IN a Pandemic, my batteries decided they had it with their existance!

[XeonPony]

Shorted battery took the rest out, they where all in failure mode, so this forced me to replace them all, I suppose all things given it has given me some thing to do and now my power worries are gon for at worst 5 years and at best 10.

Due to the slow activity I figured I'd post the pictures of the new bank and up grades to the distribution system



They only had the six in stock at the time



Riveted and soldered with silver solder.



All batteries in place and one buss bar finished!



And got the second buss bar don and all of the single point watering system attached.

I have yet to finish the middle point buss bars, first I will move the main power connections to it, so I can get rid of the rats nest of wires!

The copper pipe is 3/4inch Type L, bulk of my research says that should be equivalent to ruffly 2awg to 0awg wire.

[SparWeb]

XP
Ugh what a moment of panic on top of all the rest of the stress that must have been.
Looking good and much more orderly as you sort through the bus bars.  Do you have a tubing bender?  I can see a way to make the intermediate bars with a Z shape so you wouldn't need to do any soldering there.  The soldering I do see looks great, though.  Plus rivets - - belt and suspenders as they say.

[XeonPony]

No, I get to do it all by the good old fashioned hammer method. I'm changing them to 4 parallel one serial Vs current config, hoping for better cell balancing doing it that way.

I used high heat silver solder, all joints sanded cleaned in alcohol, then fluxed. I do not want to mess with it for a loooooong time after this!

So far huge improvement barely ran the gen set at all now.

I'm just working on forming and honing the positive strip where I will bolt the charger, inverter and such.

[bigrockcandymountain]

Very cool busbar idea.  I have wrecked a lot of batteries with uneven parallel wires.  Your effort is definitely worth it. 

Do you have pictures and specs on the rest of your system?  And a quick list of what you run with it? People ask me a lot of questions about off grid systems and i only really know mine.  It is nice to see different size systems for comparison. 

[DamonHD]

Should you not at least for OCD's sake, and minimum current imbalance, draw power from opposite corners rather than the same side as it appears you have there, even with those lovely bus bars?

Rgds

Damon

[XeonPony]

That's how it will be when finished.


Positive terminal strip formed and drilled!





Main positive rail all attached at last! (Was a royal head ache, my dc fail safe led decided to fail! So I got to do the transfer via strobe light!




Ah soo much more clean looking! bit by bit!



Ooops! Battery charger being connected may help on those cloudy days!

[XeonPony]

Very cool busbar idea.  I have wrecked a lot of batteries with uneven parallel wires.  Your effort is definitely worth it. 

Do you have pictures and specs on the rest of your system?  And a quick list of what you run with it? People ask me a lot of questions about off grid systems and i only really know mine.  It is nice to see different size systems for comparison.

1800w modified sign wave inverter with built in transfer switch (Modified Noma battery back up unit)

8 GC2 Interstate golf cart batteries.

Flow rite single point watering system.

Morning star TriStar MPPT60.

3Kw 120/240 Auto Transformer.

Some random heavy duty battery charger that I moded to do the house band when on gen set (Will pump a solid 80 Amps out)

1,160w of solar (800 usable at 12v bank) on a tripod rotatable mounting system









AUXILIARY POWER:
Honda Genset, EX3500, 12gallon fuel tank, 3kw 120 to 240 isolation transformer, AC Power monitor.
Onan 3Kw remote start (Currently defunct due to dead oil pump)

[bigrockcandymountain]

I love it. You may have the best performance for your dollar of any system i have seen.

Now all you need is a wind turbine 

[XeonPony]

working on a 3Kw system

600v peak down the tower to house then down to 60v dc, but need to do a fair bit of building yet.

[bigrockcandymountain]

That will be great.  I have always thought higher voltage would be good for a turbine.  Maybe i missed it, but if you haven't made one, your turbine build deserves a thread.

[SparWeb]

I'd like to see more turbine too!
Especially if you work out that chain-drive.

[XeonPony]

Turbine will probably be later in the year, need to get a welder/plasma cutter.

[XeonPony]

Finally got the negative strip don.



marked out the spacing on the strip.



Drilled and formed then populated.



I wasn't happy with the clamping force one the positive rail, so I split a section of copper pipe and pounded it in to double the thickness, worked rather well.



Got the wires mounted! still using the old inverter wire (3 * 8awg) going to be making a 16inch 2awg cable to replace that cluster F.



All clean at last! Need to make the center point rails now! taking longer then I anticipated, but the old carcasses been returned for their cores so no more dead batts floating around the house thankfully!

[XeonPony]

finaly got the inverter cable made, 16inches of 2awg, I all ways crimp and solder!

the reason there is a heat sink on the inverter terminal is at full load it gets considerably hot, and that is a factory thing.

[MagnetJuice]

You can add an extra nut to that bolt and clamp that copper as hard as you want for a secure connection.



Ed

[SparWeb]

If you're making up new cables for the inverter, I can't tell why you would have it join the plate with the 4 in parallel and the other little ones.  Maybe I'm missing something obvious because I can't see the whole picture form here.
Can the inverter power be connected from the inverter's terminal direct to the copper bus? 
Then the small wires could be extended to the copper bus, too...
The connections get hot because they waste energy with resistance and voltage drops!

[XeonPony]

those small wires are part of the inverters original design it is how they monitor the current for the watts read out and combine the ground plain, I left them as is.





Although now you mention it and now I think about it I could shorten them with out effecting the system by much at all!

[XeonPony]

You can add an extra nut to that bolt and clamp that copper as hard as you want for a secure connection.

(Attachment Link)

Ed

the stiffening plate did the job nicely, I tinned it to ensure full contact, goal was to avoid obnoxious things like dealing with 2 nuts inside a pipe lol.

