I bought a BusBar from Amazon to parallel connect 5 batteries in my cabin. It is rated at a 100A. I will normally never pull anything close to that out of the batteries, but I have a 1800W non-adjustable vacuum, and I am pondering if I should run it off the batteries using an inverter. Due to normal inefficencies of an inverter, that would probably pull 2000W, equivalent to about 160A at 12V, quite a bit more than the rated max.
I am wondering if this will make the metal on the bus bar so hot it will become a fire hazard? Usually I am done vacuuming in 15 minutes. Usually, any rating is done with a bit of overhead, so maybe 100A means it gets to 20 degrees C, while at 200A it becomes quite hot (like 50 degrees C)?
This is how the bus bar looks:
Best Answer
What happens is you exceed the rating of your buss bar by 60%. Doing that is not a good idea and you could melt/deform the base of the buss bar. That buss bar would heat up very fast with that much load on it in a very short time. After 15 minutes it would be so hot it would probably start melting the insulation of other wires attached to it. Plus, I'd be cautious of electrical items purchased on Amazon as they tend to be counterfeit items and could lack UL approval. Bottom line, get a higher rated buss bar.