I got a new charge controller yesterday so I rewired the solar array to use it and changed the fuse box for one that had a common positive and built a new negative rail.
I'd also picked up some 6 metre 900 amp jump leads from eBay for £16 and I intended to use them to enable me to move the fuse box into the kitchen and reduce the losses over the multiple cables that were currently feeding various 12v toys in the kitchen.
The jumper cables were perfectly designed for what I have in mind so I didn't have to try and find some crimp terminals suitable to fit the rather large cables. I just needed to unbolt the existing crimp terminals from the clamps, which involved the use of a lump hammer.
It did however mean I needed to make some terminal blocks to hook the load lines of the charge controller up to the cables and then also to terminate them in the kitchen.
A bit of bolt and washer hunting later I managed to put together some very suitable terminals. I just need some way of safely mounting them. This was achieved with a small bit of MDF and various drill bits and we end up with a pretty neat terminal block with wing nuts.
And on the underside we have the counter sunk heads.
These were easily mounted on to the existing board and a couple of crimped cables later the battery end of things was nicely wired up.
Then I had to build a new board for holding the fuse box in the kitchen and mount it on to a hollow wall. A little hunting turned up a couple of suitable medium weight hollow wall fixtures. The new board was drilled in the same way as the cable mount board and I made a couple more terminals to be mounted directly on it.
Now all that was needed was to wire in the fuse box, negative rail and test.
The voltage drop across the new cables is now not measurable with any meter I have and once I sort out the battery connection cables it will now be possible to wire up the 300w inverter in the kitchen directly to the solar array.
This also means I'll be able to run a 12v feed up to my bedroom and to the hallway without significant losses being incurred.
Now I just need the finance to afford a bunch more solar panels and some proper batteries. This setup is pretty close to being capable of safely supplying 360 watts. Almost 10 times more than the power of my solar panels at full blast and 30 times more than they typically provide.
The batteries I have (assuming they were in good condition) could only supply 360 watts for a couple of hours but this still makes it a nice little backup power supply for when the power occasionally dies (like the time a quadcopter accidentally flew into the local power distribution center and took out one of the large transformers).
Realistically I can get many hours of light and a couple or so hours of laptop usage out of it as it stands.
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