ABarbarian

Seems pretty common here to not have grounding. This house is temporary for us and re-wiring would be a nightmare so will take the risk.. I just updated the diagram with the grounding rod, it does have it at the main panel, although by my studies it is not so important, especially with no RCBOs, the ground>neutral bond is more important to ensure enough current is pulled during a short to trigger the breakers..? could I change the breaker between mains and the inverter to an RCBO, because I will ground everything after that point? But leave the main switchboard's main breaker as not being an RCBO, because so many of the old mains wiring is not grounded. At least then the inverter part of the system is protected. Maybe the 200A DC breaker I bought is over-spec, still worth adding? I have 35mm wire between batteries and inverter, not long, <1 meter. 10mm connecting switchboards and inverter. Not sure what you mean, maybe about the inverter being able to switch between grid and battery? Yes it can, that is it's planned function, to be a UPS backup when grid fails.

Hi @Crossy thanks for the reply. I get your advice about adding the ground connection that bypasses the inverter, I have updated my diagram (attached). earth-leakage protection: do you mean ground bar? I forgot to add that to the diagram, the main panel's ground bus has a cable to ground bar (currently chopped while gardening, need to fix). Do you mean a breaker on the mains before entering the inverter? I think that is the 50A breaker in the main switchboard? Solar I do not have in this setup, only battery backup. DC: A couple of questions on this, I picked up the attached DC Breaker on Lazada (good feedback), worthwhile between inverter and batteries and is my wiring OK? I see a lot of people mentioning DC fuses and I see benefit doing this, although understand the inverter already has a fuse. If we added another I guess it would not cause any harm, any advice on a good fuse in my situation? I guess just one on battery> inverter positive wire?

I am setting up inverter/batteries in UPS/Backup mode in a little house in Thailand. I was hoping the forum could review my wiring, and also answer a couple of questions I have. The house is 220-240V 2-wire single phase Attached is my planned wiring diagram after adding the inverter, anything wrong with this design? Most of the existing loads/outlets connected to the main switchboard do not have ground cables, pretty normal in Thailand and I don't plan to fix this. I am planning to add grounds to the inverter's AC loads. Below is a video for the same switchboard box as used for my main switchboard, at the ~2:30 minute mark it shows how to connect grid wires to the box: It clearly shows to wire grid neutral to the boxes ground bus, then to main breaker, that seems different to what my existing wiring is (and I understand is correct) to have the grid neutral go to main breaker, then bond the neutral bus to ground bus. Which is correct? Is there any additional bond or grounding needed on the inverter or it's AC Out/inverter switchboard? Is there any problem adding another main breaker (double-pole) in the inverter switchboard?

I have a solar power system been running since 2013, my goals were primarily to stabilize power for a bunch of computers and a few lights when power cut. No interest in selling back to the grid and not so worried about ROI, I understood I would probably not get my investment back, but the savings do offset the price of the system a great deal. Because my main concern is consistent power I run off the batteries constantly. Attached is a pic of the system I have been running, the components were: - Solar Inverter STECA EXTENDER XTM 4000-48 48V/3500Watt - Solar Charger Controller STECA TAROM 440 48V/40A w.LCD - 8x 12V/130Ah batteries - 12x 130W solar panels The basic idea is the batteries are always being charged from the solar, and used until they get low then an alarm sounds and we connect the grid to the inverter. I understand the inverter is configured so that when there is grid power it uses that, when no power coming in from grid it pulls from the batteries. It should not push power from the batteries to the grid. I added the switch between the batteries and the inverter when the first set of batteries started to die as I was not sure if the inverter also charged the batteries from grid when grid was connected, I did not want that to happen but was still using the failing batteries as long as possible, the extra switch allowed me to protect against that. The system has worked pretty well and have only changed the batteries once, unfortunately I don't get any reporting nor able to check the programming of the inverter, but it all seems to run well enough. Switching the grid on and off works well without any interruption to running computers. I thought I would chuck this up as an example, see if anyone sees any glaring faults, but also to help explain the new system I am preparing for a second location, wanted to ask peoples opinions about components and configuration. Similar goals for the new location, although a consideration I have is I want to build for about half the final expected capacity now, adding the other half in about a years time. Final capacity will be about double my old system (enough for about 800-1000 units). The information I read suggests not matching batteries/panels of different ages etc, best to buy them all in the same batch, that makes adding more capacity at a later date not optimal. I have noticed a lot of systems are using multiple inverters in parallel instead of a single inverter, I guess this works out cheaper, that gave me the idea of breaking the system into two sets of solar systems, each powering different loads around the house. Each set will have it's own inverter, panels and batteries, that way I can buy one set now, and the other later, without combining different sets of batteries or panels. My idea is to have 3 sources of power, solarA, solarB, and grid. I would have them all feeding AC to a batch of switchboards at one location, those switchboards would have cables feeding to all the different loads around the house, I would cable it in a way that I could move loads around between the switchboards depending on which I want powered from which source. I am hoping to have good reports from each solar system to be able to make choices about moving loads around over time to use power as efficiently as possible. I would also like to allow the grid to feed into each inverter similar to my old system with a switch, so if either solar system drains low an alarm goes off and we can temporarily switch that inverter to grid until the batteries charge back. I would expect each of the solar systems to handle about 400-500 units of power. So that is my idea, anybodies thoughts, either about possible issues or suggestions what components I should buy.