roof and portable solar wiring question

maxum1989 wrote:
Ok Solar gurus. Need some help. My plan is to install 200 watts of solar on my camper. I would like to have a 100 watt panel on the roof wired in working all the time. I would also like a separate 100 panel used in a portable manner that could be hooked up quickly when needed. I am going to use two flexible 100watt panels(or four 50's, haven't decided yet), a MPPT controller (best choice?)and possibly a monitor to see what's going on. The vendor I am working with uses MC4 connectors. He had some ideas on how to do this but I thought I would check with you guys to see how you would do it.



My main goal would be to have the roof panel wired in and running full time. Then when needed the other panel could just be hooked in with some type of quick connection to double the battery charging when needed or when the roof panel is fully in shade. Can this be done? The vendor wants to disconnect the roof panel, then re-wire for two panels every time I want the second panel used. I was hoping for a simpler solution.

I would go with a PWM charge controller. A waste of money with what you wanna do going MPPT.

If I were going to go portable I would use two extention cords (3 wire)
one for the pos and one for neg. As an example two 16 guage 25 ft cords
would have around 1% voltage drop. (Thats good) at 5.5 amps. Cords and Receptacles are cheap at the "box" stores. Cords coil up for storage and they could be used as a regular cord when not needed.