Hi All-
Looking to add to the factory panels on my camper. It currently has (3) 250w panels wired to an MPPT. I purchased (6) 100w panels to add to it – originally assuming I would just add a second MPPT, but is there a way I can arrange this to have them all feed to one Victron MPPT?
To answer that question we need to know what mppt and what battery voltage?
12v battery bank
I would get rid of my current MPPT – so I am open to any available solar charger products
We would also need to know the open circuit voltages, max power voltages and max power currents of the 2 types of panels. It is often hard to connect different types of panels to one MPPT.
That’s kinda what I was afraid of… if it’s easier I can just stick with two separate solar controllers.
the original panels are Rich Solar 250W – Max 18.9V, Open 22.8V, Current 13.2
the additional ones are Renege 100w - Max 20.4v, Open 24.3V, Current 4.91
These are not too far apart, sometimes you get wide differences but yours are less than 10% difference.
Presumably the 3 Rich Power panels are wired in series so Vmp is 56.7V. If you wired the other panels as 2 parallel strings of 3 panels these would give Vmp of 61.2V. However, when connecting different strings in parallel, the higher voltage strings get dragged down to the lower voltage so your 600W of new panels would effectively become 600 x 56.7 / 61.2 = 556W. The system would probably work.
The question is, can your controller handle the increase in power from 750W to 1300W.