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Grounding issue? Shorting

JonL

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Sep 18, 2020
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This is an extremely frustrating topic. I’ve talked to a couple of electricians, and none of them seem to understand solar that well, especially grounding. I was told by one electrician that basic grounding takes two years for an electrician in study.
I will be showing the way I originally had grounded, the system, and the new way, which is causing shorts & the battery shut down!
The only reason I changed it was because I figured one was off grid wiring, and the other was for connecting to the main panel.
I will be posting two drawings, one with the old wiring and one with the new wiring that’s causing shorts. Then I will photograph both wiring in photos, but I figured the drawings would be easier to understand.
For some reason, my thinking is that the inverter goes to the main panel and the ground is at the panel, from the 6/3 wire. Having the old wiring that went to a ground rod, seems like it would cause a loop and possible problems with the system in the event of a lightning, strike or other issues.
This is why I thought you only need one ground at the panel? I figured I could just wire at the old way, but I’m not sure that is safe either. But at least it worked. ?
Any help here would be gratefully appreciated. ?
 

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My crude understanding of grounding has me liking your old grounding set up, nothing fancy, grounds to grounds and ultimately into the....you guessed it, ground. But the other diagram seems to be floating as I don't see a connection to earth ground. My modest set up only has PGE coming in through an ATS, everything else is isolated and close looped....which means I am not being safe so I will pay attention to this thread. I can't really mess with the home electrical system because I rent and they absolutely will not authorize podunk Frankie to mess with the wiring. Forcing me to bootleg my harvesting of the suns power.
 
I saw this video and tried to duplicate the wiring that this guy did for the ground. Although his was off grid totally, where mine is connected to a panel with a flip switch. The attached image will show at 24 minutes and 30 seconds how he grounded his with the same batteries. The main reason I wanted to not use the ground rod, was I was going to use it for my solar panels. ?
 

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In the first diagram you have both neutral and a earth rod connected this isn’t normally done it’s one or the other

In the second it’s not clear what’s grounded. Is the invertor neutral earth bonded as well
 
In the first diagram you have both neutral and a earth rod connected this isn’t normally done it’s one or the other

In the second it’s not clear what’s grounded. Is the invertor neutral earth bonded as well
That’s what I’m thinking is that from the inverter the 6/3 wire goes to the main panel to the grid, and therefore should be grounded – then why am I getting a short on the battery’s shut down?
I did it the same way. This guy did in the video 24 minutes in. The only difference is he is totally off grid.
 

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First one is better with ground rod connections....ground needs to be connected to neutral wire in one spot and why are you connecting ground to neg battery post?
 
First one is better with ground rod connections....where is your connection to neutral wire and why are you connecting to neg battery post.
I wasn’t connecting to the battery post, but connected to the negative busbar.
 
Here’s the link to the video I was talking about. 24 minutes into the video, he talks about grounding, this is where I decided to copy his ground, figuring that instead of the ground going to the stake in the ground, it was going to the main panel where it was supposed to be grounded?
 
Well, after working with it for sometime, I put back everything I could, but I could only get the charge controllers to work. The inverter is the only problem now, as I try to hook it up the battery’s short out, even though it’s not on? I tried hooking a ground to the negative busbar again, but it doesn’t matter whether I have a wire connected to the ground busbar or not! I did this because I noticed they do this on motor vehicles.
At this point, I don’t know how to go forward, since I can’t even hook up the inverter to see if it’ll go on or not. I have to try to find some way to reset it or send it back and get another expensive replacement.
All I can say, is understanding groundIng really gets under my skin! ?
 
Check your invertor for a bong between its neutral and earth. You only need this of nowhere else there’s a neutral earth bond. Two of them will cause issues with the invertor.

Don’t have two neutral earth binds active at any time.
 
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That’s my understanding, but I don’t know enough about it to know how to check a ground & neutral bond? ?
I had an electrician hook up inverter to the main panel, he ran 6/3 wire from the inverter to the panel, they were a hot, neutral and ground wire. So my guess would be he would’ve grounded the neutral to earth!
 
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So now that it’s morning again, I’ll take a different approach to this problem. Since I believe the inverter is bonded to the main panel ground, the question is, how do I ground the charge controllers? Do I wire them down to the negative bus bar, because right now I have them wired to a separate ground bar that goes outside.
I would hope that somebody could at least tell me how to ground them properly, that way I could figure out where to go from there! ?
 
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You have Victron inverter, correct?
I have Victron Phoenix 1200VA, in the user manual it shows jumper for bonding or un-bonding the N and Gnd, check your user manual as to what it says about N-G bonding.

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You have Victron inverter, correct?
I have Victron Phoenix 1200VA, in the user manual it shows jumper for bonding or un-bonding the N and Gnd, check your user manual as to what it says about N-G bonding.

View attachment 120540
The electrician hooked it up, so I know there was the hot, the neutral and the ground wire going to the 50 amp breakers! 6/3 wire gage. Turns out after talking to Battle Born Batteries, that I had the wrong fuse, so that may have contributed to the inverter not working now.
Whatever you do, don’t daisychain your charge controllers to your inverter ground! I saw this done on the Internet by somebody who had the same batteries and almost the same set up. The problem or the difference was that his was off grid, and mine was connected to the main house panel.
I still need to find out how do I ground my charge controllers, it doesn’t seem like anybody knows? ?
 

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The electrician hooked it up, so I know there was the hot, the neutral and the ground wire going to the 50 amp breakers! 6/3 wire gage. Turns out after talking to Battle Born Batteries, that I had the wrong fuse, so that may have contributed to the inverter not working now.
Whatever you do, don’t daisychain your charge controllers to your inverter ground! I saw this done on the Internet by somebody who had the same batteries and almost the same set up. The problem or the difference was that his was off grid, and mine was connected to the main house panel.
I still need to find out how do I ground my charge controllers, it doesn’t seem like anybody knows? ?
But is the Victron inverter is setup to have N-G bonding internally? Did the electrician read the manual and set up the Victron correctly?
What is the model of the Victron inverter?
So is the fuse blown?
 
But is the Victron inverter is setup to have N-G bonding internally? Did the electrician read the manual and set up the Victron correctly?
What is the model of the Victron inverter?
So is the fuse blown?
It’s a Victron 48 V 5000. I don’t believe he read the manual, but I replace this Victron with the 24 V 3000 and never had any issues at all – so all he had to do was just connect this inverter instead of the other. Besides, it ran fine for months until I started messing around with the grounding.
Besides, Battle Born Batteries is where I got the inverter and they did all the fine tuning before they sent it to me.
The fuse was not blown, but it was only a 32 V and I believe the guy at battleborn said it should’ve been a 58 V fuse. I ordered one and will post what it looks like when I get it.
I could not see any smoke or damage done to the inverter, but I just looked when I took off the face plates.
Meanwhile, I have to send the inverter to be repaired. Funny, I can’t figure out why just connecting it to the inverter caused it to shut down my batteries-sure seems strange? Even if the inverter was dead.
 
But the fuse did not blow so it is not the fuse issue, the fuse just does not have the right Voltage rating but it will not stop the current from flowing at this point since it is not blown.
It makes no sense that all you did was connecting the chassis ground of all the equipment together to the panel ground, be it daisy chain or parallel, it will not matter, the chassis are grounded for safety so if the Line makes contact with chassis it will cause the circuit to blow due to fault current.
 
But the fuse did not blow so it is not the fuse issue, the fuse just does not have the right Voltage rating but it will not stop the current from flowing at this point since it is not blown.
It makes no sense that all you did was connecting the chassis ground of all the equipment together to the panel ground, be it daisy chain or parallel, it will not matter, the chassis are grounded for safety so if the Line makes contact with chassis it will cause the circuit to blow due to fault current.
It might have to do with the fact that I was in a hurry, after grounding it differently. I accidentally turned on the charge controllers first (even though it was dark), then I turned on the the cut off switch- then a flash happened at the 48 V cut off switch from batteries to busbar. I quickly turned off the charge controllers, but the damage may have already been done. I really don’t know, perhaps the ground wires work attach firmly enough.
Sometimes it’s better to leave things until the next day, instead of working on something for hours into the evening. ?
 

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I’ll start with “I’m not a grounding expert “.
I think there is something that is obscure that’s causing the problem.
What is the aluminum I beam looking item on the inverter battery ground?
I wouldn’t connect the battery DC ground to the house AC ground. If something goes wrong with the house ground now you have AC on the battery system.
If you do it would need to be sized larger than the battery fuse so not to melt the ground wire.
The purpose of AC ground “chassis ground “ is if a device ( switch, motor, inverter) is if there is a internal short to the case there’s a path to ground that is a lower resistance than you if you touch the case. Also the chassis ground allows a path to develop enough amperage to trip the breaker.
The ground system should always look like a tree with its branches.
 
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