I hunted around and found some 500A rated boat/RV switches, they're claimed to be good for 36V operation, but no information on 48V.
Given they're only isolating very low voltage differences (except for the last one - assuming I'm turning them all off), I didn't consider the voltage limitation to be a problem in my application.
They cost me about $10 each - identical switches sell for anything from $6 to $50 depending on where you get them from.
I have a 200A fuse between each switch and the battery bank it isolates as some protection - 200A should just let me run the inverter and handle full load off a single battery string if the others are offline for maintenance or testing etc. The switch actuators can be removed in the "Off" position for safety.
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My FlexMax-80 charge controller has a seperate double-pole breaker for each array
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and individual current metering. (Nominal 100V per array)
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I've only isolated the batteries all together once since I powered the system up in 2005 - and as others have said, consideration of the sequence is important to avoid letting out magic smoke and preventing powerloss to critical services. In my case, it was:
* Disable generator automatic controls
* Power up generator
* Allow inverter to synchronise and bring generator online
* Add some "stabilising" load (around 1KW)
* Cross fingers and toes shutdown inverter (critical loads maintained on generator)
* Turn off DC input to inverter
* Isolate PV arrays
* Isolate turbine controller
* Isolate batteries
On completion of works, the steps were basically the same ones in reverse. All completed without dropping 240V AC to critical loads, and no magic smoke
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