Understanding bar

[VanKitten]

So, I have concluded I will just use the grounding bar on each of the fuse panels...and take all the ground wires from there back to a grounding bar and then the neg on the battery. Sound righ?

 

[highdesertranger]

yes that will work. highdesertranger

 

[DannyB1954]

Those house panel grounding/neutral buses are not good to use with DC amps. Maybe a circuit needing but 1 amp. But voltage drop is a big problem in DC battery systems.

The metal buss bar doesn't care which way the electricity is flowing. In a power panel it is common for them to handle a 100 amp service. There is more metal in those buss bars than in most 12 volt terminal strips, so I don't see where there would be more resistance. Using the 12v terminal strips adds one more connection that can go bad. You have to crimp on a connector, (which is pretty thin), then screw the connector to the terminal strip. 

If I am in error, point me to a web site that will correct me.

 

[akrvbob]

If I am wiring from the battery terminals to the fuse panel (12v).   Then from the fuse panel out to lights, fans, etc.   isn't that just one connection anyway?

If I wanted more than one fuse panel...couldn't I "drop" the sub-panel from the first fuse panel?   Then it is still one connection back at the battery post...yes?

Roamingkat, you don't give yourself enough credit--this was a very wise answer and shows you know a whole bunch more than the average person about 12 volt!! Your hard work is paying off!

I put one of these Blue Seas fuse boxes at the front of my van and one at the back. That eliminates 12 items from needing to go to the battery. http://amzn.to/2mXpIJL

However, I'm not so sure I think it is a good idea to wire them together. If you do you need to increase the size of the wire going to the first fuse box to be able to handle the combined load. That is probably going to be a BIG wire and will be hard to physically get it into the posts of the fuse box. Then you also need to be sure it is fused enough for the entire load of the second fuse box.

Overall, I think that's a bad idea. 

I ran mine off my 2000 watt pure sine inverter which has a 2/0 wire and a 200 amp fuse. That's already overkill, and the fuse box will have no impact on it--saving me one less thing going to the battery terminals.

 

[VanKitten]

Bob,

Yes, those are exactly the fuse panels I ordered!

What do you think of this .... a 8gauge wire from the battery to each fuse panel (that's two connections at the battery). Then..I drop out from there.

I am trying to avoid long wire runs with 16 or even 14 gauge. So, rather than to run everything from one panel...

But..when I add the inverter, and the charge controller. Am I not up to 4 connections at the battery? Does the converter only connect to the charge controlller? Or is that connection 5 to the battery? Am I in the territory where I need a power bus (meaning a bus for the positive side) in addition to a grounding bus (negative side)? Also...do I need to then think about how to electrically insulate the power side? (Mount to a rubber backing?)

Am I over-thinking this?

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

The buss bars I am familiar with are the one's from Blue Sea Marine.  The bases on these are insulated, so that part is fine.  Note that the different buss bars are rated for different total amperage, so if you want to hook your inverter up to one, it needs to be heavy enough to handle the inverter.

I think you could run very heavy wires directly from the battery to the inverter and a smaller wire from each post to a positive and negative buss bar, and then hook each fuse block, and the solar charge controller, to the buss bar.  Keep in mind that the inverter may call for a very heavy fuse in the positive wire very near the battery, follow their installation instructions.  The Blue Sea site is a good source for these heavy fuses, too.  They will have several kinds.

https://www.bluesea.com/products/category/18/BusBars

As an alternative, if your battery has regular top posts, consider getting a set of military battery terminals, these make it easier to hook up multiple wires and will probably be cheaper than buss bars.

https://www.amazon.com/Pico-0810PT-...98&sr=8-2&keywords=military+battery+terminals

 

[SternWake]

The household grounding busses are simple crush wire under screw type. This is very inadequate for any expected duration of the connection. The screws always need to be retighttened, and the copper stranding quickly turns black and gets more and more resistive.

Also the household busbars are not electrically insulated from the mounting surface, which might or might not be a factor in any particular system.

Crimping on Ring terminals to stranded wire then attaching these to a Bussbar makes for a much improved durable connection compared to a crush stranded wire under a screw type of wire termination. unfortunately so many wire terminations on solar controllers are this type, as the only skill it requires is the ability to strip off 1/4 inch of wire insulation, and the ability to use a screwdriver.

Proper crimping takes tools and skill. Not all that much skill, but a newb can easily screw it up.

