12 Ton Hydraulic Crimper

I have only upgraded 1 wire in the last (first) 5 months of this Solar system. My system is still fairly simple: 10 AWG from the PV array, through a 6 A breaker and into the MidNite 150 controller. From there 10 AWG to the battery bank. From the bank I have 4 AWG cable from a set of heavy duty jumper cables. On the ends of the cables I have copper lugs that I've squeezed in a vise and a couple have the allen screw lugs.

This has worked pretty good, except when drawing a large current from the battery bank > 115 Amps. When the current is that high, the wires would get warm and the voltage drop from the battery to the inverter was 0.3 volts -- too much! One consequence of this voltage drop is that some times the inverter would stop due to the low voltage point.

The first change was to replace the 10 AWG from the controller to the battery bank to 6 AWG. I've expressed the benefit in a previous posting.


What I've wanted to do most was upgrade the 4AWG cables with 2/0 cables. This is very expensive to buy pre-made cables - and you have to know exact lengths, and the lugs have to be at the same angle. I see this as a long term investment, so the only real solution is to make my own.

Today I received a 12 Ton Hydraulic crimper in the mail.  To which I quickly went out and crimped an end of the current 4 AWG wire. The first photo shows the cable and the thin wires it contains. The second photo shows the hex crimp applied to the lug: I was very impressed with the reduction in size and the resulting crimp.

Today I bought some 2/0 lugs and have started the shopping for 2/0 thin cable. It's pretty expensive, so I'm going to have to shop for a bit. I've only used it once, but am very pleased and am looking forward to replacing the 4 AWG wire with 2/0 cable.