Hey! I have a van I use as a retreat space in my yard, and sometimes take on the road, which has a "house" battery I charge with an 85W, max 22V panel (typical polycrystalline metal frame panel). Someone has just gifted me a 130W, max 22V portable /foldable panel - so cool and tiny! This will work very nicely when I'm on the road. So when I'm at home, can I use both panels to charge the battery more quickly, simply by creating a wiring Y so that both panels are feeding into the charge controller at the same time, or will this double the voltage and overwhelm my crappy charge controller? Thanks!
wiring question
- Thread starter kib
- Start date
I assume the 22V max is the max Voc (open circuit voltage). They should also have a max power voltage, Vmp. Those should be pretty close as well.
You likely can't wire them in series, but you can wire them in parallel.
You likely can't wire them in series, but you can wire them in parallel.
Thank you. I'm sort of confused about series and parallel. What I've got is one cable (1+ and 1- wire in one cable) coming out of the charge controller, out the side of the van and ending at an SAE connector at the panel. My thought was to basically just splice a second SAE connector into the cable, and attach the second panel to that. There would still be just one + and one - cable to the controller and then the battery. The two panels (in my idea) wouldn't really be connected to each other at all, they'd just be feeding into the same trunk. Sorry to be a dolt, but is that series or parallel? (I'm guessing that's series; that without a controller at the splice, the voltage/wattage from one panel would somehow be able to flow and interfere with the other panel, and if I wanted parallel I'd have to have two separate cables all the way to the controller inside the van, but as I say, I don't really understand yet.)
Last edited:
