[RE-wrenches] Battery Bank to Inverter Wiring
Hi: From time to time over the years I've come across systems where the routing of DC cables between the batteries and the inverter has been the cause of issues. I'm not referring to wire thickness or quality of terminations. For the purposes of this discussion, just assume that wire thickness and terminations are perfect. What I am referring to is the routing of the positive and negative battery cables. In particular, the loop area within the + and - cables as shown in the image below, The problem I've seen in systems with a large loop in the setup is that the inverter does not provide good surge power and can even go into low voltage shutdown during large surges. Recently this happened again and I wanted to get a better feel for it, so I did some math. For a cable length of about 12', the loop is an inductor which has a value of inductance of about 1 uH for side by side cables and as much as 6 uH for cables about 1 foot apart. This inductance is greatly multiplied by any ferrous metal in the loop and can easily be in the range of 10's to 100's of uH. Examples being cables which run in steel conduits or along the steel frame of a motor home. Inductance causes a voltage drop proportional to the rate at which the current is changing. To get an idea of how large that rate can be for typical inverters, I did surge tests with a 5kW inverter and found that the rate of change of current can be as high as 100A per milli-second or 100,000 Amps/second. Given that, the voltage drop of the wire inductance is then , Vdrop = (rate of change of current) x (inductance), Vdrop for 1 uH = (100,000 A/s) x (0.01 H) = 0.1V Vdrop for 10 uH = (100,000 A/s) x (0.01 H) = 1.0V Vdrop for 100 uH = (100,000 A/s) x (0.01 H) = 10.0Vclearly this is a problem. Have any of the wrenches had systems with this issue? If so, how often. JARMO _ Jarmo Venalainen | Schneider Electric | Xantrex Brand | CANADA | Sales Application Engineer Phone: +604-422-2528 | Tech Support: 800-670-0707 | Mobile: +604-505-0291 Email: jarmo.venalai...@schneider-electric.com | Site: www.Xantrex.com | Address: 3700 Gilmore Way, Burnaby, BC V5G4M1 *** Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail ___ List sponsored by Redwood Alliance List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change listserver email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out or update participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
Re: [RE-wrenches] Battery Bank to Inverter Wiring
That is why for years we have been twisting those leads around each other. I was told it was to cancel out the opposing fields on the wires, but for whatever the correct technical reason is, we have always twisted those heavy wires. John V. From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of jarmo.venalai...@schneider-electric.com Sent: Saturday, 27 June 2015 5:45 a.m. To: RE-wrenches Subject: [RE-wrenches] Battery Bank to Inverter Wiring Hi: From time to time over the years I've come across systems where the routing of DC cables between the batteries and the inverter has been the cause of issues. I'm not referring to wire thickness or quality of terminations. For the purposes of this discussion, just assume that wire thickness and terminations are perfect. What I am referring to is the routing of the positive and negative battery cables. In particular, the loop area within the + and - cables as shown in the image below, The problem I've seen in systems with a large loop in the setup is that the inverter does not provide good surge power and can even go into low voltage shutdown during large surges. Recently this happened again and I wanted to get a better feel for it, so I did some math. For a cable length of about 12', the loop is an inductor which has a value of inductance of about 1 uH for side by side cables and as much as 6 uH for cables about 1 foot apart. This inductance is greatly multiplied by any ferrous metal in the loop and can easily be in the range of 10's to 100's of uH. Examples being cables which run in steel conduits or along the steel frame of a motor home. Inductance causes a voltage drop proportional to the rate at which the current is changing. To get an idea of how large that rate can be for typical inverters, I did surge tests with a 5kW inverter and found that the rate of change of current can be as high as 100A per milli-second or 100,000 Amps/second. Given that, the voltage drop of the wire inductance is then , Vdrop = (rate of change of current) x (inductance), Vdrop for 1 uH = (100,000 A/s) x (0.01 H) = 0.1V Vdrop for 10 uH = (100,000 A/s) x (0.01 H) = 1.0V Vdrop for 100 uH = (100,000 A/s) x (0.01 H) = 10.0Vclearly this is a problem. Have any of the wrenches had systems with this issue? If so, how often. JARMO _ Jarmo Venalainen | Schneider Electric | Xantrex Brand | CANADA | Sales Application Engineer Phone: +604-422-2528 | Tech Support: 800-670-0707 | Mobile: +604-505-0291 Email: mailto:jarmo.venalai...@schneider-electric.com jarmo.venalai...@schneider-electric.com | Site: http://www.xantrex.com/ www.Xantrex.com | Address: 3700 Gilmore Way, Burnaby, BC V5G4M1 http://www.xantrexrebate.com/ http://www.xantrex.com/ https://www.facebook.com/Xantrex https://twitter.com/Xantrex https://twitter.com/Xantrex *** Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail ___ List sponsored by Redwood Alliance List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change listserver email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out or update participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
Re: [RE-wrenches] Battery Bank to Inverter Wiring
Wrenches Going back many many years, twisting the pairs together was the preferred way to run the cables between the inverter and batteries, this seamed to reduce noise, I have personally seen improvement of audio conditions. Doing this on the AC side does the opposite and creates noise on sound mixers and powered amps. Jerry On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 7:45 AM, jarmo.venalai...@schneider-electric.com wrote: Hi: From time to time over the years I've come across systems where the routing of DC cables between the batteries and the inverter has been the cause of issues. I'm not referring to wire thickness or quality of terminations. For the purposes of this discussion, just assume that wire thickness and terminations are perfect. What I am referring to is the routing of the positive and negative battery cables. In particular, the loop area within the + and - cables as shown in the image below, The problem I've seen in systems with a large loop in the setup is that the inverter does not provide good surge power and can even go into low voltage shutdown during large surges. Recently this happened again and I wanted to get a better feel for it, so I did some math. For a cable length of about 12', the loop is an inductor which has a value of inductance of about 1 uH for side by side cables and as much as 6 uH for cables about 1 foot apart. This inductance is greatly multiplied by any ferrous metal in the loop and can easily be in the range of 10's to 100's of uH. Examples being cables which run in steel conduits or along the steel frame of a motor home. Inductance causes a voltage drop proportional to the rate at which the current is changing. To get an idea of how large that rate can be for typical inverters, I did surge tests with a 5kW inverter and found that the rate of change of current can be as high as 100A per milli-second or 100,000 Amps/second. Given that, the voltage drop of the wire inductance is then , Vdrop = (rate of change of current) x (inductance), Vdrop for 1 uH = (100,000 A/s) x (0.01 H) = 0.1V Vdrop for 10 uH = (100,000 A/s) x (0.01 H) = 1.0V Vdrop for 100 uH = (100,000 A/s) x (0.01 H) = 10.0Vclearly this is a problem. Have any of the wrenches had systems with this issue? If so, how often. JARMO _ * Jarmo Venalainen* | * Schneider Electric ** | Xantrex Brand* | *CANADA* | *Sales Application Engineer* * Phone:* +604-422-2528 | *Tech Support:* 800-670-0707 | *Mobile:* +604-505-0291 * Email:* *jarmo.venalai...@schneider-electric.com* jarmo.venalai...@schneider-electric.com | *Site:** www.Xantrex.com* http://www.xantrex.com/ | *Address:* 3700 Gilmore Way, Burnaby, BC V5G4M1 http://www.xantrexrebate.com/ http://www.xantrex.com/ https://www.facebook.com/Xantrex https://twitter.com/Xantrex https://twitter.com/Xantrex *** Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail ___ List sponsored by Redwood Alliance List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change listserver email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out or update participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org ___ List sponsored by Redwood Alliance List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change listserver email address settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html List rules etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out or update participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
