Need some advise advise on strings of different wattage.

[fisherus]

I need to settle an argument.
I have 16 360W panels and 8 370W panels I am wiring to a Sol-Ark 12K. I was going to parallel two strings of 8 of the 360W panels to one charger and string the eight 370W panels to the other charger in my Sol-Ark 12K. A guy, who installs solar told me my Sol-Ark would be more efficient if I made 4 separate strings using four 360W panels and two 370W in each string and parallel 2 strings together. Then connect the pairs separately to each charger.
This appears to me that I would lose about 80W of panel production. Any ideas out there or anyone else ever heard about doing this?

 

[OffGridInTheCity]

As long as you don't overload the SolArk PV input, I don't see what's wrong with your original plan or why the alternate plan would be 'more efficient'.

Physical layout like a bit of shade in early am and late pm on different corners of my arrays due to the neighbors roof lines and trees is much more impactful - so I'd focus on avoiding shade.

As a side comment, I have mostly 285w and a few 295w and there's literally no practical difference in power that I can detect, For example, here's the power of my 3 different arrays of 3s5p (15 panels) each at 'this moment' as reported by 3 x Midnight Classic 150 charge controllers.

Pretty close in power and these numbers fluctuate a bit all day long between the all 285 and mixed 285/295 arrays.

 

[fisherus]

I concur with you. I'm thinking that he's thinking more about balancing issues in the Sol-Ark 12K. I told him that the same thing would hold true if all of the panels were the same wattage due to the way certain panels would be producing Watts. Thanks for your input!

 

[BentleyJ]

Seems like the MPPT charge controller should adjust to find the best combination of voltage vs. current for whatever design you choose. This is exactly the purpose of MPPT vs. PWM. Am I missing something?

 

[fisherus]

Seems like the MPPT charge controller should adjust to find the best combination of voltage vs. current for whatever design you choose. This is exactly the purpose of MPPT vs. PWM. Am I missing something?

I don't think anyone but, this guy I met, that installs solar power systems for a living, is missing anything. He was wanting to change the way I helped install a friend of mine's strings in his array that I wired like the strings in my array. I purchased 8 more panels that were 370W monos just because I couldn't get any more of the ones I had and they matched their size extremely close. My friend did the same thing. They blended cosmetically into my ground mount system. I was just making sure I was correct.
Thanks for your input!