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Last summer I had a 240 watt kit(from Solar Blvd.) Installed on our MH. It has two 120 watt panels feeding a 20 amp charge controller. I recently had the two stock 12 volt marine house batteries rep...
Forum Discussion
Hi chloe,
If you are using a pwm controller voltage drop doesn't matter, so long as the wire is "legal" for the number of amps of current.
example:
17 volt panel drops down to 14.8 volts by the pwm controller. That is about a 13% voltage drop. Quite a bit more than you would ever see from the #10 wire.
If you are using an MPPT controller, place the panels in series--just make sure that nothing on the roof can cause shading on any of the panels at any time.
OR
Replace the #10 wire, use MPPT and a parallel panel configuration.
If you won't be going over 480 watts of panels, then the 3048 Rogue is state of the art, and includes a temperature sensor. Temperature compensation is a "must do" in my opinion.
Blue Sky is.....some what out of date and charge for extra for the temperature sensor. They also do not have battery voltage sense wires.
If you are using a pwm controller voltage drop doesn't matter, so long as the wire is "legal" for the number of amps of current.
example:
17 volt panel drops down to 14.8 volts by the pwm controller. That is about a 13% voltage drop. Quite a bit more than you would ever see from the #10 wire.
If you are using an MPPT controller, place the panels in series--just make sure that nothing on the roof can cause shading on any of the panels at any time.
OR
Replace the #10 wire, use MPPT and a parallel panel configuration.
If you won't be going over 480 watts of panels, then the 3048 Rogue is state of the art, and includes a temperature sensor. Temperature compensation is a "must do" in my opinion.
Blue Sky is.....some what out of date and charge for extra for the temperature sensor. They also do not have battery voltage sense wires.
chloe's ranch wrote:
Ed suggested using a second 10 guage wire between controller and batteries. Is that better than using a single heavier guage wire? Easier since one 10 guage wire is already in use? Two tens equals what guage single wire? The controller is about three feet from the batteries. Thanks again!
