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The following are common units and their abbreviations. Note that unit abbreviations are case-sensitive. While some units can be understood when written incorrectly, some have a completely different meaning if the wrong case is used. Avoid any possible confusion or ambiguity and use the correct...

You don't want a Victron inverter/charger. Why would you want something that will actually perform at its rated specs all day long without issue? Why buy something that you can get support for from any Victron dealer? And you certainly wouldn't want to combine your Victron inverter/charger with...

I'd worry about the two wires putting some bending or twisting stress on the fuse. The holder keeps things stress free. Putting a Class T (or any) fuse between two pieces of big heavy stiff wire (for example, 2/0AWG or 4/0AWG) without any support is going to result in some unwanted stress on the...

Agreed. I love a good IPA. But a friend of mine, who doesn’t like IPAs, says that IPA stands for “I’m a pretentious a-hole” :)

5000W on a 12V battery! Really? That's up to 500A being pulled from the battery. That's a ridiculous amount of current. That needs wire much larger than 4/0AWG. For 5000W you really should be at 24V or 48V, not 12V. What does the manual for the inverter suggest for wiring?

Out of all the inventions in the last 100 years, the dry erase board is probably the most remarkable.

There are two main values to worry about when choosing a solar charge controller (SCC). 1 - the max input voltage and 2 - the max charge current. When you look at Victron charge controllers you will see models such as the 100/20 or the 150/45. The first number is the max input voltage and the...

Remember that no matter how much solar you have, it will only provide what you need. If your battery is full and there are no loads then you will get nothing from the panels. Turn on a bunch of loads and the SCC should provide more current. Drop the battery down to 70% (or some non-full...

18Vmp x 3.12A (Imp) = 56W. How is that a 300W panel? Those specs don't make sense.

tl;dr - No you can't replace a BMS with a shunt. A BMS (battery management system) is there to monitor, maintain, and protect the cells of your LiFePO₄ battery. A shunt is a device that measures the amount of current flow. These two devices have two completely different jobs that are not...

Don't forget that you are getting lots of summer sun. See how it's doing in 4 or 5 more months. You won't think you are over paneled then.

Actually you can't. You have a max PV input voltage of 100V. This is based on the temperature adjusted Voc of the solar panel array, not the Vmp. With a Voc of 37.0V, 3S would be 111V which is obviously over 100V. At best you could do 2S (two in series) for a total of 74.0V. I assume you are...

1000W for 3 hours is 3000Wh. But through an inverter it would be about 3500Wh. A 48V (51.2V) 100Ah LiFePO₄ battery is 5120Wh. So the one battery can power the A/C for 3 hours (it can actually run it for about 4 hours). To replenish the 3500Wh used by the A/C, assume 5 hours of solar. 3500Wh /...

The Victron SmartShunt isn't for protection of any kind. It's to provide information about the status of your battery.

If you have that much amperage then you have enough panels in parallel that each string should be fused. If you have enough amperage to be too much for the MC4 limit then you need to be using a combiner box which won't have any MC4 connectors. If you have too much amperage for the wire then you...

I'd love to see a clear, concrete example comparing series vs parallel arranged solar panels. I know there are lots of videos on the subject but they all have serious deficiencies. Here's what would interest me at least: You need 6 identical panels, somewhere in the 200-400W range each. Make...

That's a rude thing to say. :) Aren't typos fun?

I wouldn't call that a big advantage of 24V. If you have half the battery then you have half the total power as well, regardless of voltage. You can easily make a 48V battery that is the same cost as a 24V battery. Both will have the same power. It's just that the 48V will have half the Ah of...

The lights you linked have the following note: These 12VAC LEDS require a special AC powered fixture. So you would need an inverter to power these from DC. It would be far more efficient to find 12VDC lights so you can avoid the DC -> AC losses of an inverter.

Hook everything up with just one battery and fully charge it. Then swap out the battery with the other one and fully charge that one. Do both with no loads. Once both are charged you can hookup both batteries in parallel and you are good to go.

Start with the basics. V x A = W. Volts times amps equals watts. That is as simple as it gets. The k prefix for any unit simply means 1000. Example: 1kW = 1000W. The symbol h is for hours. When you see Ah for a battery that is the battery's capacity. A variation of the basic formula of V x A = W...

I'm the opposite. I love a blank sheet. There's so much potential. So much to learn. So much to figure out. That's my favorite part of any project. By the time the sheet of paper is full I'm getting bored and I'm ready to move on to the next project and learn something new. I have such a long...

Use some scrap wood on top of and below the copper bar when drilling. Drilling through the clamped wood/copper sandwich will help with bit wandering and burrs.

Power is pulled by things that need it, not pushed by things that provide it. Your solar panels are not pushing 1000W into the SCC when unneeded. The SCC stops taking power from the panels no matter how much sun there is. It's like all of the outlets in your house. Electricity isn't being...

Depends on your use case. Provide more details about how your battery will be used and under what conditions. LiFePO₄ is great for many uses but not all. And don't run off and order some LiFePO₄ cells until you fully understand that LiFePO₄ fits your needs and then what it takes to build your...

It makes no sense for negative wires to be the same length as positive wires. If you have a battery bank made of 6 batteries in 2S3P, for example, then the following must be true: - The three series connections should be the same length as each other - The two or three positive parallel...

I used wood to drill my 1/4" copper bar stock when I made my bus bars. Seemed to work well enough. Maybe the ideal way is to use one piece of metal with the correct sized hole on top of the copper. You don't need to keep drilling new holes that one piece of metal. Just reuse the same hole over...

The idea is to wire for the hardware. It’s a 1kW inverter. Wire it to be used as intended so it’s not a surprise (or possible hazard) when someone tries to use the full potential of the inverter.

1500W load / 12V battery = 125A. That's why your 100A breaker trips. To fully support a 3500W inverter at 12V (which is really too much) you need wire capable of handling 340A and a 425A breaker. To handle 340A you should have a pair of 2/0 wires between each connector. I have no idea what wire...

You can put more than 6kW of panels on a charge controller that only supports 6kW of solar. You'll never get more than 6kW at any one time but having more panels gives you more production during a longer portion of the day or under less favorable conditions. Just be sure you don't exceed the...