Nearly every electrical issue is from a poor connection either causing excessive heating, or simply losing connectivity from excessive heating and or corrosion. the variable is the time it takes to reach this point.

Proper wire terminations are critical for longevity.

Quality Buss bars and ring terminals properly crimped means the time before failure can be decades, instead of possibly just a few weeks.

 

[VanKitten]

Stern...

Thank you. I probably would have made that newbie mistake. I have installed proper ring connectors and crimped them on. I believe I did a good job....well..I have the right tool...and put all my strength in my hands into it. I checked the connector by pulling on it before declaring it "good".

But, I probably would have thought just the ole speaker wire...wrap the wire under the screw ... was good enough.

Thank you for saving me that headache later!

 

[VanKitten]

I am making myself a bit crazy.....

  I have drawn a diagram of where my understanding is now.

Question...where do I put the battery monitor?   Catching both charge and drain

Where do it put the grounding for the circuit breaker panel for the 110?

Or...is this whole thing going in the wrong direction?

I totally understand why some people have their brains turn to mush as soon as they begin to dig into any depth with this!!!

And...and am sure grateful for everyone having the patience to deal with my questions.
Oops

 

[VanKitten]

First one looked fuzzy.

 

[highdesertranger]

the shunt(that's the piece of the battery monitor that measures the current flow in and out) would go between the ground bus and the battery. no other grounds go to the battery, just the one.

the ground for the circuit breaker box goes to the vehicle frame.

the power for the convertor comes from the circuit breaker box. the 12v output should go to the bus bars.

the power to the inverter should come from the positive and negative bus bars. make sure the wire is of sufficient size. there will be a ground on the inverter separate then the negative going to the negative bus bar this is also a frame ground. power out of the inverter goes to the circuit beaker box. highdesertranger

 

[VanKitten]

Thank you. I am going to need a while to absorb all that.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

Hope this is understandable.  Red Lines are 12 volt positive.  Black Lines are 12 volt negative.  Green Line are 120 volt AC.

 

[galladanb]

So, in looking at the above diagram, I have questions...

I'm just beginning my electrical systems installs.
For my distribution center I'm using this:
http://www.bestconverter.com/PD5000-30-Amp-ACDC-Power-Control-Panel-_p_27.html#.WOEJZoM8KK0

For my charger, inverter, and auto transfer switch, I'm going with this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007NOUBA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

So, regarding the above digaram, am I correct in assuming, the shore power will go into the disruption panel first, the ac then goes to the charger inverter, then out to the outlets.

Is that about right?

PLEASE don't spank me for choosing these particular components... I choose them to suit my needs, and I'm thinking they will work for me.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

I'm not going to spank you, but I do want to make sure you understand what you're getting here.  That Triplite is not your traditional RV unit.  It's designed to be part of a high end computer uninteruptable power supply.  A regular ups has only enough battery capacity to run for 10 to 15 minutes, just enough time for you to save your work and shut down gracefully.  This Triplite would be used with one or more 12 volt batteries to keep something critical running for hours.

If you were using it in a van, you would run the shore power directly into it, hook up your house battery, and plug whatever you want to run into it.  When hooked up to shore power, it would power your stuff and recharge the house battery.  When not hooked up to shore power, the built in inverter would be powering your stuff.

So, yeah, you could make it work for a simple van set up.

But there would be no distribution panel with different circuits and circuit breakers.  Everything I've ever seen suggests that you can't hook an inverter with regular outlets up to an AC panel, only the ones without the plug in outlets are designed to do that.  I'm not positive, but I think it's got to do with that third safety ground wire and how it's wired in the outlet.

If I'm wrong about that - and I could be - hopefully someone like Sternwake will step in and set both of us straight . . .

Oh, and it looks to me like it's got no way to serve as a transfer switch for an onboard generator, which I believe the real RV inverter-chargers can do.

 

[VanKitten]

Thank you for the diagram.

Could you put arrows on that so I can see the direction of the flow?

It looks like the ac circuit breakers feed the converter?? I thought that was supposed to be the other way around. Converter gets power from the the power buss...which is feed by the battery....thought the point of a converter was to feed shore power to the AC circuit breaker panel.

Ok...now I am not seeing this straight. Would arrows help? Maybe a new brain?

 

[John61CT]

A disruptor panel would probably make things interesting!

Sorry couldn't resist

Using the term "converter" is so confusing to me, usually I associate that with DC to DC only.

To me, AC to DC is a charger or power supply.

DC to AC is an inverter.

