Connecting Multiple Solar Panels To One Charge Controller

Connecting in series means joining the positive terminal of a solar panel to the negative terminal of the next solar panel until eventually you are left with one free positive and one free negative terminal of the array which are to be connected to the input either of the inverter in case of a grid tied system without a battery backup or the charge controller in case of a grid tied system with a battery backup or off grid solar panel system.

Connecting multiple solar panels to one charge controller.

This setup is ideal if you have multiple solar panels that do not have the same rating. Yes you can have two controllers on a one set of panels array. For mppt controllers mppt tracking of each subarray is preferred as there is less impact with voltage mismatches. Solar panels connected to multiple charge controllers strings to multiple charge controllers and one battery.

Connecting two solar panels in parallel. If both panels are rated at the same maximum voltage then you ll get maximum output. In addition to displaying information from any individual controller or aggregated system totals it allows simultaneous initiation of an equalization charging cycle for all tristar or tristar mppt solar charge controllers in the system. You can think of a charge controller in the same way that you would think of a hard drive on a computer.

Each controller is independent and the outputs will not be parallel unless you put them that way. For example a 110ah battery should never be connected to a panel more than 11w without a solar controller and if you are using a solar controller you do not need a blocking diode. As clearly visible in the picture it will be enough to wire the positive pole of one panel to the positive pole of the other one and then wire the negative pole of one panel to the negative pole of the other one. If we have two solar panels with same voltage and power the connection will be very simple.

To meet high power charging requirements several solar controllers can be connected in parallel to a battery bank with each controller connected to its own separate pv subarray. Connect the negatives to the negatives and positives to the positives. The meterhub was designed specifically for systems with multiple controllers. The array 1 and array 2 voltages could be different.

For example our 115w sunpower solar blanket has the following ratings. The rule of thumb when connecting solar panels directly to a battery is never connect more than c 10 watts where c is the capacity of your battery. And you can connect more than two arrays and charge controllers all in parallel. Maximum rated current 5 8a.

The battery bank voltage must be lower than your array voltage so that your pv system would charge your battery. Maximum rated voltage 19 8v. Generally speaking it is a good idea to obtain your solar panels before you buy a charge controller. If you connect the output of each controller on two separate battery banks each controller will charge the bank that is connected to its output using whatever power is available depending on the need state of charge the battery bank has.