Wiring and Power Distribution Connections

electricity from the sun by John Drake II | home

Minimumizing the number of connections in a low voltage d.c. system is very important.

Each connection is a site for voltage drop, heating and corrosion.

On this page we will concern ourselves with power distribution blocks, feed through / splicer blocks and heat shrink tubing.

Power Distribution Blocks:

Whenever you want to take a large cable and split it up into several smaller wires a pdb really comes in handy.

It is basically a heavy duty captive lug which has one or two holes on one end (with set down cable locking screws) and

several smaller holes on the other side as shown in the pictures above.

I have seen them in single, two, three and four pole variations.

For our applictions, a two pole does the job.

These can be used as part of a photovoltaic combiner box with smaller wires coming in from each pv panel and a larger

cable going out to the charge controller.

For loads, heavy cable goes into the block and smaller cable goes to each load.

We use them for combining the individual input of several photovoltaic modules as well as for operating many small

load circuits from heavier supply wire.

To be continued.