Running DC through a house.

[saint]

Customer wants his inverter in the garage and the only sensible route is through the house. I.e. down landing cupboard under floor and into garage. Normally we would put the inverter in the loft and run ac through the house or dc externally. Im looking for something saying this is not permitted due to absence of short circuit/ fault protection on the dc but can't find anything so assuming this is acceptable. Although perhaps not ideal.
Can anyone advise?

 

[Darkwood]

Not my field so limit my comments but have seen remote inverter a few times but the DC cables used running through the house were marked up and clearly identified throughout the length of their run... may be an area to look regarding the identification of the cabling also i assume local isolation in the loft may be needed with appropriate warning labels.

 

[sean_ork]

long DC cables = great way to reduce the arrays output

that might change his mind

 

[SolarCity]

Hot lofts = hot inverter = yield loss and reduced inverter life.

Increase the size of the DC cables and reduce the losses. We do.

 

[Gavin A]

long DC cables = great way to reduce the arrays output

that might change his mind

probably less so than AC in most cases due to the higher voltages involved.

 

[Gavin A]

Customer wants his inverter in the garage and the only sensible route is through the house. I.e. down landing cupboard under floor and into garage. Normally we would put the inverter in the loft and run ac through the house or dc externally. Im looking for something saying this is not permitted due to absence of short circuit/ fault protection on the dc but can't find anything so assuming this is acceptable. Although perhaps not ideal.
Can anyone advise?

surface mounted?

I prefer to use galv isolated inverters where doing this, as the circuit is then protected by separation - ie you could bang a nail through the positive, touch the nail while holding on to an earthed pipe and still feel nowt as there's no circuit. TL inverters you'd get a shock doing the same thing as there is a path through earth, though the RCMU on the inverter should recognise this as a fault and cut out, thereby making it an isolated circuit again.

If you're using a TL inverter and concerned, run it in earthed metal conduit / capping / swa, then any nail goes through it would trip the RCMU before anyone got chance to do anything. But AFAIK this isn't necessary for surface mounted cables as long as they're well marked.

 

[BruceB]

As long as you do not bury unprotected cables in walls there there is no particular regulation against dc cables running through the house. Do not run them alongside ac cables nor in the same conduit/trunking as ac cables. Using swa is a good idea if they are going to be at all vulnerable.

 

[Earthstore]

long DC cables = great way to reduce the arrays output

that might change his mind

HVDC Cross-Channel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Hope the link works, we import electricity from France not in AC but in DC.... I believe there are lower loses in HV DC.

 

[BruceB]

And the networks do not have to be synchronous if linked by dc

 

[woko]

On my own installation I have run DC through a built in wardrobe and down into the garage. System has out performed predictions over last two years, so any cable loses are insignificant but over sizing is a good idea.
I used this installation for my first assessment and running the dc through the house wasn't picked up. Clearly labeled yt2 is ample. But if want more piece of mind then galve is probably better.
Cheers.