efficientPV
Solar Addict
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2019
- Messages
- 1,355
Concrete is good anywhere, even in moist soil. It increases surface area contact.
I have worked on mountaintops quite a bit on the towers and RF communications equipment. We had to sometimes create our own artificial ground grids when we could not drive ground rods into soil because the mountaintop was mostly rock. The ground grids were made of interconnected copper and/or aluminum wire arranged in a wagon wheel pattern with the equipment building being in the center of the hub. If good, deep earth ground is available, use that for your ground rods of course. If the ground is extremely dry or the covering of soil over the rock is thin, lay the ground rods down horizontally and use as many as you can.They make themselves the most likely to be hit if lightning is trying to arc to ground in that location. This is why I want my equipment to be grounded or the same potential as the earth around it. I live on a mountain so I researched grounding and lightning extensively before beginning to build up there. I do not want to increase the potential that lightning would strike anywhere near my solar equipment. This is why I don't want or like lightning rods. What I did find out is there are many things about lightning we still do not understand. I took what we seem to know and applied it the best that I could.
Quote: The one thing lightning rods do are increase the probability of creating a streamer, which increases the odds that it will make contact with the last step leader. If the streamer is successful in making contact with that last step leader, it will direct the electric current into the ground.
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awesome!My grounds are like this. The two Ufer grounds are connected together under ground. The ground rod just provides a way to attach clamps for grounding additional components. So like I said it is one continuous ground with a way to attach to it at both the solar array and the solar shed.View attachment 455
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I have used exothermic welding to connect the ground cables to towers and equipment; it is by far the best connection method and virtually corrosion proof. https://www.cad-weld.com/My grounds are like this. The two Ufer grounds are connected together under ground. The ground rod just provides a way to attach clamps for grounding additional components. So like I said it is one continuous ground with a way to attach to it at both the solar array and the solar shed.View attachment 455
View attachment 453
View attachment 454
That's totally on another level LOL. That's how the railroad rails are tied together.I have used exothermic welding to connect the ground cables to towers and equipment; it is by far the best connection method and virtually corrosion proof. https://www.cad-weld.com/
All good options. But thankfully I did not have to improvise too much as the ground bars went in after a bit of work with an electric jack hammer.I have worked on mountaintops quite a bit on the towers and RF communications equipment. We had to sometimes create our own artificial ground grids when we could not drive ground rods into soil because the mountaintop was mostly rock. The ground grids were made of interconnected copper and/or aluminum wire arranged in a wagon wheel pattern with the equipment building being in the center of the hub. If good, deep earth ground is available, use that for your ground rods of course. If the ground is extremely dry or the covering of soil over the rock is thin, lay the ground rods down horizontally and use as many as you can.
All good options. But thankfully I did not have to improvise too much as the ground bars went in after a bit of work with an electric jack hammer.
[/QUOTE Did the ground rods go into rock?
Wow I went down that rabbit hole deep! One ground is better!NEC allows that, but watch this video. Apparently multiple grounds are bad.
Not that there's much you can do about it. Once you've put posts into the earth and hooked panels to it, you've got a second ground regardless.
If it's all on your roof (and not a ground mounted system away from the house) after seeing the video I would not use a second ground for anything if I could help it.
Well he also said that if a 20' ground point is not practicable ( new word ) then an 8' ground rod must be used in that location and a #6 bare copper wire at minimum will be buried to connect ( bond ) that rod to the main ground point. So I'm going to do that from my home to the shed now. So far the way I did my solar grounding is exactly as they described... all grounds connect or are bonded together to provide effectively one single ground point.Well the message from that is bond at one point only . Everything below ground goes to one point and everything above goes to that same point.