beemerphile1 wrote:
Saw a tv show about solar on houses and other buildings. The statement was made that a system with panels in series could be dragged down by a poorly functioning panel. A system with panels in parallel would not be affected by a poorly functioning panel.
Others may be able to explain the hows and whys of the statement.
It basically works like the results of my mixed panel test. The array is controlled by the weakest panel so when I added a smaller panel to the array, it lower the voltage of all of the rest. It also caused my MPPT controller to constantly search for a peak voltage. This possible could happen with a off sized panel, a shaded panel, a damaged panel or even one that acts differently under different conditions. A 24v mono panel will play better with a similar poly panel in bright sunlight but act different in lower light conditions crippling the poly.
