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borisvonf
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# Posted: 10 Jan 2011 10:25am
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thanks again all for a great site.
i keep adding to my little single battery solar setup and have multiple clips and wires attached to my battery (all with inline fuses). battery has both a fat post and threaded post for each positive and negative.
so far i have connected to battery:
solar charge controller
a/c inverter
3 bank cigarette outlet (for 12 light, cell phone charger, xm radio,air bed inflator, cordless tool battery charger, etc)
12v pressure pump for sink
the mass of wires makes me feel like it should be better organized.
my question is: do i need a fuse block/panel to manage all the wires to make it safer or am i ok since all items have inline fuses?
if i need a fuse panel that will handle the positive side, what do i do with the negative side?
again, great site. thank you. one day i will post pics of my humble set up to hopefully return some nugget of info to the community
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MtnDon
Member
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# Posted: 10 Jan 2011 11:52am
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You can probably get along with the inline fuses you are using. However if you wanted to make it much neater and tidier one solution would be to buy a small breaker panel. You would then have a main DC lead from batteries to the breaker panel and from there to each point of use. The positive leads would run through the breakers. For the negative lead there would be one main lead from the batteries to the panel that would connect to the white or neutral block. All the branch circuits would have their negatives connected to that.
Look for a Square D, QO series panel at a Lowes or HD . The QO series of breaker can be used on DC circuits up to 24 volts. The breakers may not be marked for DC but the QO series are DC rated for low voltage circuits. There are no other brands of home style breaker panels that are rated for DC. Do not use a std AC breaker on DC, the contacts will burn, maybe even fuse under high load.
You might also find a breaker block for an RV.
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larryh
Member
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# Posted: 11 Jan 2011 10:00am
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In my farm house I put in over 20 years ago a 12v alternative back up to my line power. It consist at first of two batteries but I was lousy at keeping them full and eventually went to one since it gets limited use. I read in the old free Home Power magazines that were around at the time, that a "bus" system worked good for 12v to spread the power evenly over the length of the wiring. I used a #6 copper wire over the top of the rooms and then installed standard wiring down to outlets in the walls. I have a cigarette outlet plug in the kitchen, along with standard outlets I soldered the wiring to in several rooms along with ceiling lights in the bath, kitchen an closet and hall stairs. To use the wall outlets I converted one of the cigarette plug in "y" type multi plugs to use a standard polarized wide on one side plug in to run items like radios or tvs that use the cigarette plugs. I have a simple in line fuse in the positive side near the battery. I don't have any solar or wind so I charge it with my Honda 2000 or from a car battery charger in the house wiring from the power company.. I would like to get a few solar panels as I think the limited power I use for many things it might keep up with.
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islandguy
Member
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# Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:32pm
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I bought a marine-rated 12v fuse panel for our cabin, and installed it in a small wall mounted box in the bedroom. When you open the door to the panel, there is a diagram on the door listing the circuits and amperage, eg. Pump 10 amp. The box also contains spare spade type fuses.
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