4 very high current wire
4 very high current wire:
For when you need the Big Guns, here's 50ft of red and black welding cable. It's 6 gauge, with a high strand
count for surprisingly good flexibility. It's pure copper too, so it's HEAVY. I bought some heat-shrink tubing
to connect it every foot. This was better than say, wire-ties, that would have turned it into a chainsaw when
trying to handle it, and it lays down better than if I had twisted the two together.
Honestly, I was expecting to use it for my solar panels, but after I'd bought it I did a "sanity check" and then
I realized it was completely unnecessary as long as I kept the voltage up. At 50 feet, I figured I was only
going to lose something like 5 watts out of 600, using 10ga, and switching to this was only going to cut that
loss in half anyway, so it was a silly plan. It would have made sense had I placed the panels in parallel, but
then not only would I be battling power loss due to high current, but there's no way my solar controller would
be able to handle the current either.
I ended up storing it on a sturdy extension cord keeper. All that heavy wire. not very practical, but looks
very impressive! SB50 connectors (120 amp) on each end. (propane torch required to solder) It's actually
rated to 600 volts though, and has a tough (rubber) jacket that's chemical and abrasion-resistant. The red
and black bands you see on the wound up cable are small pieces of heat shrink that are holding the two fat
wire together, since you can't get welding cable in convenient twin-lead at this size.
