Excellent way to describe it, thank you sir 👍 I hadn't quite got the concept of the combiner box being the "parallel-er" thru my thick skull lol Great video!
Great video! It's why I bought my pecron e2000's. They use 3 charge controllers in them. I love that it has 2 of them at 95 volts each which really makes life easy and less dangerous. I lot of these stations like Anker do that single 60 volt limit game so you have to buy their over priced low voltage panels. Your video was perfect great explanation and insanely helpful! I don't want to be over amp things or over voltage. The volts will fry the controller the amps will burn things up.
You can still overpanel without going anywhere near the max voltage input. In an "over-panelling" situation all you are doing is supplying more amperage than the unit can currently use under ideal conditions. Then when you have a non-ideal day those same panels that were sending (purely for instance) 50 amps to your 30 amp charge controller are now sending 25 amps. Where as if you design your system to only ever create 30 amps max under ideal conditions then those panels in the same foggy or cloudy day as the above scenario would theoretically only be putting out 15 amps. I 100% agree that you want to leave a healthy margin between your array and your charge controllers maximum voltage input.
You're right about the need for higher amperage cable. But that's where a combiner box comes in, you run all of your cables from your individual solar panel using lower AWG wire and then they only become paralleled once you plug them into the combiner box and then you only need one set of higher gauge wire from the combiner box to the SCC.
@@TheOldJarhead That's also another possibility. A lot of people don't know that as well that you can put any number of charge controllers on a battery bank. It's often cheaper to get a few small amperage charge controllers versus one large one.
I'll be setting up series parallel now that I'm adding to my system. And one thing that's good about ordering solar system this late in the year. There are good deals and it not long before tax time. 30% of solar price will help towards your taxes.
I think the confusion stems from initially using the wrong specs for your calculations. You don’t use max power or whatever rating from the solar panel. You always use VoC, and then depending on your climate stay 15-25% below the mppts max input voltage. What you really want if a mppt that can take 250-500 volt. The conversion loss is not important. I think you are making the same mistake on the mppt by saying it can take 80amps. Are you sure? It might output 80amps to your battery but is unlikely to allow 80amps on its input side.
@@TheOldJarhead maa as butters hide the input amp rating in the manual instead of making it a prominent aspect of the specs for mppts. I think they assume we run one, two strings max. P.S. in the UK people frequently call their “charge controller” an inverter or converter. I often find their language confusing.
Excellent way to describe it, thank you sir 👍 I hadn't quite got the concept of the combiner box being the "parallel-er" thru my thick skull lol Great video!
Glad it clicked! I love the combiner box.
Great video! It's why I bought my pecron e2000's. They use 3 charge controllers in them. I love that it has 2 of them at 95 volts each which really makes life easy and less dangerous. I lot of these stations like Anker do that single 60 volt limit game so you have to buy their over priced low voltage panels. Your video was perfect great explanation and insanely helpful! I don't want to be over amp things or over voltage. The volts will fry the controller the amps will burn things up.
Glad to hear it was helpful!
You can still overpanel without going anywhere near the max voltage input.
In an "over-panelling" situation all you are doing is supplying more amperage than the unit can currently use under ideal conditions.
Then when you have a non-ideal day those same panels that were sending (purely for instance) 50 amps to your 30 amp charge controller are now sending 25 amps.
Where as if you design your system to only ever create 30 amps max under ideal conditions then those panels in the same foggy or cloudy day as the above scenario would theoretically only be putting out 15 amps.
I 100% agree that you want to leave a healthy margin between your array and your charge controllers maximum voltage input.
You're right about the need for higher amperage cable.
But that's where a combiner box comes in, you run all of your cables from your individual solar panel using lower AWG wire and then they only become paralleled once you plug them into the combiner box and then you only need one set of higher gauge wire from the combiner box to the SCC.
True, or just the extra panels to another cc 😁
That's what I've done and the best option but high amperage at the combiner still means a big feeder cable
@@TheOldJarhead
That's also another possibility.
A lot of people don't know that as well that you can put any number of charge controllers on a battery bank.
It's often cheaper to get a few small amperage charge controllers versus one large one.
yup. Or one big one and 1 or more small ones
I'll be setting up series parallel now that I'm adding to my system. And one thing that's good about ordering solar system this late in the year. There are good deals and it not long before tax time. 30% of solar price will help towards your taxes.
Nice! Good point on the taxes!
Good call! There are too many disadvantages to going strictly serial or parallel. At least the system works well in many situations!
Amen!
I think the confusion stems from initially using the wrong specs for your calculations.
You don’t use max power or whatever rating from the solar panel. You always use VoC, and then depending on your climate stay 15-25% below the mppts max input voltage. What you really want if a mppt that can take 250-500 volt. The conversion loss is not important.
I think you are making the same mistake on the mppt by saying it can take 80amps. Are you sure? It might output 80amps to your battery but is unlikely to allow 80amps on its input side.
Good point on the mppt. It's been years since I put it in so I ought to check that.
Ya, max recommended watts @24v was 2000 and as much as 5000 @60vdc so really the amperage is output max
@@TheOldJarhead maa as butters hide the input amp rating in the manual instead of making it a prominent aspect of the specs for mppts. I think they assume we run one, two strings max.
P.S. in the UK people frequently call their “charge controller” an inverter or converter. I often find their language confusing.
lol well they can call them Scotch if they want but I wouldn't drink it 😅