The reason that I asked was because I'm in the planning stages of
purchasing a sailboat and I'm kind of fond of my electricity. With
all the things on a sailboat that can shadow a solar panel and since
a shadow over a single panel can severely attenuate the output of
all the panels that are ganged together with that panel, it makes
sense to wire each panel separately into the controller so that this
doesn't happen. Most of the controllers that I'm seeing have space
for three pairs of wire. I've seen a couple of examples where there
are two or three of these controllers connected together. In my mind
it's better to have a single controller to handle all the electrical
generation sources on the boat. (This conversation seems to be
wandering way off course and I'm not helping things.)
On 3/6/2020 1:42 AM,
mosslandingcreatures wrote:
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Because I¡¯m a layman with limited electrical
expertise I can only say ¡°I¡¯ve heard it¡¯s best that the
electrical harvest devises be the same as each if either
paralleled or series connected together or the controller will
be confused or the stronger or weaker ?of the two will bring
the other down¡±
On Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 9:50
PM Bill Farina <
bill@...> wrote:
Speaking of shadowing, if you have a bunch of solar
panels... maybe a wind generator and regen, what do you
do? Do you take a number of controllers and gang them
together, or is there a controller with maybe 10-15 inputs
that someone could recommend for not a huge price?
On 3/5/2020 2:46 PM, Kevin Pemberton wrote:
I would agree. Most mounting must be
industrial quality. After seeing almost anything fly
off deck though well lashed down, manual setting works
best.
My experiments tell me in a stationary
setting tilting panels every 1 or 2 hours will yield
enough power that any other effort is just wasted.?
Another issue is shadowing. When one
panel is partly shaded,the whole is brought
down...For this?reason I recommend a controller for
every panel in the system.?
I? have more but I am not on the
computer.?
Uni axis currently tilted
manually. Wish I knew of a durable reliable
automatic tracker but everything I see online
seems like it won¡¯t hold up to Ocean cruising
environment. Do you know of one? I was just
introduced to the Victron smart Cyrix. It seems
like the answer? Thank you for your calcs and
assistance! Let me know what you think.
Your post raises more
questions.?
Do the panels follow the
sun?... my panels when flat produce 1/4
the power.? At best 4/5ths of rated
power.?
Just because the voltage is
up mid day tells you nothing. When you
turn the panel switch off what is the
battery bank reading?
The last 20% of a lead acid
bank can take more than ten hours.
800w motor, 1000w panel.
2hrs at 800w=1600w. Real numbers on the
array bet more like 300w if flat.?
Check the numbers for your
installation.?
If dink is high priority,
consider splitting the array and
dedicating some to the dink. Or add panels
to the dink.?
Kevin
My first time
on this wonderful info site. I thought my
project would be easy. Mothership sailboat
has 1k solar power with a 3k Victron
inverter Charger powering the usual refer,
autopilot, dc water maker and the like.
House bank is 800 Ah. She has a Honda 2000
generator but I would dearly want not have
to use it. With typical use and southern
California/Mexico daylight and uniaxis pv
tilt I hit float usually by mid day or so.
I want my house bank to never dip below
50% DOD. I want componentry to see the
house floating and send remaining power to
a separate dedicated inverter??? To power
the 120 v charger to drive 200 Ah lithium
battery onboard the ding?... Echo charger
relay??? I want rapid as possible charging
of the dingy battery so I might use the
800 watt dingy motor for 2 hours every
day. Any ideas ladies and gentlemen??
