I need some advice

[Mudsloth]

I am running 5 solar panels totaling around 610 watts hooked up to 9 100ah batteries. I'm wondering if I should wire these panels into 1 big panel or keep them charging 1 battery each. If I splice extra power and earth wires into the panels can I do both? i.e from one panel: have 1 set of leads hooked to the next panel with the second set of leads hooked to a battery via the normal means and continue on down the line with this same configuration to the fifth panel which would power the inverter at the full 610 watts whilst still charging the batteries with all 5 panles. See the rough as hell diagram below.



Will this work or will i blow something up? I have no formal electronics training so keep it simple and if I have described a normal way of doing things don't laugh at me too hard. I understand the basics of electricity and am skilled enough that 3 of the 5 panels are home made. I understand that the charge controllers will have to handle the voltage as well as the amps and the ones I am using are capable of both. Anyway, will this work or is it a waste of wire?

Thanks in advance.

[Blknight.aus]

what you've roughly described will work but not very well. it appears youve set up a parallel linkage behind the regulators which means that there is a path for power from one panel to be shunted to another if it stops outputting power.

assuming that you have a mix of 5 panels and 5 seperate regulators the best thing you can do is to wire each panel to a regulator and then wire all the regulators onto the battery bank.

this is parallel wiring your solar bank to the batteries.

its main advantage is that because each panel is its own power providing device in its own rights if you loose one panel due to damage or shade you dont loose everything. the other advantage is that the panels and controllers dont have to be perfect matches as only the output voltage of the charge controller (given that the controler must be able to deal with the amps the panel its connected to) counts. this means that you can hook up as many different styles of panels and regulators as you can get your hands on so long as the charging voltage is close enough it'll work but It wont be pretty or particularly effecient.

Its downside is that its only ever a low voltage setup so you cant take advantage of the higher effeciencies of higher voltage or the smaller cabling that lets you run.

[Mudsloth]

what you've roughly described will work but not very well. it appears youve set up a parallel linkage behind the regulators which means that there is a path for power from one panel to be shunted to another if it stops outputting power.

assuming that you have a mix of 5 panels and 5 seperate regulators the best thing you can do is to wire each panel to a regulator and then wire all the regulators onto the battery bank.

this is parallel wiring your solar bank to the batteries.

its main advantage is that because each panel is its own power providing device in its own rights if you loose one panel due to damage or shade you dont loose everything. the other advantage is that the panels and controllers dont have to be perfect matches as only the output voltage of the charge controller (given that the controler must be able to deal with the amps the panel its connected to) counts. this means that you can hook up as many different styles of panels and regulators as you can get your hands on so long as the charging voltage is close enough it'll work but It wont be pretty or particularly effecient.

Its downside is that its only ever a low voltage setup so you cant take advantage of the higher effeciencies of higher voltage or the smaller cabling that lets you run.

Things are currently running as you described. If I want to change it to my diagram i should include blocking diodes between the panels.

[Blknight.aus]

heres a rough layout for putting multiple panels onto a single battery, if you have more than one battery you just hook them up in parrallel just like you would if you were jumpstarting a vehicle.

[Blknight.aus]

Things are currently running as you described. If I want to change it to my diagram i should include blocking diodes between the panels.

no, theres no advantage in doing it the way you are describing in your diagram.

blocking diodes are for parralleling multiple cells into a single regulator, IF you have the same number of regulators as you do panels each regulator will provide blocking from the other panels and the battery (assuming they are semidecent regulators) to prevent losses.

[Mudsloth]

no, theres no advantage in doing it the way you are describing in your diagram.

blocking diodes are for parralleling multiple cells into a single regulator, IF you have the same number of regulators as you do panels each regulator will provide blocking from the other panels and the battery (assuming they are semidecent regulators) to prevent losses.

Thanks for that mate. That little diagrams gonna be handy. I'm gonna add the extra cabling aka my diagram tmrw and see what happens. Why the hell not hey?

[Blknight.aus]

urmmm because with 4 panels feeding into one you could blow the link in the panel?

[Chops]

Gday Adam/Dave,,,(seeing as no-one else is here)

Depending on what your doing with your set ip, get hold of a book written by Collyn Rivers. (He has a couple actually, [of which yours truely has two off ]) but mine are in Albury at the moment, but they are extremely informative, based around motor homes but the same info applies for all,,

Chops

[Mudsloth]

Gday Adam/Dave,,,(seeing as no-one else is here)

Depending on what your doing with your set ip, get hold of a book written by Collyn Rivers. (He has a couple actually, [of which yours truely has two off ]) but mine are in Albury at the moment, but they are extremely informative, based around motor homes but the same info applies for all,,

Chops

Thanks chops will hit the library. Still havn't hooked em up like I described, I will though dammit, even if it blows somthin, havn't had a good explosion around here for years.

[Blknight.aus]

now thats what we need in this world...

more mad scientist "oh hang it lets just hook it up and see what goes boom"

go hard.