Ivanson Lance

Also if I ever forget about this post a year later or something, anyone can email me at vaugeri22@gmail.com if they’re interested.

Miles Flansburg wrote:Keep me updated , might need to bugout someday.

Are you thinking more as a bugout vs preemptively moving? I imagine you’re already in the region then?

Dan Steinicke wrote:Sounds very interesting.  Sent you a "purple mooseage".

Dan

Just sent an email

Opal-Lia Palmer wrote:Yes, yes, yes. Love it. Looking at the same states. Please email me let's talk. Opal.althoff@gmail.com

Just sent a message, looking forward to hearing from you!

Burned out by all the critical race theory/wokeness present in much of the homesteading/permaculture/intentional community scene? You’re not the only one!

Me and my partner are in the research stages to form a community in one of the following states: Idaho, Washington, Montana, Alaska, Nevada or Utah. We’ve tentatively picked these states as they tend to be pretty free states to live. Our golden rule is the nonaggression principle. We are voluntarists, consent matters for every aspect of life. Our goal is to preserve individual freedom while protecting others rights and developing a community that supports each other. Life is easier (and more fun) when building a house or planting an orchard isn’t drudgery, it’s instead a work party and a potluck.

As voluntarists we believe the right to self preservation/self defense is innate.

Property would be bought as a land trust and all members would be trustees, everyone has a stake in the game and no one is above anyone else. Any taxes would be divided fairly across all members.

As a community I would like to see natural building and sustainable practices as much as possible but whatever individuals choose to do on their portion would be left to them short of something extreme like dumping toxic waste upstream of someone’s water supply.

If this interests you we’d love to hear from you!

Carl Nystrom wrote:Sorry, I had an antsy toddler climbing on me when I was trying to write my last post, and now that I look at it again, I see that I was looking at the circuit backwards. In your picture, the charge controller is connected without ANY fuse between it and the battery. If the charge controller were to have a catastrophic failure (and they do happen) the batteries would push so much current through that wire that it would turn red-hot and catch on fire. Fuses. Must. Be. On. Every. Wire.

Here is a demonstration of what happens when you short circuit a battery:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xESCXFz8ZQE

I am not really sure why a system of this size would have a 300Amp fuse in it to start with, but if you intend to use it, I would make something that looks like this:



The main fuse protects your main battery leads: if you drop a wrench between the two bus bars, it will open if 300 amps flow, and since all the parts are rated for 300 amps, you will be replacing the fuse, not everything that burns down in the resulting fire.

If the charge controller gets fried: the 30 amp fuse will blow before the 12ga wire is melted, since 12ga can only sustain about 30 amps

If the inverter shorts out, same thing, the fuse protects the wiring.

If it were me, and I was not thinking of major upgrades down the road, I would probably scrap the 300A fuse and put in a 100A fuse directly to the inverter.


Busbars are nice to have if you want to add more circuits later, and you might find that you want to add a battery charger to use a generator, or some 12volt circuits to run a few lights without the inverter or whatever.

Edit: Also, oversizing the wire relative to the fuse is fine electrically: if you want to run 6 ga wires on a 30A fuse, go for it. It reduces voltage drop, but on short runs like this there is really not much point. The wire costs a lot more, so generally, just stick to whatever the chart you are using tells you. I personally would run 10 ga wire for 30 Amps, but 12 would i am sure be okay in this application.

Yeah the guy that set these up seems to be missing basically all safety features.

I like what you’re saying about the busbar for running some 12v stuff off of, that’s definitely something I’m interested in but figured I’d cross that bridge when I get there. I’m going to add in the bus bars like you showed but here’s my diagram so far. Also it sounds like you’re saying anything bigger than 12g will work, I have a bunch of #10 and #6 my dad gave me so I’ll probably do #10 between the charge controller and battery. Let me know what you think or if I’m missing anything else.

Michael Fundaro wrote:I had zero experience with solar when I installed the solar panels on my trailer.  After a couple weeks of research online of available kits I ordered the one I liked and using their easy to follow instructions I installed it myself.  It was not difficult at all, aside from the fabrication of the frame on the roof of the trailer which I figured out myself.  I mounted the solar panels to the roof, flat, using 2" square aluminum tubing so the panels sat flat  and they have handled 90mph speeds on the freeway without any problem.  The plus side to this is the solar panels shade that portion of the roof and it is considerably cooler on that portion of the ceiling compared to the rest of the trailer.
If you have any DIY abilities I believe you can install a solar system yourself.  Usually the manufacturer has videos on how to do the connections.  You can pay someone to do this for you but you could save a munch of cash doing it yourself.  Even if mounting the panels on a pole in the yard it wont be very difficult.  The hardest part will be digging the hole for the mounting post.

I’m handy when it comes to building stuff, worked as a timber framer etc but I have zero electrical experience. I wish I would have bought a complete kit, but I wasn’t really sure what size I would need, which is why I went to a store so they could help me size it. But the guy at the store didn’t really understand all the safeties you need in place as can be seen above.

Our property is mostly in the woods, so we’re going to run the panels 50 feet to a clearing. We also have a sloped tin roof on our trailer since rv roofs are garbage, does a good job to buffer against the outside temperature

Carl Nystrom wrote:

I guess this is just a way of using less wire to make the connection and is not providing any protection to the battery?  

Using one lug of a component to connect multiple connectors is done all the time, but in this case it is very sloppy. The fuses are there to provide protection for the wires. EVERY wire that connects to your battery must be fused to protect it FROM the battery. If your charge controller fails (and if I recall correctly, they tend to fail as a short circuit) then the battery will try and push more than 300Amps through it. A single lead acid battery can push 500+ amps at below freezing temperatures.

In this configuration you would need to size the wires to and from the controller to handle 300A, so probably at least 2/0 copper (dont forget that the return path will also carry the same current). It looks like the wire on there is fairly beefy, and seeing as it is in open air, and pretty short, I would guess that the fuse would blow before it caught your plywood on fire. But that is just a guess from a stranger on the internet, so its worth what you pay for it. Still, much better would be to have Battery -> 300A fuse with 2/0 -> Busbar (capable of handling 300 Amps - this is why you dont do 12 volts, kids) -> then from there you put another fuse that is sized for the smallest wire that will carry at least the full rated output of your controller. What is that on there, like 4awg maybe? If so, it should be able to carry like 95Amps if it has 90 degree C rated insulation.

Would it then make more sense for the charge controller wire to go to the same lug as the inverter that way they’re both protected from the battery?

How would a busbar help this situation?

Also i was not tracking that the wire from the charge controller had to be that large, I saw elsewhere that for a 30amp charge controller like I have you could go as low as 12 awg and I was planning on using 6awg. Foiled again!

Thanks for your help, I think we’re going to do without the gfdi as everyone I’m talking to says it’s unnecessary for something of this size.

I’m making a diagram now with all the sizes of everything before I start assembling it. Looking back on the display setup from the store I bought this at I noticed it was strange how they have the charge controller connecting to the battery by using the lug on the 300 amp fuse. I guess this is just a way of using less wire to make the connection and is not providing any protection to the battery? Is it safe to set it up this way?