Powering up IOTA Battery Charger

Re: Powering up IOTA Battery Charger

I will see if I can help here.

Crystal wrote: »

The IOTA manual says connect the battery positive to line side of the breaker, and the IOTA unit to the load side.
Does this mean that my postive from the charger into the breaker should then continue out of the breaker to the battery positive?

Yes, the battery is the "source" of high current if there is a short in the system. Yes, the current will flow "backwards" through the breaker, but it will never be large enough current to ever trip the breaker.

I have a 20 amp breaker for this charger so there is only one spot on the bottom of the square D breaker to insert both wires. is this breaker big enough or should I have one with 2 spots to put the postive line in.

I am sorry--I do not follow. Is this inside a "load center" (box with bus bars and breakers mounted inside)?

also the charger negative is hooked into my neutral bus and the ground is in my ground bus

It sounds like you are using a standard AC load center for your DC power management....

Does your load center have an insulated neutral bus and a separate safety ground bus (many panels will have an insulated neutral bus that can be grounded to safety ground with a screw or bolt setup).

On the DC side, you want the "safety ground" and the DC return wire connected together in only one place. This could be done in the DC panel, or it could be done from the battery negative bus to the earth ground rod and/or cold water pipe (as examples).

What you don't want is the "DC Return grounded to safety/green wire ground in the box and also at the ground rod. That creates parallel current paths (DC return and DC green wire ground in parallel). It creates a "ground loop" and can cause a ground wire to over heat in some conditions/some setups. Can talk more about this if you are interested--Simple to say, don't type DC Return and DC Safety Ground together in more than one spot.

... using the square D system has made this interesting for me I would really appreciate help on this. Also this is how I have my charge controller hooked up positive bat. going into bottom of 40 amp breaker and also coming off bottom of breaker to postive bat screw on charge controller, neg. on neutral bus, ground on ground bus... sorry if this is not clear please help me if you can thank you

It sounds like you are OK (assuming the you know where the one point DC Return and DC Safety/Green Wire ground are tied together (in the box, or else where).

Keep wires short and heavy between loads/charging sources, to DC Panel, and finely to battery bank. Long wire runs create more voltage drop, requiring even thicker cable to compensate.

AC wiring is actually much simpler--Currents are low and allowed voltage drops are much higher (and voltage drops don't affect the loads much).

-Bill