solar panel install
well I finaly got a day that wasn't raining and had juat a light breeze, june is so hit or miss up here. I managed to get the 3 panels mounted and tied into the system.
I decided to add two extra ...
Forum Discussion
Is the old panel on it's own controller? If so, I'd hook it into the system, it's got to add another what, 100 watts? Unless you're already doing that. If you recall my recent Victron install, I rebuilt an unusable cabinet into about the same 2x2 space with access doors giving easy access to all equipment. I drilled 5 1.5" holes along the bottoms of the doors to vent.your instalkation looks nice and clean. It looks like you have the 3 panels wired in series.
it was. the problem is I used the exsisting roof penitration and wires to go from the new panels to the victron mppt, so there is no roof penitration to drop another pair of wires for it. the old controler is back in the wall just no wires to it to cover up the hole. I would have removed it and had a 4th panel there, but becaue of the bedroom escape hatch there was only 28" of width on that side and I needed 32" for thoes panels so I settled for 600 watts instead of 800. that also saved me almost 300 bucks on the controler I would have needed, as extra 200 watts would have added 500 bucks to the build.
yup they are in serries, by upping the voltage you get less line loss and it is more efficient. this also let me not worry about using the exsisting 10ga wire. actual charging that should drop to about 95V and 6.3 amps at the controler, which should translate to about 41amps of charging during the best part of the day. but seeing as I am showing 107V instead of 95 it tells me I am getting some bifacial gain which is all bonus, and shows potential that I will be getting more than the advertised 600 watts as they don't rate the bifacial gain for the panels (up to 60 watts per panel under ideal conditions). right now this would translate to about 674 watts which would be 47 amps of charging at 14.4V so I will be throwing away some with only having a 45amp mppt. so it showes I am getting about 13% bifacial gain which is ballpark for everything I read for my type of instalation.
I was actualy thinking about trying to straiten out the bent panel they replaced and see if I can figure out a way to put it on the ground and add it into series with out having to climb up on the roof every time. or I may just sell it to a frien who is bugging me about it.. I think the wiring wold be to hard to make that work and I don't want to have to load it and unload it all the time.
