RJsfishin wrote:
A well known neighbor camper had a 280 watt solar install done yesterday.
A few things surprised me,....
The 2 Kyocera panels (brackets) were glued to the rubber roof, no screws.
The BlueSkys MPPT SB 3000i controller was mounted 15 ft from the 4 6v batts, thru 22 ft of 6 ga wire.
The panels were connected in parallel,....which the manual plainly says parallel connections only.
Installed price of $1550 dint surprise me much.
The "glued to rubber roof", maybe ok, they should know.
The 22 ft wire to batts, could have been 5 to 7 ft, had they not elected the easy way out. The owner is upset about that.
The MPPT controller using parallel connected panels only, was news to me.
Any comments appreciated.
The glued to the roof worries me. I can see vibrations down the road causing the panel to tilt a little bit, then air rushing underneath would cause the panel to act as a lever, and shear the mounting off with a chunk of roof coming with it. There are far better ways to do this and ensure that the area is leak resistant, ways that don't require smearing caulk over everything.
The wire length is also not a good sign, as others have mentioned. 22 feet of six gauge wire seems pretty skinny unless the panels are 48 volt and the MPPT controller can handle the combined top voltage.
It would be interesting to see if the batteries are able to ever hit a 95-100% SOC, assuming no outgoing load (just the CC on the batteries and a sunny day.) I would not be surprised if this impossible with this setup.
