Building a terminal strip box for solar

[iFred]

When you are strapped for cash you become creative and inventive.

I went to home depot yesterday and was looking for a metal enclosure that I could use for a terminal strip box to hook all my solar panels to the main lines going to the garage. This is 100ft away, and I needed a central location to wire everything. But the cheapest box I found was like $45 at minimum. I could not afford it, and besides it was a bit out their in price..So after doing some thinking I started looking for alternative box's and enclosures. I found an old see-through tool tray box that I was not using, and after thinking about it, came up with this idea. The box is solid and waterproof which was nice. The bonus was the see-through window, which looks nice. The box completely closes up with a latch on the side.

Here I have one metal strap connected, the idea is that I can use the holes in the metal strapping for attaching eyelets and wire to.

The back of the box shows where I put all the screws.

After the screw comes through the box it is held by a nut and washer, then about half way up I placed another nut and washer (in red) to be used as a riser to lift the metal strips up from the back of the box.

now installing the third and last power strip.

Hope you liked the idea! With enclosures costing an arm and a leg, it is possible to build such enclosures from stuff just laying around. THe box can now be mounted on a wall or post or anything and all the wires can come into the box and get hooked into the main lines. Good Luck!

[BT Humble]

Just one thing to remember:  if this is going to live outside then the clear lid is likely to become brittle from the UV light.

What are you making your bus bars out of?  If it's steel, you might be getting a little bit of voltage drop.  Copper is better, if you can get it (maybe flatten out some plumbing pipe?)

BTH

[BrianK]

How are you insolating the bars from the bolts? My first thought was if it is outside and it rains box gets wet and shorts out on the back. or shorts to what it is mounted on. other than that looks good to me.

  .

[iFred]

The bus bars are only about 6 inchs long, do you really think resistance would be that large a factor for such a  short span? yes I could use bar copper, did'nt really think about it from resistance point of view. ummmm... As for the lid... UHHHmmmmm.... not sure... Thanks for makin me think!

 

[stm]

I'm not so sure, that it would be a large problem - the panels would point towards the sun and the box would therefore be in the shadow most, if not all, of the day.

There's a chance that the sun would hit the sides of the box, which makes me think that it would be a good idea to apply some uv resistant paint.

Have fun

/Steffen

[iFred]

I'm not isolating the bars from the bolts. This is such low voltage (12-30vdc), i'm not really worryied about it. There is a 1-1/2" inch gap between them, that is plastic. I doupt it would short, even if it does, I have fuses after the fact in the garage. Besides which i figure that I will make a sheild out of wood around this now to protect agaist the elements, as stated above to help. No biggy. as long as everything else remains dry and isolated it should be fine. Thanks for the mention however! This stuff gets me thinking about things I might miss, I always apprecaite comments, this is why. Thanks again!

[RobC]

What I have found is that metal enclosures are very expensive but if you buy the samething in the the form of an outside syle breaker box and just rip the guts out its way cheaper. RobC

[BT Humble]

The bus bars are only about 6 inchs long, do you really think resistance would be that large a factor for such a  short span? yes I could use bar copper, did'nt really think about it from resistance point of view. ummmm... As for the lid... UHHHmmmmm.... not sure... Thanks for makin me think!

Not the resistance of the steel Fred, the connection.  If you're connecting copper wires to it you're going to get galvanic corrosion (due to the dissimilar metals & the moisture from the air) which will gradually build up resistance in the connection.

BTH

[pyrocasto]

I planned on doing a similar thing with ground/neutral strips in a wooden(indoor) box.

[kenputer]

I did something similar,I used a block of wood to mount my buss bars on and then used construction glue to mount to the inside of the tool box, rubber grommets where the wires entered and exit.

[pyrocasto]

I prefer to use the grounging/neautral bars you can get in the electrical secion of a hardware store. They are made for conecting many grounds and neutrals to one strip, as we are doing here. I have them for my positive, neutral, and a few for my ground incase I need to ground an outlet or something. It has a screw down hole to make it really simple. I'll get a pic up later, since I cant find on on the net.

and fred, you can order copper strips exactly like that for I imagine pretty cheap. Just do a search for "copper bus bar"