I just mocked up a rough schematic for what my main electrical system will look like. I have 4 200w solar panels, all other parts are shown in my schematic, along with wires and some fuses. I am hoping someone can take a look and tell me where I may be missing fuses for safety, as well as any mistakes I may have made. Mega fuses in my Lynx distributor will be sized accordingly based on each electronics manual. I physically own each and every part shown in this image. I will buy whatever else I may need. Thank you all in advance. It really helps getting some opinions.
I would definitly put a fuse between the starter battery and the DC to DC charger. Ideally as close to the battery as possible in case that wire rub on something and end up causing a short circuit
Will certainly do that thank you. How does the rest of it look?
Rest of it look good I don't see much I would do different. I don't know if you plan on wiring your ground exactly like your diagram. The way you draw it you'll need 2 wire for everything that is gonna be connected to your fuse box, a positive and a ground. If you ground your battery to the frame you can reduce your wiring by almost half. For exemple, if you want to plug a light. The way you draw your circuit you would need a positive wire from your fuse box going to the light and then a ground wire from the light back to the fuse box. If you ground your battery to the frame you'll be able to have only one positive wire going to the light and then you can ground the light on pretty much anything metal nearby. It would simplify your wiring harness and make it smaller
Also I'm pretty sure it's needed for your DC to DC charger since it seems to be a common ground for both side of the system. On your diagram the starter battery side is open circuit so it wouldn't charge. I also don't see any signal wire going to the DC to DC charger to turn it on when the engine is running and off when it's not. On my van I plugged that signal to my parking light, but you can also plug it on a 12v power outlet that receive current only when the ignition key is on or something similar, just don't use any critical circuit in case something happens and you blow the fuse. Losing your parking light or your power outlet is not too bad, but you wouldn't want your loose the fuel pump for exemple.
Hey that all makes sense and I appreciate it. Any chance you can find me a simple blog or video talking about grounding the battery to the frame so I can adjust accordingly?
Far out ride for all your technical needs
Thank you very much.
I'll look to see if I can find something, but it's very simple. You use the same wire gage then your battery positive wire since electricity work in close circuit you'll have the same amount of amp. Usually you try to make your ground wire as short as possible while still connect it to a good ground like the frame. You just connect your battery negative to the frame, once that is done everywhere you need to ground something you can just plug on the body, frame, existing ground or anything metal that is grounded.
https://youtu.be/01F4QDVJUq0
Here's a good video with a lot of useful information for your project. The ground part is around the 20 min time mark, but if you have time to watch it all you might find other useful information. I would suggest using sand paper to remove paint and connect your ground wire to bare metal for a better ground instead of using a star washer like he show in the video. I had too many engines and transmission issues caused by bad ground to trust a star washer
Just watching the grounding part of the video and I notice his ground goes from the chasis of the van to the negative on the lynx distributor. I am wondering if this is what I need to do as I thought I needed to send that ground to the negative on my battery bank. Does it not matter since the negative of my battery is going to the negative on my lynx distributor anyhow?
You are correct, it doesn't matter, as long as your battery end up being connected to the chasis in one way or an other your fine. I told you to connect your battery directly to the chassis because that's what I did in my van since I don't have a lynx distributor. I just use a positive bus bar and individual ANL fuse older for my principal electrical components. A lynx distributor is just a fancier way of doing it. Connecting your battery ground to your lynx distributor and than grounding your lynx distributor to the chassis is exactly the same as grounding the battery directly to the chassis. Look at your lynx distributor ground as a bus bar, all the ground are common.
So anything and everything I might need to ground can be grounded to my Lynx? Everything can share the same ground in my system with no problems? Nothing needs to say be grounded somewhere else? I don’t want any grounding loops draining my batteries but I also don’t want to ground two things together that shouldn’t be.
You don't have to be worry about any of that. Ultimately all your ground need to go back to the battery negative in one way or an other to close the circuit and allow the component to work, but no matter the way you use to achieve it there's nothing isolating one ground from an other. If you wanted you could connect each and every single component ground of your entire van and plug it individually directly to the battery negative and everything would work perfectly fine. The only reason we don't do that is to clean our built, use less wiring and don't have 40 individual wire connected on the battery ground.
