WELDING VS MARINE-GRADE CABLE

Getting ready to do a fairly large upgrade of my boat's battery system. Will wind up with 12 6 volt batteries in 2 banks (12 volt system). Fairly large amount of new wiring. Would appreciate the opinion of the use of welding cable (which comes in various colors now; black, red, yellow) instead of the much more expensive marine-grade wire (eg. Ancor).
Comments
Second system 1890W 3 × 300W No name brand poly, 3×330 Sunsolar Poly panels, Morningstar TS 60 PWM controller, no name 2000W inverter 400Ah LFP 24V nominal battery with Daly BMS, used for water pumping and day time air conditioning.
5Kw Yanmar clone single cylinder air cooled diesel generator for rare emergency charging and welding.
With three parallel connections in each bank, you'll want to keep an eye out for corrosion etc anyway. Are you fusing each parallel connection?
Main daytime system ~4kw panels into 2xMNClassic150 370ah 48v bank 2xOutback 3548 inverter 120v + 240v autotransformer
Night system ~1kw panels into 1xMNClassic150 700ah 12v bank morningstar 300w inverter
If you going out on the big blue ocean, taking her to the tropics, living in places where the people on the boat are the only ones for a 1000 miles, then I would use the best available. Corrosion in weld cable will happen long before marine grade. The excellent results I have seen
on boats that have circumnavigated for decades bears it out. Anchor is an excellent product and a joy to crimp! Well it was back in the day....
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Some say that the black oxide can be removed with vinegar and salt - I haven't tried it.
I agree that electrical grease should help - preferably applied before connectors are attached (people who have tested this say that even dielectric grease doesn't interfere with conductivity in a tightly compressed connection).
I am available for custom hardware/firmware development
They both have UL ratings but the marine meets coast guard and the american yacht/boat standards.
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Rancher
|| Midnight Classic 200 | 10, Evergreen 200w in a 160VOC array ||
|| VEC1093 12V Charger | Maha C401 aa/aaa Charger | SureSine | Sunsaver MPPT 15A
solar: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Solar
gen: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Lister ,
Adding on, it is especially important not to tin anything in a maritime/mobile application because vibration can fracture the joint. Boats and their engine/genset or an ambulance need all the good engineering they can get. Space also.
The old joke I tell about working in a Marina and an owner looking at my resume saying, wow you worked in aerospace that must have really required quality workmanship. No sir, in marine electronics, if the boat sinks there is a very good chance they will get in a life raft and hunt you down. In aerospace they rarely come home....
http://members.sti.net/offgridsolar/
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http://members.sti.net/offgridsolar/
E-mail [email protected]
I am available for custom hardware/firmware development