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diy solar

A little safety check please

KyleW

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May 15, 2020
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I’m a complete newb to solar and pretty much electrical safety. I bought the mobile solar power book which helps but I still can’t completely wrap my head around it all. Take a look at the pictures and let me know if my setup is safe. I have 3 100watt solar panels going through the Epever tracer4215bn controller to two 6volt FLA batterie which I will be replacing with 1 12v BB and will eventually add another when I can afford to. I don’t have the battery isolator hooked up in the pictures, once I put my BB battery in do I need to do anything special since the BB is lithium and my van battery is FLA?
Thanks in advance!
 

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You'll need to switch the MPPT to a profile in line with Lithium Phosphate batteries (LiFePo4) or set it manually - does that charge controller have this option either via bluetooth or a cable? If not you'll need a new MPPT. Which you might need to get anyways as you need to have a low temperature disconnect set to around 2C (36F) as LiFePo4 batteries cannot be charged below freezing without the possibility of severe damage to the cells. You can still discharge them below this temperature. Victron has this option on their MPPTs, or if you buy a top notch BMS it would have it as well.

Do the Battleborns have a built in BMS with an appropriate low voltage disconnect set at the right level? This is an issue with LiFePo4 batteries, where it's not with FLA ones. If the BB does not have it you'll either need to figure out an external BMS or buy a Victron Battery Protect for your DC devices and an inverter that has a low voltage disconnect that's customizable (all victron ones have this, a few other brands do as well but none of the cheapo ones do). You want this set at 12V or higher for a LifePo4 battery and the typical inverter has it set at 9.5-10.5V (and is not customizable). This works fine for FLA but is too low for LifePo4 ones.
 
It's hard to tell from the photos (although overall it looks like you did a very clean installation) but you want to make sure every wire is fused to prevent the possibility of a short causing a fire. The general way to do this is the "only" wire from the battery positive terminal goes directly to the fuse box (or a disconnect switch and then to the fuse box). All other positive wires should come from the fuse box. You can also keep the negative terminal "clean" by running one wire from it to a bus bar.
 
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