Solar panel cable routing

westend wrote:
One thing I never understood was trying to connect modules in series or not spending $$, all in an effort to eliminate buying and installing larger sized wire. I used a lot of 4 AWG welding cable in my 12V system and it is easy and inexpensive to do so. I always figured that I am spending good money on panels, controller,and distribution so why would I lose even 2% because of wire loss.

Lots of additional variables. For my rig 24V panels provided the most watts, least cost and least footprint/watt. At that time 12V panels would cost more and with the cheaper PWM CC the total cost was only $100 less for 12V panels.

And I connected them in serial because with bypass diodes it is more shade tolerant than parallel. I used 63' of 10 ga wire for a loss of 0.5% to the CC.