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RE: It's done! Solar powered steemian! Ecofriendly!

in #solar6 years ago

You need heavier wire from the battery to the inverter. The inverter will draw 50 amps at 600 watts. Your 10 gauge wire is only rated to 30 amps. you need heavier wire I recommend a Minimum of 6 gauge wire (rated for 55 Amp); I would use Number 4 if it were my system. Also, keep the wire as short as possible :)

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It really depends on what is being run off the inverter. I use 12 gauge wire on a 400 watt inverter and it is fine because I only use it for charging a netbook and occasionally running a compact florescent light bulb. It may not be the 'best practice' but it works fine.

The only things that I really would advise is to secure that battery so it cannot shift and move that jacket away from the charge controller because those things can run hot and one you want it to stay cool and two the jacket could catch on fire.

Load is rverything on any system! Your 12 ga wire will work up to a 240 watts load. At full load 10 ga wire will just carry that load.

Yeah!

I am often just working with what I have available and often do not recommend that others do what I do. I am very mindful of the loads I use and 'know the limits'. I am also using very short lengths of wire.

Shorter is better for sure, and using what you have is wise. If you can double the supplied wire, with that shorter length, it would better

I always try to help on load calculations, because I want everyone to have the best possible system. I am glad you are up on load and voltage drop, this is usually where most systems fail.

Keep charging! :)

Yeah I think that load calculations are important as well. Having the advice of electricians is always good!

One thing on doubling the wires and why I avoid it is because it is also doubling the resistance/ohms. If I am wrong about that let me know.

Capacitors in parallel double, resistor values in parallel are halved. Since we are fighting (small) wire resistance we can lower it by parallel wires. :)

Try it, you will like it; and it's free!

Yup, spot on!

I like to oversize the feed wire a little to help the inverter to not stall under the surge part of the load. I like the battery size he has, and for a mobile unit 600 watts is decent. :)

It's a 305 watt hanwa qcell panel.

That will give you 25+ amps at 12 volts, so that 10 gauge wire on the inverter would be good on the Panel to solar charger wiring. That is a nice sized panel, and will fully charge that battery quickly! :D

Oh good call! And that's the wire that came with the inverter.

They should know better! But no harm done, it is a short run, and the lumber yards sell wire by the foot! :)
IF YOU CAN'T GET THERE in time, Double up the wire you have, it should be okay.