Batboard

I stopped by a co-workers house to crimp burndy lugs onto his off-grid power system's battery cables (has PV cells on the roof with a bunch of batteries in the garage)

What floored me was his distribution panel. He is using a Square-D 42 space panel for DC distribution. I looked up the breakers & low & behold the QO breakers are rated for 48 volt DC! He switches both the + & -, so he has 20 circuits available.

Any one else use this configuration??

(one edit to fix number of available circuits error)

Sounds neat! Never knew they made breakers like that. Sounds like it would work good to!

It is a significantly cheaper way to do things than traditional DC boards from the telecom power vendors (Argus, Marconi, Peco2, etc). There are no alarm contacts like you would get from the typical Airpax or Heinemmann AM style CB. But for the home application it isn't needed.

BTW, for those interested, here is an inexpensive telecom grade alternative... http://newmartelecom.com/dst20rckmntdis ... rbpnl.html

Did he use something like the 200A mains breaker for the battery?

Don't know why he would switch both sides of the DC circuit. One side of the battery is typically referenced to ground so loads should not have the return side disconnected. You don't want to disconnect the device from it's ground reference. He is wasting CB.

RF Dude

RFdude wrote:Did he use something like the 200A mains breaker for the battery?

Don't know why he would switch both sides of the DC circuit. One side of the battery is typically referenced to ground so loads should not have the return side disconnected. You don't want to disconnect the device from it's ground reference.

He is using class "T" fuses for battery protection, with a Hendry LVD (cell site leftovers I gave him a while back) . No clue why he is protecting the battery return.

Answer on why he is using 2 pole breakers: They were free pulls from a factory that was upgrading.