A couple of weeks ago I saw that someone on the forum completed a load test on their breakers and use a thermal imaging camera. I quickly found a AccuMEMS thermal imaging camera on sale at Amazon for just over $100. After scanning my house and my wife a few times, I decided to conduct a 5 minute load test with a 1,300 watt space heater on my gear and take some thermal images myself. I wanted to see where I might find an inefficient connection or piece of hardware. I’m not sure that the test was long enough, but it was fun seeing where everything got a little warmer.
BEFORE LOAD CONDITIONS
44 degrees F ambient air temp.
51.4 degrees F battery temp.
91.8% SoC, 13.29vDC
LOAD CONDITIONS
I have a 2,000 watt Renogy inverter. I plugged in a 1,300 watt space heater and started warming things up. It was drawing 113A. After stopping the test, I was at 88.3% SoC.
OBSERVATIONAL RESULTS
The Blue Sea Systems 200A breaker stayed cool throughout the test. You can see the temperature on the thermal images. The hottest part of the system were the pure copper lugs. I shouldn’t even use the word hot, as nothing really started warming up.
IMAGES from LEFT to RIGHT
Back of inverter during load test
Space heater element
T-class fuse (vertical) and 3/0 cabling to the isolation switch
Breaker and wiring
NEXT TIME
More load, longer test. It was a fun mini test that didn’t show any hot spots. Trial and error and experimentation…
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