Xantrex Technology 10 owner manual Glossary of Terms, Awg

Glossary

Glossary of Terms

Alternating Current	An electric current that reverses direction at regular intervals. Sources
(AC)	of alternating current are shore power, utility power, inverter output
	power, generator power or household current.
Ampere (Amp, A)	The unit of measure of electron flow rate of current through a circuit.
Ampere-hour	A unit of measure for a battery’s electrical storage capacity, obtained
(Amp-hr. AH)	by multiplying the current in amperes by the time in hours of
	discharge (Example: a battery which delivers 5 amperes for 20 hours
	delivers 5 amperes times 20 hours, or 100 Amp-Hr. of capacity.)
AWG	American Wire Gauge, a standard used to measure the size of wire.
AH Capacity	The ability of a fully charged battery to deliver a specified quantity of
	electricity (Amp-Hr, AH) at a given rate (amp, A) over a definite
	period of time (Hr).
Circuit	An electric circuit is the path of an electric current. A closed circuit
	has a complete path. An open circuit has a broken or disconnected
	path.
Circuit (Series)	A circuit which has only one path for the current to flow. Batteries
	arranged in series are connected with the negative of the first to the
	positive of the second, negative of the second to the positive of the
	third, etc. If two 12 volt batteries of 50 ampere-hours capacity are
	connected in series, the circuit voltage is equal to the sum of the two
	battery voltages, or 24 volts, and the ampere-hour capacity of the
	combination is 50 ampere-hours.
Circuit (Parallel)	A circuit which provides more than one path for current flow. A
	parallel arrangement of batteries (of like voltage and capacity) would
	have all positive terminals connected to a conductor and all negative
	terminals connected to another conductor. If two 12 volt batteries of
	50 ampere-hour capacity each are connected in parallel, the circuit
	voltage is 12 volts, and the ampere-hour capacity of the combinations
	is 100 ampere-hours.
Current	The rate of flow of electricity or the movement rate of electrons along
	a conductor. It is comparable to the flow of a stream of water. The unit
	of measure for current is the ampere.
Cycle	In a battery, one discharge plus one recharge equals one cycle.
Dip Switch	A series of small switches used for special programming of the
	Freedom inverter/charger. These switches are located on the rear of
	the Freedom remote panel.
Direct Current (DC)	Current that flows continuously in one direction such as that from
	batteries, photovoltaics, alternators, chargers and DC generators.
Discharging	When a battery is delivering current it is said to be discharging.
(Discharge)

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