GROUNDING YOUR SOLAR ,WIND AND LIGHTNING PROTECTION.

Grounding your solar panels,wind turbine and your battery bank.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Solar power
• wind turbines
• batterys
• off grid
• SHTF
• bugging in
• diy
• power failure
• grid failure
• EMP
• SOLAR STORM
• prepparing.

[Yankeeprepper]

You have done a great job, very nice. I sure appreciate the "free" info. Your videos are very helpful for me, helping me plan out my next addition of solar. I will be following your recommendations and layout. Thanks for the effort here.

[OBXSOLWIND]

@Yankeeprepper Hey YANKEE. You are welcome you have been a huge help to me as well. Keep your info comming.

Kevin

[ditmar11]

hey kevin, about grounding the batteries to the hole system, xantrex recommends it. that is, ground rod, panels and breakers.no minus grounded from the batteries to the combined ground? please let me know, thanks.....ditmar

[OBXSOLWIND]

@ditmar11 Xantrex recomend grounding all componants but those are chasis grounds they are not your battery negitives. So you are correct. I am not planning on grounding my pannel frames but all else is grounded. I hope that helped. Kevin

[u2nvme]

Great video once again!

With the lighting rods is that all you need to mount them or do you run a copper wire to a ground stake?

[OBXSOLWIND]

@u2nvme You have to run a uninsulated loose braid wire to a ground rod the deeper the better.

[bowtau9]

Your set up is real nice. You are the power man , thanks for sharing.

[indman101]

I have to ground my panels to meet code here in indiana,I was told by an electrician to not use a seperate ground since I will be grid tied using enphase inverters,might install a seperate gound just for a lightning rod,any thoughts?

[skokie23]

Hey Kevin! I missed this one somehow. When my 5.2 kw was installed they installed a 12 foot copper grounding rod. Does the distance matter? Say 4-6 feet and call it good?

Thanks and take care!!



[CPLBSS88]

all i know is that lightning is unpredictable; i've seen it skip a 12ft copper lightning rod and strike my car...they were about 30 ft appart, the pole is right above where the car is...i thought at first it hit the pole then jumped to the car but there was no marks on the pole at all? I put thermal paint on the base of the rod so it should have changed color like in the past.

[flyingeagleone]

it will kill the batteries in about 1 1/2 days with nothing charging and nothing on or pulling from them. i have beat my head against the wall. any help would be awsome. i could make you a video if it would help you understand my system.

[flyingeagleone]

hey i have a simple setup, i have 2 deep cycle battery 1 tiger claw 3000 watt inverter and a missoiuri wind generator. i have wired directly into the main box. in other words i took 2 breakers and jumped them to the inverter, so if i turn them off at the main and on at the inverter im on wind power if not im on power co power. all seems to work ok but my batteries are draining down even when nothing is on? like its dead short.

[field16]

Thanks for the tour of your beautiful setup. Looking forward to the geothermal video, too. I hear you mention it in your other videos and have always wanted to know more about that. Thanks.

[linuxpyro]

Hey one more thing. With grounding the negative on the batteries, a single connection to ground doesn't really create a potential difference - that's within the battery. With the negative connected to the ground rod there's no complete circuit. A small amount of current will flow, which you can detect with a sensitive multimeter, but not enough to drain the batteries appreciably.

[linuxpyro]

Hey Kevin, not to nitpick, but you mentioned electricity only runs on the surface of wires. You might be referring to the skin effect, which happens with alternating current at high frequencies. Direct current does go through the wires. A lightning bolt will have a rapidly changing current, but it doesn't really switch polarity like AC, so that's not much of an issue here. Anyway thanks for the vid, having a separate system ground's a great idea.