These will only be used during grid outages. I’m trying to fit in at least 500w in the only space we have, a balcony that gets sun from ~1:00 to 5:00. There is not a lot of available space.
The railing will shadow panels if they are not up high enough when the sun moves move west. I can suspend flexible panels between the top of the railing and the side of the house. Or I can connect glass panels from the top of the railing and lay them against the side of the house if they are tall enough.
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Hi,
You might be able to deploy a folding plastic table for elevating the panels above the height of the railing, oriented verically, with perhaps a strip of 2x2 pine, C-clamped atop the table, lengthwise, against which to rest the bottom edge of the panels, propped up against the wall. No drilling or permanent mounts required, but you'd have to find a place to store the table, when not in use.
With for only three panels and mixing the types, with them not permanently mounted, you'll have to stick with using a 3s array, but the good news about your situation is that you can easily monitor the Bluetti, to reset it, if necessary. My EB240 is in a garage - not easy to monitor. ?
Try to avoid shading even one cell of one panel in the series, because it can dramatically reduce total wattage coming out of the series.
If you imagine a flashlight with three AA batteries in series, if one of the batteries is weak, it will pull current from the stronger batteries - depriving the intended load (dimming the output more than you might first consider). It's a somewhat poor analogy, in that the diode of a weak, shaded panel will prevent current from flowing in from the other panels in that same series, but in practice, a shaded panel can weaken its unshaded serial siblings, nevertheless. Proof of that can be had just by shading a single cell while mesuring the current coming out of a solo panel.
If you think you could at times suffer unequal shading of your three panels, you might want to use them in a 1s3p array, so that a shaded or partially shaded panel does not drag down the other two panels, but keep this in mind: When panels are in parrallel, they should be identical in design or at least in Voc and Watts specification AND you should never go more than 3 deep in parallel circuits, because the currents can get too high - overheating inadequately short or inadequately thick cables or overheating connectors, posing a risk of fire or shock.
I'm probably telling you stuff you already know, so please forgive my dogmatic tone. There's more than one way to boil this egg and, in the end, you will get the best results by experimenting and taking good notes. ? Now's the time to do it, though, not at a time of real need. Good for you on pursuing this project. ??
Have fun!