What is a good material for a battery busbar?

Used as a battery busbar material. Nearly pure aluminium with minimum weight percentage of 99.5% of aluminium. Very good electrical conductivity. Very good thermal conductivity. Excellent corrosion resistance. Tight controls are used on certain impurities that could adversely affect conductivity. Low mechanical strength.

Do you need a bus bar for your DIY lithium batteries?

We are continuing our deep dive into bus bars for our DIY lithium batteries. Bus bars (busbars) are short strips of conductive metal for high current electric connections. We are going to use some to connect the battery cells in our batteries. While the concept of a bus bar is simple, getting the right bus bar is nuanced.

What are busbar materials?

Busbar materials will vary, depending on application, between copper and aluminium. While copper is still ‘king’, one expert reports that interest in aluminium and copper-clad aluminium is starting to grow, while tin, silver and nickel are all common plating materials.

Can a copper busbar be replaced with aluminium?

If you are replacing a copper busbar with an aluminium design you will need to increase the cross-sectional area by 62%. Within the design you will need to consider the temperature swings and hence the expansion and contraction of any busbar so that you can look at loading and clearances.

Are copper bus bars corrosive?

Copper bus bars come in a variety of forms. Copper quickly corrodes when exposed to air. Therefore, many bus bars have a thin layer of non-corrosive material around them, such as tin. Coating copper is particularly common in corrosive environments, such as the ocean. So you’ll often see tinned copper as a marine-grade connector.

What makes a bus bar?

The key to making a bus bar is conductivity. The goal of a bus bar is to maximize the efficiency of a connection by minimizing any resistance. In the rest of the camper, we will be dealing with relatively small amperages that only call for thin gauge wires. In contrast, the bus bars are handling some of the highest amperages of the whole system.