I'm setting up my home system and practicing with a small solar mini split to cool my garage. I've got a junction box on the side of the building providing 120V hot-neutral-ground, which currently powers an outdoor outlet. I'm looking to run power from this box to an Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) that will connect to a 120V panel, which will then power the mini split and an outlet. The other input to the ATS will come from an inverter. My main concern is figuring out the correct way to route the grounding wires from both the junction box and the inverter to the panel's ground bar. I've seen mentions of bonding the ground and neutral from the inverter, but I'm unsure about the best approach.
1 Answer
You should make sure your ATS is service entrance rated if you're planning to use it for that purpose. Since you mentioned you're only taking power from the junction box to a subpanel and this is a single phase 120V setup, you don't need to worry about connecting everything together in a service entrance way. Just keep your grounds separate as per NEC requirements, which say you should only have one grounding point to touch at any time. This will help avoid issues down the line!
That's correct! Just keep in mind that if you're using RV or Marine gear, they handle grounding differently, usually with a relay.