T fuses and inverters

[grantgoold]

I am getting ready to set the xantrex inverter in place and the directions discuss placing a 300 amp t fuse inline. Can folks provide me with some insight as to vendors, quality and so forth. I see alot of various manufactures and do not want to pick up something cheap that blows every twenty minutes.

Thanks in advance.

Grant

[ChuckMC8]

Grant,  I bought mine at backwoods solar-here's their link-siper nice folks to deal with and a  great price, too-

http://www.backwoodssolar.com/Catalogpages2/wiring2.htm#DC%20RATED%20FUSES

[NewbeeMC9]

I think i bought mine here

http://store.wmjmarine.com/c19001.html

[belfert]

Any reason not to use a DC breaker?  A friend of mine is going to give me a DC breaker big enough for my inverter.

Brian Elfert

[boogiethecat]

The only reason to not use a breaker is if something goes wrong with your inverter and it's going to let the smoke out, a fuse is generally much faster than a breaker, and will blow quickly enough to do a lot of damage limitation where a breaker would probably let it all rip before tripping.  But since that's a rare occasion, I'd think a breaker would be just fine.
Cheers

[Stan]

It is almost impossible to protect solid state electronics with a fuse or circuit breaker.  Low power devices  either explpde (leaving an open circuit and the fuse intact) or short out and blow the fuse. In high power devices, the fuse will keep the power cables from melting when a device shorts out. Electronic components will invariably fail before the fuse!

Very fast, high current fuses ($$$) are available and used on DC motor drives which employ a soft start feature so that current is ramped up slowly. On an inverter, they would blow every time the A/C compressor tried to start.

The short story is to do every thing possible to elominate the possiblity of a short circuit on your inverter output. This also applies to the battery cables when the inverter is in charger mode.