Trailer Electrical Ground/Frame and Solar

[brulaz]

The negative terminal of the battery goes to the frame via 6ga wire.
And I think the AC ground goes to the frame when we're not off-grid.

I'll wire the MPPT controller with two 6ga wires going to the battery, or maybe the negative wire will stop at the frame as that's closer.

But the MPPT controller also has a "ground" terminal. Should I do something with that? I haven't run a ground wire from my solar frames either.

Rogue says to run a separate 10ga from the MPPT grd terminal to "a common location in the DC load center, and through a Ground Fault Protection Device (GFPD), to comply with NEC requirements".

What sort of GFPD are people using if anything? Could I just connect the grd to the neg wire in the load center? Or should i just ignore the Mppt grd terminal?

[BoonHauler]

brulaz wrote:

Rogue says to run a separate 10ga from the MPPT grd terminal to "a common location in the DC load center, and through a Ground Fault Protection Device (GFPD), to comply with NEC requirements".

What sort of GFPD are people using if anything? Could I just connect the grd to the neg wire in the load center? Or should i just ignore the Mppt grd terminal?

What model controller do you have? I'd like to see what context they're refering to.

As for Ground Fault Breakers, here's a Link

[time2roll]

Metal boxes need to be electrically connected to the RV frame.
Note the green wire in the pic.



The idea is to keep the box from becoming energized during a fault.
The copper connection prevents you from being the connection.
The ground should be a separate connection so that during battery or other service the ground will remain connected.

[BoonHauler]

Always run the negative wire from the Charge Controller directly to the Battery/Bank.

From there (the battery/bank) you bond the Negative to the frame.

As for grounding discussion in general, there's one here Grounding my off grid RV system

[Golden_HVAC]

Hi,

I would recommend a #10 wire from the MPPT controller to the chassis or to the battery, your pick. Actually #12 will work fine too, as the current going through it will never exceed about 1/10 amp, but never can exceed 10 amps, much less than the wire is good for. I would be running #6 wire to the battery for both +12 and -12 wires. It is not that much more expensive than running just the one wire. And you have less resistance with copper wire than with steel chassis.


Good luck with your installation.

Fred.