Renewable Energy Questions/Discussion > Wiring and Code discussion

Battery bus design

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ksouers:
My little bank is growing and it's time to start thinking about hooking up to a bus. My criteria are fairly simple. As my bank is growing I need room for expansion. I will be switching from 12 volt to 24 volt in about 6 months or so. I also need to reduce the chances of shorting. I really don't want to drop a wrench and have it weld itself to the bus.

So, how has everyone laid out their bus? Did you put the bars end to end or parallel? How much separation between the bars?

I know brass would be the preferred material, but steel and aluminum are readily available. Brass would have to be ordered, not a problem, just extra cost and hassle. Are steel and aluminum acceptable materials with proper corrosion protection?

How did you protect the connections from inadvertent shorting? Did you mount them in a box? Put them in separate boxes for each pole?


Thanks,
Kevin

bj:
  I will be interested in the replies as well Kevin, as I am at that point.
  At this point, I can only tell you that all incoming (solar/wind someday) will be in a box.
  I suspect my buss will be copper, as I have a large free piece.  Copper is pricey these days.
  As building a box is fairly easy for me, (and cheap) I am leaning towards putting the buss's in
one.
  If you use aluminum for a buss, put the anti-oxident grease on all connections, and it should be fine.

ghurd:
I would not use steel.

Actually, I personally would not use AL either, but I think it would be better than steel.

Bus bars may be one of those items that is cheaper to buy than make, depending on the requirements.
G-

tomw:
Kevin;

Avoid Aluminum like the plague. I think Stainless Steel is OK but higher resistance than other options. Among the common, affordable metals copper is where I would go for low resistance.

I do not use a bus as you think of it. I have 2 big boy traction batteries with 2 heavy cables each and factory interconnects on each for the cells within the individual "battery". One is copper cables with ends the other is tinned copper straps. The batteries tie together through a breaker and ginormous terminal blocks with 500 MCM connections.

I had access to a decent industrial salvage outlet and collected a few copper bars from electrical boxes 1 inch wide and a quarter inch thick and various lengths to build a "bus" but never needed to.

It seems that any decent metal dealer in a largish city should have copper bar stock available. I think copper is the best bang for the buck for conductors whether wire or bar stock. I use Aluminum triplex with 3 conductors the size of your pinky to feed from my turbines but that is an availability issue and weight consideration being overhead lines. I got 2 150 foot rolls of it for $90 each used. It never wears out and can move 200 amps all day without issues.

I guess I am saying Aluminum has its uses but NOT for a bus and certainly not near possible acid vapors.

Just from here.

Tom

EDIT:

I meant to add you could split PVC tube to cover your bus bars. My 810 AH GNB set uses a formed plastic strip to snap over the interconnect bars. PVC pipe split with zip ties be an easy way to duplicate that out of any hardware store.

Tom

ChrisOlson:
I got a four bar 2,000 amp DC bus (for two inverters) from SquareD, rated 250 volts.  It has 6061 aluminum bars in it.  Seems to me that most all of the commercially made power panels use aluminum bus bars, including the DC Conduit Box for Xantrex inverters.

--
Chris

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