diy solar

diy solar

burning fuse

I need to add fuses to my two parallel fla battery bank strings. When I changed battery setup from 8P to 4P2P i neglected to plan well for two fuses; the prior fuseholders was full of water. ATC fuses don’t seem to care but of course those aren’t inverter cable fuses.

My dumb question is: Are those ANL fuses considered waterproof? The cheapies I have apparently are not.
 
I have never seen a waterproof or 'IP' rating for stud mounted fuses, any of them. They would be as waterproof as the rest of your battery wiring, no? Same as battery cables. They tend to call them 'splash proof'.

The idea of the electroplating, whatever it is - Buss says theirs is 'silver' - is to prevent corrosion in a marine environment. It's the same stuff Blue Sea sells under their label. "Harsh or hazardous environments".
 
Browneye said:
They would be as waterproof as the rest of your battery wiring, no?
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I do need to at least make a hinged cover for my batteries. That would solve 97.44% of it- they are 100% exposed.

That has taught me things, though. Like battery cables from Walmart you buy cuz they’re easy and available that are tinned or copper are actually plated steel and therefore rust in six months.
 
Browneye said:
Now I did get my Eaton Bussman ANL fuses today - they are the genuine article. I put one of the tabs on the grinder for a teeny bit and sure enough, it's copper underneath the silver looking coating. Interesting that the 40A is much thinner than the 80A. Anyway, they are the real mccoy for $9 each - you guys should get your fuses from fuse depot dot com - they're half the price as every place else. With the Spartan Power ANL fuse holders these are a very nice option. Even Spartan sells the cheapo brass plated ones with their holders.

Click to expand...

I look at these fuses and then at my Victron MEGA fuses and I have to scratch my head. My fuses have no window like those ANL fuses. I have no idea how I would tell if the fuse was blown. I have two 200 amp fuses in parallel (parallel cables too). So one fuse could be blown and the other working OK and I would never know it.
 
HRTKD said:
have two 200 amp fuses in parallel (parallel cables too). So one fuse could be blown and the other working OK and I would never know it.
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If one blew there’s a reasonable assumption you’d know it because the other would cascade immediately.

Of course you know a multimeter would show infinite ohms if blown…
 
HRTKD said:
I look at these fuses and then at my Victron MEGA fuses and I have to scratch my head. My fuses have no window like those ANL fuses. I have no idea how I would tell if the fuse was blown. I have two 200 amp fuses in parallel (parallel cables too). So one fuse could be blown and the other working OK and I would never know it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I never understood the mega fuse configuration. Every other fuse known to man shows a blown filament. [shrug]
I also didn't realize there were 'mini' ANL fuses - ordered a fuse holder and when it arrived I thought I shrunk the kids. LOL

Always a learning experience here. ?


I have 40A side by side for each leg of Victron Orion. Since this is more or less outdoors, I'm happy to have the better grade of fuses. The old outside battery tray now has just the starting batteries for the chassis, and their own 100w PV and 10A charge controller. I moved the generator lead to the chassis too - Winnebago puts it on the house battery. Isolator/combiner solenoid is gone. I exchanged the Orion TR for a SMART one, on recommendation. Works awesome.

 
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Browneye said:
I just looked at that t-fuse and block on don rowe and it appears to be the exact same one I got from Best RV Inverters. For all we know Littelfuse is having them made for them, selling them with their fuse.

I got curious, so went over to littelfuse.com and no fuse blocks for class-T. [shrug]

A general search produced this source - exact same block, and it's $42:
shunts.com

FB2 - 250 to 400 Amp Class T Fuse Block - Includes JLLN Type Fuse

Class T Fuse Block Current Rating: 250 to 400 Amps Ring or Spade Termination SPECIFICATIONS Type Rated Current (A) Type Rated Current (A) FB1-110 110 FB2-250 250 FB1-125 125 FB2-300 300 FB1-150 150 FB2-350 350 FB1-175 175 FB2-400 400 FB1-200 200 Rated Current Range FB1: 110 to 200 amp FB2...
shunts.com shunts.com

Everything else was more $$. BlueSea has their own - it's about $88.

Mine is mounted inline with the plus side of the battery pack.




The neg side is a smart shunt.

Click to expand...
Has anyone ordered and received one of the $42 class T fuse holders from Riedon linked above? I tried to order using PP and got a pending and now the charge has dropped off the PP account. They legit?
 
Found that on a web search.
Looks like the link is to shunts.com, which must be the sales arm for Riedon.

Did you try calling them? They are just up the road here...seem to sell all over the world. But sorry, can't vouch for them.
 
Looking at their stock of the 400amp fb2 and it shows 0. Tried my luck again but ordered the fb2 with 300 amp fuse and the order went through.

USPS shipping for the $43 fuse block was $16. Ouch!
 
This is interesting stuff I was looking at 300 amp blue sea DC magnetic breakers and I noticed that they're actually three 100 amp breakers paralleled... Which got me thinking I recently had an ANL fuse fail.. due to high inrush current... This was a big fuse honestly it was oversized for the job so it shouldn't have been an issue in the first place but I noticed that the wiring directly before it and the wiring directly after it was heated

So I decided to disassemble the fuse and realized while there was a nice large landing pad on either side of the fuse that it necked down to something extremely small that could not possibly carry that much current.. this is a major choke point

Previously when I needed to carry that much current I used two smaller fuses sandwiched and that seemed to work really well and I got to thinking about what that actually was that I was seeing and the grand scheme of things I think once you get above 100 or maybe 150 amps there's just not enough surface area, to carry the load correctly so it becomes a choke point

I think ultimately the reason that the blue sea 300 amp breakers actually work for 300 amps is because they're spreading the load over three smaller breakers and effectively have much more surface area to work with so it doesn't create resistance and excessive heating which leads to more resistance and fuse or breaker failure

Now all that being said I also found it very interesting that my 200 amp fuses from install Bay seem to have a larger fusible area then a 500 amp fuse that I had laying around.. wrap your brain around that one go China
 
ericfx1984 said:
So I decided to disassemble the fuse and realized while there was a nice large landing pad on either side of the fuse that it necked down to something extremely small that could not possibly carry that much current.. this is a major choke point
Click to expand...
Did you take pictures for the peanut gallery? ?
 
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