ELECTRICAL BUS SYSTEM AND COMPONENTS

An electrical bus system has an integrated trunk bus that includes at least one positive bus line, an equal number of negative bus line, and a messenger cable that that are twisted together to form a single, integrated trunk bus line. The messenger cable provides mechanical support and is coupled to vertical support using brackets, ground clamps, or other suitable coupling techniques, thereby eliminating the need for cable hangers or trenching. The messenger cable provides a grounding function, thereby eliminating the need for an additional grounding line. Multi-tap shear bolt connectors are used to connect the integrated trunk bus line to photovoltaic wires carrying the output from one or more solar panel arrays, thereby obviating the need for combiner boxes used in conventional systems.