments; answers are Dajiu Energy's own. Build figures and settings are transcribed from the video.
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