New solar project
I have a 30 foot travel trailer with plenty of space on the roof and I want to do some remote camping. I'd like to be able to run the refrigerator, watch TV through-out the day, and be able to use la...
Forum Discussion
red31 wrote:daveyboy12 wrote:
I've heard others say the MC4 connectors don't work all that well so they cut the MC4 off and splice in 10 or 8 AWG.
This seems odd, why not open the box on the back of the panel and wire directly or open the box and add short MC4 versus cutting.
I appreciate the input from everyone, I probably am overkill for what I want to do - but good advice, the fridge can run off propane, I was thinking worst case where I wanted to preserve the propane for cooking.
I was probably wrong about the MC4 guys cutting them off, it was probably more they were just taping into them from the back of the panel.
I've read about the combiner boxes. I assume that is really only necessary where you have multiple panels coming in and you want to wire them in series? Assuming I go with the midnite classic, I could do a homemade combiner box on the roof, uping the voltage to 48+ on the two panels, and one set of wires coming down to the charge controller? Would I just use 8 AWG or something like that coming from the combiner box down to the shut-off / fuse box, than onto the charge controller?
How much maintenance are we talking about with the batteries, typically? What is a good GEL battery for solar. Do they have a decent life?
