U.S.A. HEADQUARTERS
P.O. Box 1306, Newport Beach, CA 92663
Phone: 714-751-0488 Fax: 714-957-1621
E-Mail: [email protected]
EURO WAREHOUSE
Phone:+31-35-603-2494 Fax:+31-35-603-2149
E-Mail: [email protected]
www.newmarpower.com
5
D) Case Grounding
The case of the inverter/charger
must
be properly grounded to ship’s ground*.
*Per ABYC A-20: A DC chassis grounding conductor shall be connected from the case of
the battery charger to the engine negative terminal or its bus, and must not be more than
one size under that required for the DC current-carrying conductors.
For example, if the installed battery wiring (see Wire Size Chart in the following section) is 1
AWG, then the minimum size of the grounding cable is 2 AWG. Use stranded copper wire for
case grounding. A screw compression lug located on the right-hand side of the unit is pro-
vided for attaching the ground wire to the case. The lug accommodates wires up to 1/0
AWG. A flat blade screwdriver is required to tighten the lug.
E) Battery Selection and Sizing
The inverter/charger should only be wired to deep cycle lead-acid batteries of flooded, gel or
AGM construction. The battery bank should be a dedicated inverter (or house) bank. It
should not be connected to batteries which are designed primarily for engine or generator
starting. Those batteries are not designed for repeated deep discharges which are common
with inverter operation.
There are quite a number of variables which can influence the proper size of a battery sys-
tem (expressed as amp-hour capacity) which is used in conjunction with an inverter. Some
of these include:
l
Battery type
l
Discharge rate
l
Intermittent or continuous operation
l
Ambient temperature
l
Time between recharge cycles
l
Depth of discharge
No single formula can practically cover all these variables, however, a general calculation
may be used which assumes no extraordinary variable (such as very high or low tempera-
tures in the battery environment) to make an educated estimation of the proper battery size.
The result can then be adjusted up or down to compensate for unusual circumstances.
Use the following procedure to calculate the required amp-hour capacity for your battery
system:
Note: It is assumed that the batteries are a suitable deep-cycle type, that discharge will
not exceed 50%, and that batteries will be fully recharged after each cycle of inverter
use.
1)
Determine the maximum amount of time in hours that the inverter will run the
loads before an external source of AC becomes available and batteries can be fully
recharged.