When I'm figuring what size wire and the distance I can run at a certain amp and voltage my question is this: According to my specs I can run 50' of wire at my ratings, from my panel (I have one) to my fuse box (combiner box, if I had more then one panel) is 45' so I am fine. Then from my fuse box to my charge controller is 30'. Now seeing I only have one panel the amperage is not increased at the combiner box, do I consider this two seperate runs under 50' or one run of 80"? Thank you
Steve
Submitted
13 years 10 months ago
Comments
Hi Steve,
You will need to use the total 80 ft run when calculating the wire size. The voltage drop and wire size calcuation becomes complicated on a circuit with different voltages.
The fuse doesn't alter the voltage or amperage. You can put the fuse in the beginning or the end of the circuit too; it doesn't matter where the fuse is.
I also just wanted to share with you the wire size calculator that I use frequently.
http://www.southwire.com/support/voltage-drop-calculator.htm
Hope it would be helpful
I'm very interested in your calculator but the link you provided doesn't seem to work. These links are always fussy, what I do sometimes before I post a link on a board is e-mail it to myself to check and see if it works. When I click on yours it says "HTTP Status 405 - HTTP method GET is not supported by this URL ""
One more question concerning the wire length, if I had 2-3 runs going to my combiner box, how would I figure the wire size between my combiner box and controller (it's about 30' between), if I have to calculate at least one of the runs from the panel to the combiner box, which would be at a different amperage, then adding the 2 or 3 together after the combiner box to the controller?
Sorry Steve, here is the link:
http://www.southwire.com/support/voltage-drop-calculator.htm
To your question;
You need to calculate each node seperately and add the voltages and currents.
In this case, Node 1: Array-to-Combiner; Node 2: Combiner-to-Charge Controller seems to be the solution.