Dean K 0 Posted Tuesday at 08:18 Share Posted Tuesday at 08:18 What would happen if say for instance you using 3 x 12 v panels that are 120 w and you add 2 x 180 w. How would this affect the charging. Would all panels operate at 120 w or would they operate at their own wattages. Many thanks Dean Quote Link to post Share on other sites
0 Kalahari Meerkat 58 Posted Tuesday at 08:52 Share Posted Tuesday at 08:52 (edited) 34 minutes ago, Dean K said: own wattages Panels operate on voltage, so you'd have to try and match the voltages, if your 120W panels, let's say, produce maximum smoke at 16V (Vmp) and you are running them in parallel and lets also assume the 180W panels run at the same Voltage, but more current at Vmp, then you can just parallel them up and voila, you should at best be able to extract ( 3 X 120W + 2 X 180W) out of that lot... but I suspect you may not have the same Vmp's between the 120W and 180W panels and thus my explanation would be not applicable... the point being that Voltage is what matters, if you run your 120W panels in series and lets assume for a moment say their Vmp is 16V, that would give you 3 X 16 = 48Vmp, now if the 180W panels had a Vmp of 24V, then the two in series would also be 48Vmp and could run in parallel with the 3 X 120W panels. But it also depends on your load/charge controller/inverter/whatever you are feeding the panels into, what is this device expecting Voltage wise and what can it cope with... You are not providing enough information for a sensible answer, unfortunately. You would have to provide, the specs of the 120W panels as well as for the 180W panels, state how the existing ones are wired up and what they are connected to and what, the unit to which they are connected, can cope with Voltage wise... Edited Tuesday at 08:53 by Kalahari Meerkat Dean K 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
0 Dean K 0 Posted 10 hours ago Author Share Posted 10 hours ago Thanks that makes sense, they are all 18 volts through a 30 amp 12/24 volt control unit charging a 350 amp hour 12volt battery. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
0 Kalahari Meerkat 58 Posted 6 hours ago Share Posted 6 hours ago 4 hours ago, Dean K said: 18 volts through a 30 amp 12/24 ok, there's the limit, the 30A charging unit 3 X 120W = 360W / 12V (more like 14V for charging) = close to 30A, so the extra panels wouldn't do much most of the time, except when things are cloudy, then they would add some extra power. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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Dean K 0
What would happen if say for instance you using 3 x 12 v panels that are 120 w and you add 2 x 180 w. How would this affect the charging. Would all panels operate at 120 w or would they operate at their own wattages.
Many thanks Dean
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