I have a another question for the elec. gurus.. If I understand I can run a earth ground to the neg. side of my system. I am not sure I can. I have never grounded a dc system. I already have a separate ground running down from the frame / strut that mounts my solar panel and I have a 8 ft. ground rod that grounds my ac panel. I planned to hook to this.
Been searching and this comment brings up ground loops. Haven't thought about this since messing with ham radio ..
Default Re: Battery grounding
Normally, the DC power are floating (positive and negative) for charge controllers, inverters, AC battery chargers and such.
Where you can get into trouble is mixing in, for example, automotive accessories such as a car stereo where the chassis of the radio is also the negative return lead.
When you have a DC negative return tied to Earth Ground in two or more places, you have parallel current paths. In some cases, the earth grounding has lower resistance than the DC wiring and you can have pretty heavy current flows in the earth ground system that you did not plan on (shielded cables for antennas, etc.).
So--In a well designed DC power system, your grounding at the negative battery bus common point to the earth ground rod is not going to create any ground loops (unless there is a short circuit somewhere).