Hi everyone. I have a victron 75115 solar controller and plugged my new 200watt portable solar panel on it. It gave a reading of 140 watts on the victron app. I disconnected it straight away as was told it was far too high and will damage the controller. Was told panels need to be wired in parallel and the ones I brought must be in series. Any help would be appreciated as new to this.
What’s the voltage & current on the label of the panel, and your battery voltage?
You can’t over-voltage the solar charge controller without risking damage, but I’m pretty sure the SCC will only draw the rated current from the panels. I use a 75/15 for a 425W panel, at 24V.
For this to be damaged by one 200Watt panel is unlikely.
The panel would have to have over a 75volt output.
I have a 460watt on mine.
But yeah what other panels do you have and are you planning on combining them all on one controller? The other important piece of data is the ISC of the panel (short circuit) if you want to parallel them.
PS 200watts onto a 12v system is 16Amps. So if the panel is working at full output its perfect on its own.
Hi. I have two 12 v 850amp 800 watt hour AGM leisure batteries. The solar panel is max power voltage 25.0 max power current 8.0 . Had a solid blue light on the solar controller and the batteries are charged with a victron 12 volt 20 amp smart charger. I am not adding any more panels. The one I have is portable
I’ll assume you have a 75/15 MPPT.
200V would blow up that charge controller.
200W at 25V 8A will not.
Depending on the Voc of that panel you could probably wire a 2nd panel in series and still not blow up the charge controller.
If you batteries are in parallel you’ll max out at roughly 220W charge power.
Either you or the person advising you needs a crash course in electricity.
Thank you Bart. Yes it was Google that said disconnect the portable solar panel at once as it is far to high and as I am not an expert so panicked a bit.new to the forum and very pleased with the help you give. Was trying to send a photo from the mppt app but not sure how to do it.
FYI, AI is very often wrong on technology.
Most AI systems are just language models - they’re good at talking but often not so very good at giving correct answers.
Truth be told: I also use AI tools, usually to sift through massive amounts of data that would take me too long to come up with the regression logic myself, or to dig up hard to find data from the internet.
For building or error-checking Node Red flows I’ve found Google’s AI rather useful, but it still remains a tool that’s useless if not handled properly.
Never just trust the AI.