circuit breakers

[kauaisolarman]

i have a question about circuit breakers.

seems common sense but i just wanted some other input on the subject.

anyway,

i am running aquion batteries and the maximum current the the battery can handle in/out is 17A.

I have 6 of these paralleled together and am using 15A breakers and a mnpv6 disco to combine them together.

was looking at the 15A breaker and it says breaking amps 19A....   

does this mean that the 15A breaker will not trip unless 19A comes through?

does that mean it will not provide the 17A current protection that i need for my battery bank? 

does anyone know what the breaking amps for the 12A breakers are?  dont want to purchase 6 more breakers and still have it be above the 17A protection that i am looking for,


thanks for any input.  sorry for all the question

[Vic]

Hi Kauai..,

I may have some MNEPV 12 A breakers in stock here.   Will check and report any Trip current rating if they are in stock.

Vic

[Vic]

Hi Kauai..,

It appears that if the Rated current for the MNEPV breakers is multiplied by 1.3,  one winds up at,   or very close to the Trip rating.   This is taken from several data points  --  I do not have a 12 A breaker here,  but would guess that  the Trip rating on it would be about 15.6 (or perhaps 15.5 A).

It would seem,  that a 13 A MNEPV breaker would trip at about 17 A.   Although,  at that current,  it might still require a number of seconds,  or perhaps one minute or so to trip.

Looked at several resellers,  and they both offer 12 A and 15 A,  but no 13 A MNEPVs.

Halfcrazy Ryan of MidNite has been testing Aquion batteries,   and knows all about MN breakers (as do Robin,  boB ...  and more MN folks),   so perhaps try pinging Ryan could help you find a good solution,  based upon his experience.

CBI does have Trip curves for these breakers,   but it is difficult to know which curve to use ...

Will look at that though.   Vic

[kauaisolarman]

thanks for the reply.

as of right now i don't have much running off the batteries but i just want to get the OCP correct because i really want to protect my battery bank and not burn up those expensive aquion batteries.

can anyone cnfirm the trip rating for the mnepv12?

if 1.3 is correct then the mnepv12 would be perfect for my application.

i may have a lot of extra mnepv breakers for sale very soon. 

purcahsed 6 15A breakers for this battery bank and now i have no use for them.

[kauaisolarman]

another question off topic but relative i suppose.

i am using a mnpv6 disco box to combine the batteries.  the big red lever makes it easy to turn on/off all the batteries at once instead of individually switching 6 breakers.

bad thing is it seems that when using the mnpv6 disco the circuit breakers become useless being they are all coupled together with the plastic cover and then the plastic cover is attached to the big red lever on the front.  the breaker would need to move all the other 5 breakers and the plastic holding tab and the big red lever in order to trip.

will the circuit breakers still trip individually when using this mnpv6 disconnect box?
http://www.midnitesolar.com/productPhoto.php?product_ID=507&productCatName=Combiners%20-%20Disconnecting&productCat_ID=26&sortOrder=2&act=p


any input would be appreciated.

thanks

[harryn]

I am pretty sure that breakers tied together as a set will trip all of them even if only one circuit has  problem.  The addition of the handle aspect does make for an interesting question.

Not 100% certain, but I believe that in order to be rated, at least DC breakers have to be able to trip on a fault, even if the handle is held stationary, so tying the handles together should not be an issue.

I am not 100% sure though that the MNEPV circuit breaker is the right one for your application though.  I have a 60 amp rated, DIN rail mounted version sitting on my desk and it is clearly marked with the ++ on one terminal.  This indicates that it will only correctly trip for DC power going one direction.  For batteries, there is charging and discharging, so bi-directional DC power flow.

The panel mount breakers are bi-directional, but I don't think this is released yet for the DIN rail versions.  Could be wrong, but I think this is correct.

Probably this would be a good question for the "breakers" section of the forum in order to get more feedback.  Perhaps the answer to your question is there, or in the breaker data sheets.

Harry