460 watt solar setup: wire sizes?
I want to change out my old 50 watt panel and 10 amp controller with at least one and hopefully two 230 watt 24 volt panels and whatever controller would be best. Right now the roof on my fifth wheel ...
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If you find it is a better price or other advantage for wiring size, whatever, you can get two smaller capacity controllers instead of one big one.
I have my array wired together with one long wire going to near the batteries and then a Y splitting off to two controllers, each on the same battery bank. This gets the same total amps as having two separate arrays with two long wires each to its own controller, where both controllers are on the same bank.
It also gets the same total amps as having one array, one long wire, and one big controller on the battery bank.
You could have three controllers :) Point is, there are many options and it may be that juggling the max Voc ratings, series/parallel, controller max amps, wire gauges, and total price of any "package" you can dream up, may lead you to a more "unconventional" set-up with no loss of amps to the battery for the same total array size.
I use the Trimetric for monitoring the battery bank with everything going through that, so I have to derive what solar is doing from the total (net) amps showing.
If you want the solar-only and all the fancy data stuff some controllers provide, then the above set-up options might be reduced if that is your priority.
I have my array wired together with one long wire going to near the batteries and then a Y splitting off to two controllers, each on the same battery bank. This gets the same total amps as having two separate arrays with two long wires each to its own controller, where both controllers are on the same bank.
It also gets the same total amps as having one array, one long wire, and one big controller on the battery bank.
You could have three controllers :) Point is, there are many options and it may be that juggling the max Voc ratings, series/parallel, controller max amps, wire gauges, and total price of any "package" you can dream up, may lead you to a more "unconventional" set-up with no loss of amps to the battery for the same total array size.
I use the Trimetric for monitoring the battery bank with everything going through that, so I have to derive what solar is doing from the total (net) amps showing.
If you want the solar-only and all the fancy data stuff some controllers provide, then the above set-up options might be reduced if that is your priority.
