Solar Grounding Essentials. These important safety features are often forgotten.

Why didn't you use something like NYY-J 1x16 for the earth? its already UV protected

kann es sein, dass du ein deutscher/österreicher bist?

achja… tolles video

I've never seen it written somewhere but for grounding aluminium mounting frame you should go all aluminium and stainless, no copper mixing before the very last part.

Every aluminium part should be linked with aluminium cable and mounting with stainless screw, and a aluminium to copper crimp ferrule with anti oxidation grease in it when transitioning to copper.
Mixing in copper cable outside is asking for corrosion problems.

Yes professionals use copper but i don't think most think about the galvanic corrosion.

man könnte ja zwei neue Email-Adressen machen nur zu einer Kontaktaufnahme und nur dafür benutzt

Aha , ein AUSSIE-Teutone , oder Teutonenaussie. Auch ich Teutone , allerdings auf Mallorca und mit Solar beschäftigt . Mal quasseln ?

Thanks

Silicon may help prevent external corrosion, but galvanic corrosion is where you have two different metals making contact in the presence of an electrical potential - like in your situation... i assume the recommended treatment stops that

I would use bare copper solid wire for the ground.

Heya, earthing your solar panels is a must for safety. that said I have to do it myself too still

I watched another video that explained the ground earth isn't part of the DC Solar circuit. Eg. A car, for example, doesn't use an earth rod connection, obviously. A further explanation indicated that in the event of a lightning strike, the earth grounded frames become a 'magnet' to the lightning bolt. It was also pointed out that the voltaic cells are independent of the frame. So, this is a very contestable subject. So, like installing a car stereo, you would need to ground it, but, not the earth ground. I am not an electrician in anyway, but, the other video made logical sense, to me anyway.

Why is it necessary to ground panels and not a Tesla?? Both are DC current?? I understand the grounding of AC current, but not DC current.

Is your continuous nudity doing OK still?

continuity 😄

What is it for?

Completely off-grid and there is no exisiting grid tied earth grounding. Not planning on grounding my panels, or inverters for that matter. I am adding and EMP Shield.

Im living completely off-grid and concidering not to ground any of my panels. Its a small system. I only have 2,1kWp installed, 24V panels. The reason for not grounding is that Im affraid of lightning strikes damaging the entire system. If not grounded its basically a metal roof and to my knowledge we havent had a single strike on the house (high trees surrounding the building) since it was built for around 50 years ago. If I ground the panels I will basically creating a lightning rod, which is not good for the system nor my cabin. Any thoughts on this?

Hi Andy what kind of cable are you using to connect your solar panels.

The problem you made with the silicon is that you did not silicon the bolt that claps the copper wire onto the lug. Moisture can go through the screw threads of the bolt. Just an observation. Well done anyway. Doing cabling on your own is always a nightmare and takes soooo much longer to do. You should employ your wife. 👻

And if the brackets were loose and banged up and the threads were damaged you would have cried about them not being in a proper package LOL

I understand grounding the cabling after the system, but why ground the panels? if any lightning hits, everything is fried anyway and you will discharge to ground which means that you will have a discharge to the house as well(potential depending on distance), correct?

What is the size of grounding wire?

Andy, you should not ground solar panels on a roof unless you are found so for an electrical strike. When you ground the panels you reduce the number of catastrophic failures from 2 to 1, so you actually make the system less safe.
Regards,
Bill

Nice! Good tutorial for us all! Thank you!

In my opinion the way you had done the grounding with the ring lug bolted to the aluminum rack would be more then sufficient.
Spending excessive amounts on those very nice and very expensive grounding brackets, in my opinion, are totally unnecessary.

When I set up my 16 panels this fall I found continuity between the 4 sides of the panels was lacking..it was apparent that the one connection per panel wasn’t going to bond all the metal frames properly ….I wound up putting 4 of those special darn fancy connectors you have per panel… one one each extrusion….each connection is swabbed and bedded with a with the N-Alox anti corrosion type stuff…( probably not needed) and one continuous 6 gauge copper wire weaves through all panels back to the electrical area… Yeow…..a real job..now each seperate panel strut is reading as in contact with all the other frames , prices and mounts.
It was the only way I could get a good connection between all the pieces… alot of work too.

Earth should be flex

Great video! Really helps me out with my planning of the new solarsystem I'm building this summer.

Anodize is a conversion coating which builds a oxidation layer to (help) prevent corrosion. Does not make aluminum stronger.

Another great video, the reason your ground is not considered legal cuz the manufacture said its not to sell us there expensive cheep brackets hihi…

No kidding. Have you seen the SRNE inverter chargers? Ac out has no grounding terminal!!!!!! Just a ground screw on outside of box

Nice work Andy! Just the video I was looking for as i've ordered all of this gear already for my off grid project and wasn't 100% sure on the AS standards to earth PV systems.
Just a recommendation as a retired electrician - paint any orange conduit with weathershield UV paint as it's designed for underground only and doesn't have any UV stabilizers in it. It will go brittle and crack in the AU sun after a year or so otherwise

On automobiles they use a special "grounding" or "electrical" washers on the ground cable lug-to-chassis interface. It is a "star" washer with internal and external "teeth".

Very nice video Andy. Thinking about the PV panel frame. We should measure if all the Alu sides are inter connected. If not, 4 corner grounding is justified. But I ordered only 1 piercing metal per panel as I didn't thought about it before.. Also, there is a better putty for waterproofing connectors . One, that you can undo. For electricians. It's like a chewing gum, sticky stuff. Silicone is not good enough. Probably no silicone is better. Lugs should be better also than exposed wire. They may vibrate lose and corrode, in my humble opinion. Cheers from Pavel

Andy if you could answer this, or if you want to do a video on it.
Is it required to ground your battery banks? My thoughts are grounding the negative terminal and running that back to the ground rod.. any ideas on this?

may I know the ground cable size you use?

Hi Andy, any update on the popular topic about silicone? hehe :D

So stupid to put solar panels under all that shade from so many tree's.... jut Stupid!

THANK YOU! I was wondering what those parts (earthing washers) were for. Much thanks!

Bonsoir ANDY, hum j'attendais impatiemment que tu ouvre le sujet de la connexion à la terre ! enfin une vidéo sur le sujet. bonne continuation.

Amazing video thank you so much. may I ask a question? I am off grid and I have seen some people say that the panels should be earthed to their own earth rod and then the system earthed to another earth rod. my panels are very close to my system. Do you think that is necessary or even correct? with so much conflicting information it is hard to know. thank you in advance.

It's a pity you have so much Shading over your panels

Now you've created a giant lightening rod you need a lightening arrestor in your combiner box because it will have no problem jumping a fuse gap.

so much shading on them panels .

I am posting a stupid question:
How the solar panels and inverters will behave in case of a earthquake the National power grid is 100% off ..down.. shut.
So..my solar energy can not be transfered (feed in) to the power grid . What will happen? The inverter will blow away? Shall we have an emergency button to stop the feed in?

it is sooo funny when you have everything well conductive(whole structure is metal!) and you draw cables in isolating tubes to it! luv it. that's prove why intelligence is so important.

In my boat i use "White Vaseline -acid free" on all connections.

The real other reason for earth the panels is to discharge corona charge . Every 1 meter above the ground 100 volt charge will be induced into it, at 3 meters up it 300 volts. Due to the anodising, the aluminium is an insulator and this charge can build up to a dangerous level over a large area.

Deutscher?

Very nice system I'm sorry to see all that shading from the trees

Where can you find these actual Australian requirements? I have tried many times and failed. I am not going grid tied and not bothering with RECs.