xw e-panel

[dapdan]

Hi all,

I thought I would bring this up in this particular forum to see if I can get some traction. I have installed two of the midnite solar e-panel for the xw line of inverters. I love the the fact that the panel is compact and reduces the installed foot print of the gear even though one get a good work out when completing the wiring. My main issue with this wonderful product is that the ac bus bars are only good for up to 6awg. If you trying to install 4awg it get nearly impossible to fit it into the bus bar. I brought this to Robin attention while he was at a solar fair sometime in July and he suggested that he would have some kind of adapter with "fingers" that would install in the bus bars and allow a larger conductor to be installed. I am still waiting to see this proposed adapter in the mail Robin.

The other small matter is the supplied shunt. I currently use the Victron line of battery monitor so I have to remove the shunt supplied and install it onto the black metal "thing". The main issue here is the fact that the bus bar attached to the shunt and connected to the positive terminal of the inverter has only one slotted hole at the terminal. The other hole to the shunt is not slotted or "elongated" so I had to put a drill to it to open it up so that the shunt blot that came with the victron battery monitor could fit. It would have been nice if the hole was a little bigger and was slotted so the swap would have been seemless.

That is basically it. Otherwise the xw e-panel is brilliant!

Cheers....
Damani

[Robin]

I remember having a discussion about accommodating a 2/0AWG wire on our busbars. I still haven't done anything. Sorry. The busbars have 6 holes. 4 of them are 6AWG and two will accept up to 1/0. I wonder if MidNite is already using up the 1/0 holes? We do not need to use the large holes since we are installing 6AWG wire. Did you find at least one of the large holes free? There sure should be one available.
My fix for really large wires will be a bolted on tang lug like you can get at Home Depot. This lug is likely to take up two spaces though since they are wide. I created a solid model file of this 2AWG lug and it should be attached here. You will notice it placed two different ways on the two busbars shown. This lug is 1/2" wide. You will also notice the 1/0 holes in the regular terminal busbars. I do believe we use one of them, but that still leaves you one more. Perhaps we do not provide sufficient wire bending room to use the standard 1/0 holes? The bolt on lugs shown here will fix the problem. It is very difficult at this point to change the busbars, but in general people are happy with the 1/0 wire size. We do have some 2/0 terminal busbars in the works for other projects, but they are not a drop in replacement.
Does the add on lug solve your problem?

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[Robin]

I forgot to comment on the shunt issue. Our thick copper busbars are designed to work with our 500A/50mV shunt. This is the industry standard here in North America. Victron also uses a 500 amp shunt but due to a problem on their website, I was unable to check to see if it is also 50mV full scale. There is a good chance that it is. If their shunt is 50mV, then I suggest you throw it out and just use the shunt that comes supplied with the E-Panel. If they use something other than 50mV, then you will need to file the hole a bit. We do not want a hole any larger than absolutely required for this high current connection. It just creates more heat and potential issues down the road.

[dapdan]

Hey Robin,

Thanks for the in depth reply. I have not encountered the issue with the busbar as yet but it is very possible because we may have a long run and would want use at least 2awg wire from on the bus bars. I was incorrect to say it is an issue with 4awg as it is not. I installed a xw 6048 for a client using the X panel box and there was tonnes of space in that box and there were no problems installing the 2awg wire. I have since installed 2 more xw's using your e-panel but I had used 4awg and 6 awg respectively and did not get a problems except for the space issue when bending 4awg  wire in place. I was envisioning an issue with your box and installing 2awg or greater given the space restraints and size of the holes in the bus bars. I have not actually tried installing 2awg in your e-panel but based on my experience with 4awg I expect it would be a very very tight fit if at all.

In terms of the stunt from victron, it is 50mv but it has a proprietary shunt that has a PCB board that accepts a RJ12 jack to send information to the display unit. So I had to replace your stunt with theirs.

[Halfcrazy]

In terms of the stunt from victron, it is 50mv but it has a proprietary shunt that has a PCB board that accepts a RJ12 jack to send information to the display unit. So I had to replace your stunt with theirs.

Does the board screw on the shunt with the 2 small screws? the old xantrex tma meters had that same board but it could be installed onto the MidNite shunt I suspect all the shunts are pretty standard on screw spacing?

[dapdan]

half,

yes it does have two screws. The meter unit and the shunt unit have serial numbers so I think both may have been calibrated to work only with each other (I am guessing here). Are you suggesting trying swaping shunts by removing the small pcb board? I will have to check and see if the holes on both shunts line up so that a swap is feasible.

Cheers...
Damani

[Robin]

Screws on the 500 amp shunts should all be standard. The manufactures set the standard for the sense lead screws. We set the standard for side screws at OutBack. If shunts supplied by other don' follow the same spacings, then they royally screwed up!
I do not know if your circuit board will fit though with the busbar installed on the side. Some modification may be required of the busbar. A hack saw comes to mind. We will be designing a battery status monitor to fit on the shunt that will not require removal of the busbar. No easy task since there isn't much room.

[SOLENTRICS]

just a reminder Robin to put a label as we had discussed near the dc bus to let inexperience installers that it's connected to the battery and not threw the main breaker. The e-panel is still the best one to use even if Magnum say different