If it can help you visualize better, imagine that electricity is water flowing from positive to negative. Your water start from the battery positive and flow towards switches to stop the flow or let it continue, it flow thru fuses so if the flow get to hight the fuse blow to protect the system and stop water from flowing. Then it reache the component, let's say a light but it could be anything. It does the work needed to be done and now it need to flow back to the battery. At that point it doesn't matter anymore how it reache the battery negative, it just need to reach it. It can reach it alone by itself or it can join other rivers and form a massive one. It's all gonna flow in the same ocean at the end
another question for ya. In the video he grounded the multiplus inverter by putting the ground from the multiplus to one of the bottom lugs on the lynx distributor. I thought that you had to ground inverters separately from everything else and also thought I would need to buy a bus bar to ground my battery to and then ground everything to that rather than grounding it to the Lynx distributor.
All ground are common and cumminicate with one an other. In any vehicle you can take a ohmeter and check the continuity between any ground wire and the continuity should always be closed to zero. So you can do pretty much whatever is most convenient in your built to ground your inverter. You can connect its ground directly to the battery, a ground bus bar, the chassis, the lynx distributor it doesn't matter as long as the weakest link between your inverter and your battery negative is strong enough for the total amp rating of everything connect to it. For exemple in my van, my inverter is connected to the chassis 10 inches underneath it on the same bolt I use to connect my battery negative to my chassis
Awesome thank you. Do you happen to know if there is any way to program my victron multiplus 2 without buying some adapter or what ever.
No sorry, I don't know victron products very much. I use a mix of eco-worthy, renogy, bluetti and I don't remember the brand of my inverter. They where just way cheaper options than victron and offer different products that are fitting my need perfectly.
There's surely a victron subreddit or a forum somewhere else you can find that information.
I never click on links. Post it or it's vi.
I tried posting the photo here but it kept getting removed. Usually with an Imgur link they auto populate the post with the image too but on this sub that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Nothing but fire, sparks and fire.
Ded.
Make sure your solar is set up correctly/safely. You typically can't put more than 2 panels in parallel because otherwise there is a risk of a short circuit overloading one of the panels. I almost made this mistake and had to get this https://mo.eco-worthy.com/catalog/worthy-string-solar-combiner-surge-lighting-protection-solar-panel-p-669.html instead of the 4-1 pv branch connector which in practice shouldn't be used unless you set up additional inline fuses before each panel.
You need ground for the multiplus and the distributor.
I am also a big fan of draw.oi for making diagrams.
I made sure to get a charge controller that could handle my 800 watts from the 4 panels. Are you saying there is something else I need? I will check out draw.oi! I used photo shop for this because I am well versed in it but even still it was not ideal.
You need fuses for each panel, which is what the thing I linked has + more. Fuses protect wires. Every wire in your system needs to be protected by a fuse. Your charge controller specs are irrelevant for this.
More info here: https://explorist.life/how-to-fuse-a-solar-panel-array-and-why-you-may-not-need-to/
After some research it seems you only need to fuse them if you are running them in parallel. In my case I am running them in series. I believe this is one of the reasons I chose series for the easier setup.
That's true. I would reconsider though switching to parallel though. If one panel is shaded all four panels will have a significant drop in output. You would just need to get the box I linked earlier.
I will try series first and if I ever switch I will grab that box first thing. I chose series because I wanted the higher watt output. I decided it was worth the drawbacks. We will see if I stick to that tune in the real world once it’s finished.
I assume you mean voltage output. The theoretical watts (aka power) are the same regardless of arrangement of amps/volts. You are changing the amp/volts not the watts. But yeah panels in series will have a high voltage.
Make sure to read series/parallel comparison from far out ride. https://faroutride.com/electrical-system/#charge-sources
If your panels have any permanent shading issues from nearby vents then series will cause problems for sure.
It isn't hard to change later on though depending on your build set up/accessibility.
Need fuses close to the batteries.
Need a fuse on the input to the XS12, read the manual.
Like a class t or midi fuse?