Seeking Feedback on Solar Idea

[Wavery]

Originally Posted by Casey Freswick

Yes, I am still here. I did not connected the wire from my TV to my battery. I also normally just shut the breaker off for the converter. I charge my battery (batteries) with my vitron 30 amp solar controller. I have 3 100 watt solar panels on the back of the rear shell. If I have access and need shore power I will turn the circuit breaker on. I just added a 200 Amp battery to my 100 amp battery. So I now have 300 amp battery bank. I put the 200 amp battery in the storage compartment under the rear bed. This may be particularly beneficial if I am in a low temp situations where I can warm that battery up. I have shut off switches for both batteries. Here are pictures of my bus bars, one battery, solar controller and inverter.

Casey.......... I will be kind and just say that your "busbars" look unsafe and probably not as effective as what you might be trying to accomplish.

The main reason for busbars is to avoid stacking wire terminals and decrease the possibility of accidental shorts. What you have created does just the opposite. Stacking wire terminals increases resistance and potential for corrosion and other problems. I see that you chose to double up on 2/0 gauge wire as apposed to going with 4/0 wires. You only need to have 4/0 wire from the battery to a busbar and from that busbar to the inverter if you plan to run high amperage appliances (like A/C) from your inverter. That's your high amp draw. I'm thinking that a single 2/0 wire may be plenty for what you might be running. The rest of the wires need only be single, 10AWG wire (8AWG at the the most). You have way over complicated your wiring.

Today is Father's Day and I have to leave soon. If you'd like, I can draw you a plan for rectifying what you have there. I just can't do it today. What you have may work but trust me, it may cause you more headaches than you can imagine over time.

Is your inverter a pure sine wave inverter?

[Wavery]

Casey, I hope you find this helpful. It would simplify what you have and I think it will be safer and more reliable.

You have other (smaller) wires going to your busbars as well. I have no idea what they are for but they can also go to the busbars in the drawing as long as they are fused.

You don't really have enough battery or solar to effectively run your A/C, so as long as you aren't running some high amperage appliance that I don't know about, singe 2/0 cable should be sufficient up to 200A+ at a 10' run.

By the way, I realize that you have a 3,000W inverter. That doesn't mean that you must run 4/0 wires if you never run anything over 2000W constant. 3000W is just what the inverter is capable of. That is not what you will running it at, unless you know something that you haven't told us. Even if you did run 3000W for a short time, you'd probably be OK with 2/0 pure copper wire.

You might like these 250A, protected busbars (they're also available in 350A):
https://www.amazon.com/Seamaka-250A-...1zcF9hdGY&th=1

These solar circuit breakers are a good ide too. They allow you to turn off the solar panel input so that you can work on your other components without risk of damaging your solar controller.
https://www.amazon.com/Miniature-Cir...s%2C156&sr=8-5

[Wavery]

Originally Posted by JohnMD

driving down the road in full sun, if I am getting close to 30A and the 7-pin charge is sending a few amps that pushes over 30A combined, is this dangerous?

John

That is not a problem. Your vehicle's alternator sends a very poor (low voltage) charge to the trailer battery anyway. Besides, you mentioned wiring your solar panels in series. When wired in series, you multiply the voltage x the number of panels but the amperage doesn't change. EXAMPLE..... if you have 3, 100W panels that are rated @ 20V and 6A. 3 in series would be capable of putting out 60V and 6A. 3 in parallel would be capable of 20V and 18A. Your MPPT charge controller sorts out whatever is sent from the solar panels to what is the best voltage and amps for your battery.