Solar System / Electrical Diagram Advice

[segurtj]

Here is my solar system / electrical plan. I was looking for some feedback. I am by no means an electrician and any help is greatly appreciated.

The Blueprints

[PNW_Steve]

Looks pretty good to me.

I do see two items right off that cause me question. Perhaps I missed them?

1) I don't see any grounding of the negative side of your inverter. I don't know about Aimes but some do recommend grounding the negative battery to the chassis ground.

2) It looks to me like you have 6 x 12 volt batteries in series. That would yield a 72 volt battery bank.

[segurtj]

So are you saying that 72V of batteries will not be enough?

[PNW_Steve]

Well....

Finding a charge controller that will work with a 72 volt bank my be challenging as well as finding a 72 volt to 12 volt converter to support your 12 volt loads.

Most of us run 12 volt or 24 volt battery banks along with the odd duck who runs 48 volts.

If you take those 6 x 12 volt batteries and wire them in a series/parallel configuration you can obtain a 24 volt bank. You would connect pairs of 12v batteries in series strings giving you 3 x 24 volt strings. The connect the 3 x 24 volt strings in parallel. This will yield a 24 volt battery bank with 3 times the A/H capacity.

Take a look at this:https://www.batterystuff.com/kb/arti...-tutorial.html it may explain it in a bit more detail.

[Jdawgsfanasty]

Originally Posted by segurtj

So are you saying that 72V of batteries will not be enough?

Not much equipment rated for a 72v input...most equipment is 12vdc or 24vdc...

Sent from my VS500PP using Tapatalk

[JDOnTheGo]

In addition to what the others have said, I'm not sure about connecting the shore/generator transfer switch output and also the inverter output to the 120VAC panel. I guess there is no reason not to do this as long as you are sure you have only one of those three sources providing power?? I'm not sure. Maybe the reason is that the shore or generator "input" would be hot as shown (when the inverter is operating).

I put another transfer switch in my system at that point.

[PNW_Steve]

Originally Posted by JDOnTheGo

In addition to what the others have said, I'm not sure about connecting the shore/generator transfer switch output and also the inverter output to the 120VAC panel. I guess there is no reason not to do this as long as you are sure you have only one of those three sources providing power?? I'm not sure. Maybe the reason is that the shore or generator "input" would be hot as shown (when the inverter is operating).

I put another transfer switch in my system at that point.

I think that the Aimes inverter that he is looking at has a built in transfer switch.

[roach711]

I'm guessing that you want a 12 volt system. In that case you would change the yellow jumpers between the individual batteries. Instead of a jumper connecting the positive on one battery to the negative of the next (which will give you a 72 volt system), you would jump from positive to positive and negative to negative for a 12 volt system.

12 volt parallel connections (pos to pos and neg to neg) add the battery amps while leaving the voltage the same. For example, assuming your batteries are rated at 225 amps, your system would be 12 volts and 1350 amps.

Now, take the same 6 batteries and connect them in series (pos to neg) and you now have a 72 volt system with 225 amp capacity.

Parallel cabling adds the amps and series cabling adds the volts.

[segurtj]

Thanks everyone for the help!! I changed the battery connections so now it is a 12v system. I also ran the shore/generator power straight to the inverter which has a built in auto relay. Am I correct in grounding the Inverter and both panels to the chassis? Anything else I might be missing?

UPDATED: The Blueprints

[PNW_Steve]

My installation on my last bus more closely followed your first transfer switch configuration.

That gave me the ability to "automatically" disconnect high current loads when I was running on invert power.

Not sure if I can describe this properly,.....

I ran shore and generator into the transfer switch. The load side of the transfer switch went to the load center mains. Then I wired branch circuits for all of the high current loads and one branch circuit to the inverter input (ATS built in) and the inverter output went to a sub panel for connection to inverter powered branch circuits.

In use, it auto switched between generator and shore power. When one of those two was available then all branch circuits are powered from shore/generator. In the absence of shore/generator power the ATS in the inverter will power up the inverter backed circuits and the non-inverter backed circuits are dead.

I hope that makes sense