2oldman
Wilson Creek WA
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True gary. It's not unheard of, but unlikely any charging current would be greater than a large load like a MW or a toaster. That said, a very high charging current would last longer, and would be split between the two.
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smkettner
Southern California
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#4 with 105C wire ampacity is 160 amps. Do you expect loads or charging to get anywhere close to 320 amps? I have doubts. The fuse will open for the unexpected.
Actually you would need to worry about the #2 (210 amps) before the pair of #4. I would keep the battery fuses at 100 amps each or less.
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mena661
Southern California
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You want to keep voltage drop in mind for the charging sources and inverter loads. No need to alarm off the inverter because the wiring is too small (3 tons post). Also, no need to clip the balls off the chargers because of the same reason.
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smkettner
Southern California
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Inverter shown is just 300w
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2oldman
Wilson Creek WA
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smkettner wrote:Inverter shown is just 300w Yah.. that makes wire size even less critical.
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BFL13
Victoria, BC
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I have used #4 for years for all battery connections because the store sells "starter" cables with ring lugs at each end which are all #4 gauge of different lengths, which I get instead of getting fancy made up cables like you guys do 
I have four 6s in series- parallel with loads to 120amps (inverter-MW) and charging loads to 130 amps. The #4s take about half those amps each AFAIK. Nobody died yet.
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mena661
Southern California
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smkettner wrote:Inverter shown is just 300w Oh that's right he's getting the Go Power. You can just use the wire that came with it (4 ft of #10 I think). That's good enough. Of course, I upgraded mine to #6.
BFL13 wrote:I have four 6s in series- parallel with loads to 120amps (inverter-MW) and charging loads to 130 amps. The #4s take about half those amps each AFAIK. Nobody died yet. #4 is plenty. Some believe in sizing wire to catastrophic failure. In my case, that would be wire to handle 740 amps which would be silly expensive and not necessary. I use 4/0 which carries a max of 400 amps or so and 1% or less voltage drop (7 foot wire run. I HAD initially planned to get a 2000W inverter). More than enough for what I need. Just size it to your max draw and account for an acceptable voltage drop or get the wire size your inverter manual says.
* This post was
edited 05/19/12 09:47pm by mena661 *
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wa8yxm
Wherever I happen to park
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Two answers, choose the larger wire.
First: Assume one battery will fail "High resistance" and thus the other battery will provide ALL the current.. Now the odds of this happening are low, but this is called "playing safe".
The recommendation for this is "The same size as the wire(s) attached to the existing battery (Go with the negative cable size, there is usually only one of those).
The other answer is "Standard starter cable" (That is usually 4ga) as that is very easily obtained, low cost, and comes with lugs already attached.
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cruz-in
Southern Maryland
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Thanks all for the inputs and discussion....decided to go with 2 gauge...It was only a few dollars more from genuinedealz....
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