The biggest thing that has been bothering me about my Solar Power system is the Hap-Hazard way that I had connected everything to my batteries, Mainly the fact that several things were connected to the batterys that were not Fused or protected in any way. The only thing that had fuses on it was the Output Wires going to the house where I am using the power at. It was all in this little black box that was built and pictured here in a much smaller system at my last house.
So last week I built a really nice Fused Power Distribution Panel for anything that connects to the batterys. In fact "this is the battery" and anything that I hook to the battery will make it's connection here. It is wired entirely with 12 gauge wire. Each Individual input from the battery to it's fuse is a separate 12ga wire. It is constructed in a chassis from an old Radio Shack burglar alarm system. In the picture below, it is installed and operational right next to My Ghurd Dump load and controller...
There are only 4 negative terminals on the strip. Each terminal has two 12 gauge wires going to the battery which is hard to see in the picture. There are 8 numbered Input/Outputs. They They are connected as follows...
1 - (Future) maybe a voltage sensing circuit
2 - (Future) Maybe an output for some lighting around my nearby pool
3 - Output 1 is a 12ga wire to the house- 10amp fuse
4 - Output 2 another 12ga wire to the house- 10amp fuse
5 - Input From Solar Panel Diode Combiner- 10 amp fuse
6 - (Future) Input from Wind Turbine generator
7 - Ghurd Dump Load power connection- 15amp fuse
8 - Dump Load Voltage sense line- 3 amp fuse
All of this stuff is involved with my growing Harbor Freight solar panel system soon to include a 200 watt wind generator and a Long Wire experimental system.
http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2008/3/4/6303/63451