"Combi" units have both inverter and charger built-in and coordinated for auto-switching and sometimes load sharing when needed.

Is that what the RV industry calls a converter? Or is it just the charger piece combined with auto-switch pass-through?

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

Thank you for the diagram.  

Could you put arrows on that so I can see the direction of the flow?

It looks like the ac circuit breakers feed the converter??  I thought that was supposed to be the other way around.     Converter gets power from the the power buss...which is feed by the battery....thought the point of a converter was to feed shore power to the AC circuit breaker panel.  

Ok...now I am not seeing this straight.   Would arrows help?   Maybe a new brain?

OK, I tried to add arrows to it.  Didn't work.  I'm not that good with paint.

A converter converts AC to DC.  You put 120 volt AC into it and you get 12 volt DC out, to either run things like lights, fans, etc directly, or charge the battery with any excess.

Let me describe the flows, maybe you could sit down with a drawn copy and add the arrows yourself.

12volt DC flows from the solar panels to the MPPT controller, and from there to the two power busses.

12 volt DC flows from the alternator to the isolator, and from there to the positive power buss.  (Chassis ground is it's return path)
(Optionally, power from the isolator could go directly to the battery positive, if it's a very heavy wire.)

120 volt AC flows from the shore power to the transfer switch and from there to the AC distibution (circuit breaker) panel.

120 volt AC flows from the distribution panel to the converter, is converted to 12 volts DC, and flows to the two power busses.

If there is no shore power, the battery feeds 12 volt DC to the inverter, it's inverted into 120 volt AC, and it goes to the transfer switch.

The transfer switch is there because you can't feed 120 volt AC from both the shore power and the inverter into the distribution panel at the same time. The transfer switch is an either/or switch.

(BTW, DO NOT run the inverter and the converter at the same time!  You would be taking 12 volt DC out of the battery, changing it to 120 volt AC, then changing it back to 12 volt DC and sending it back to the battery.  Not only a useless thing to do, but they would probably go into some kind of feedback loop and burn out)

The two 12 volt DC fuse blocks get their power from the power busses.

If the voltage on the power busses is higher than the voltage in the battery, then power flows from the busses to the battery to recharge it.

If the voltage in the battery is higher than the voltage on the power busses, then power flows from the battery to the busses, and from there to the fuse blocks, etc.

So the arrows between the battery and the power busses need to go both ways.  Sometimes the battery is a power source, and sometimes it's a power receptor.

Hope that helps

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

Using the term "converter" is so confusing to me, usually I associate that with DC to DC only.

To me, AC to DC is a charger or power supply.

Yeah, a converter is really a power supply.  You can't use battery chargers on an RV because loads like refrigerators and water pumps and stuff like that that comes on and goes off randomly confuse them, they can't deal with it.

I feel the same way about "solenoid" and "relay".  A solenoid IS a relay, dammit!

 

[galladanb]

I'm not going to spank you, but I do want to make sure you understand what you're getting here.  That Triplite is not your traditional RV unit.  It's designed to be part of a high end computer uninteruptable power supply.  A regular ups has only enough battery capacity to run for 10 to 15 minutes, just enough time for you to save your work and shut down gracefully.  This Triplite would be used with one or more 12 volt batteries to keep something critical running for hours.

If you were using it in a van, you would run the shore power directly into it, hook up your house battery, and plug whatever you want to run into it.  When hooked up to shore power, it would power your stuff and recharge the house battery.  When not hooked up to shore power, the built in inverter would be powering your stuff.

So, yeah, you could make it work for a simple van set up.

But there would be no distribution panel with different circuits and circuit breakers.  Everything I've ever seen suggests that you can't hook an inverter with regular outlets up to an AC panel, only the ones without the plug in outlets are designed to do that.  I'm not positive, but I think it's got to do with that third safety ground wire and how it's wired in the outlet.

If I'm wrong about that - and I could be - hopefully someone like Sternwake will step in and set both of us straight . . .

Oh, and it looks to me like it's got no way to serve as a transfer switch for an onboard generator, which I believe the real RV inverter-chargers can do.

So you think I made a bad choice?
Should I send it back?

I saw another blog where they insisted it would be ideal... That's why I choose it, that and free Amazon prime points....

I'll try and find that blog, although another crvl member pointed it out...
So, I'm not the first one to try it...

Here s the blog posting:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Vehicles/PMRV/Electrical/Electrical.htm
I actually don't like that the inverter is only 1250w, and it's a modified not pure sine wave...