I did a 170amp cont for 5 minutes to test all connections, and all passed, 200amps is the design limit I set for this.  If needed I'll just solder it on.

[Mary B]

Some antioxidant electrical paste under each connection where it is bolted is a must! Stops corrosion form the dissimilar metals.

[kitestrings]

Xpony,

A mix of thoughts here... in no particular order:

Sorry to hear about the battery failure, but the upgrade will likely make you wonder why you didn't do it sooner, right?  That's always been my experience.

Do you plan to cover/insulate one of the two busses?  I was thinking even pre-formed pipe insulation would work and would prevent accidental shorts if that crescent wrench were to get dropped.

You've done a nice job of attention to detail on the connections.  But...I don't think I would ever do more than two parallel strings if I could avoid it somehow.  We've had three, but it's not ideal; and eventually leads to trouble.  Have you considered going to a higher voltage?

I look forward to hearing about the turdine when you get to it.  ~ks

[XeonPony]

higher voltage is the goal, but atm I can't afford to buy a 48v inverter, so I will use the system as is while I rebuild my funds. that and may as well enjoy the new buss bar for a bit since it is a heavy investment.

insulation no, I will leave them bear as I have an insulated wrench I use for general maintenance, I grew up with bare buss bars any ways.

oh it is glorious to have a battery bank again, forgotten how nice it was.

I am changing it so it will be 4 parallel 1 serial, but I need to make the center point buss bars yet.



that will be the final design till I get the Schneider battery capacity meter, then it will just be the addition of the shunt

[XeonPony]

Some antioxidant electrical paste under each connection where it is bolted is a must! Stops corrosion form the dissimilar metals.

All fasteners are 316L stainless steel

Copper is coated with high silver containing solder on their contact points

[kitestrings]

I think i'd still at least wrap some wire loom around one bus.  It's not you to worry about - you know the hazard... but the unsuspecting by-stander, family member, might not be so cautious.

A few questions:

What's the purpose of the 200A fuse?
Is there any reason why you wouldn't tie both ends of the +6V buss?
Why not pull off opposite corners (12+ to 12-)?

That looks like a robust Onan in the background.  Gas-fired, air cooled?  Probably hungrier on fuel than the Honda.

[XeonPony]

the way the buss bares are hooked up evenly spreads the voltage drop so I don't have to bother with weird cable configurations, that is why the other end is left open

If a battery fails by short or any other critical short it separates the battery strings and cuts the voltage in half that is available to feed said short.

The Onan is a gas air cooled at 3600rpm, sadly oil pump broke, this summer I hope to do a rebuild on it, and it will be tied into the power system as a dedicated battery charging system, it isn't able to handle the loads the Honda can

I converted it to electrical ignition so no more points! I all so had to wind it a new auto choke coil.







No one is allowed in the basement area, so it is very secure. Mind you atm it is just me and the dogs, and dogs aren't allowed down stairs either!

[kitestrings]

Nice work. Im sure you’ll see a big improvement.

Our nearest parts resource for Onan is in NH, and theyve been good. On ocassion I’ve scored something we’ve need here. O cant for the life of me think of yhe guys name, but he’s pretty knowledgeable on the older models:

https://powerparts.ecrater.com/c/396386/onan-parts

[XeonPony]

https://www.smokstak.com/forum/forums/onan-generators.1/

all the info you could ever want.

there is a dealership 3h drive from me, will be going with a good shopping list I wager, all the AC brushes need to be replaced, berrings will be don while I'm in there rings will be don.

I need to get a 6.5kw, preferably a NH series.

[kitestrings]

Info is the easy part, it doesn't get depleted over time; parts can be the challenge.  As time marches on, more inventory pops up as "discontinued".  ~ks

[XeonPony]

Indeed! I can still get most the stuff, but the electric choke I had to custom fabricate the coil and the insulation plate, thankfully a hair dryer and an old toaster gave me what I needed!


Now progress, mid point connection is started, got one bar don, dip coated the battery side connections, Type L is turning out to be a lot of soding work!

[XeonPony]

Well I will update this as to far as I got befor my main inverter decided to explode on me (Well the DC - Rail)

as the bastard Murphy and his stupid laws usually go and my 1800w modified sine wave with transfer switch blew up shortly after had to convert to 48v! but for the short time it was in use it worked exceptionally well, under full max load not even a warm spot could be found!



Now I am using a Chines 3kw Pure sine wave inverter/charger @ 48v and so far been working well and performing as claimed for a HF style, no issue starting fridges and freezer, and my smart drive washer can run on it as well!

Will make a log of that later on in a new thread.

[wine_guy_3]

Excuse the newbie here, but could you elaborate on the statement

4 parallel one serial Vs current config, hoping for better cell balancing doing it that way.

It's hard to tell, but it looks like at 24 V system?

[Mary B]

Putting batteries in series adds the voltage, putting them in parallel you add the amp hour rating. so 4 6 volt cells in series is 24 volts. 2 banks like that in parallel that are rated 400 amp hour = 800 amp hour for the entire bank.

[southpaw]

Wine-Guy-3  The text and picture are slightly misleading. The comments refer to 24v and 48v battery banks but the picture shows a 12v system. The 4 lower batteries are connected in parallel to make a 6v 800ah bank. the 4 upper batteries are connected the same. The positive rail on the lower bank is connected via the 4 8ga. wires on the right end to the negative rail on the upper bank (series connection) to make a 12v 800ah battery.

[XeonPony]

well life has been eventful to say the least, so I will add the last pictures of the 48 lead acid bank, and start a new thread for the latest bit win!