First 220RK Solar / Lithium install

[klenger]

How are you panels wired? Parallel, series-parallel? How many and which model solar controllers?

That's impressive. I have a single 60-cell 340 watt panel and I think I get around 25 amps when conditions are right.

[DaveMatthewsBand]

How are you panels wired? Parallel, series-parallel? How many and which model solar controllers?

That's impressive. I have a single 60-cell 340 watt panel and I think I get around 25 amps when conditions are right.

Panels are wired in Parallel, so if one is shaded it will only affect 1 panel.

We are running two Blue Sky 3024’s.
Check my solar thread for more info.

[emoji3]





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[WhittleBurner]

The panels do still work in the shade, just not as well. They claim they will even work under 1 inch of snow.

[DaveMatthewsBand]

The panels do still work in the shade, just not as well. They claim they will even work under 1 inch of snow.

Correct.


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[TucsonJim]

Panels are wired in Parallel, so if one is shaded it will only affect 1 panel.

We are running two Blue Sky 3024’s.
Check my solar thread for more info.

[emoji3]





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My three panels are wired in series, and even when one of them is fully shaded, it still allows the current from the other two to pass through. I've often heard that if one of your panels gets shaded, that you would not get any charging. So at last year's Quartzsite rally, we ran an experiment. I have three panels, and measured the voltage and current. Then, we completely covered one of the panels with cardboard and tape so that no sunlight was getting to it. The current remained the same, and the voltage was reduced by 1/3. In the early days of solar, if you obscured one panel in a series configuration, you'd lose the whole circuit. Most panels sold today have pass through technology to prevent that.

There is a lot of benefit to running a series configuration. One being that you can use a smaller gauge wire to carry the current generated in that configuration. If you run in parallel, the voltage remains the same, and the current increases. This can force you into using larger gauge wire to handle the current.

Jim

[DaveMatthewsBand]

We were boon docking for a couple days in a heavily forested area and purposely didn't even try to conserve power because we knew we were heading to a place with shore power (30a) in a few days. I accidentally got pulled into the gaming void and played Farcry5 for like 6 hours on my Xbox last night which probably spent 10% of the bank.
lol
We wanted to get the battery bank down pretty low so we could see how quickly they charged back up on shore power, since we don't use shore power, just solar.
For comparison, on a typical day our 1155 watts of solar charges the bank from 60% to 100% in a mere 3 to 4 hours.

The battery bank was at 56% when we got to our new location. We shut down all power strips and appliances, down to where there was only a 1a draw from vampiric devices.
Our inverter has an awesome 125 amp battery charger built in and we put it to the test!
I took a few photos of the charging progress, which shows some interesting numbers.
I assume the Battle Born BMS regulates the charging amps and these photos show that amperage curving downward as the bank gets closer to full.
I'd like to do this again at some point with a video camera setup because I kept getting distracted and didn't take photos every 10% the way I had intended.

Shore power took 2 hours 15 minutes to hit 90% so shore power is just barely faster than our solar.
I'd like to do this again tomorrow and see how quickly they charge from 90% to 100%, since I know this takes forever with non-lithiums.

[klenger]

If you have an iPhone, you can take a time-lapse picture of the process. The iPhone automatically compresses the frame rate to make the total time-lapse picture fit within some predefined period (2 min or 20 sec. Can't remember and I've never actually used it).

Regarding panel series vs parallel wiring: On my current (no pun intended) RV, I have a single 340-watt, 72-cell, 38-volt, 9.5-amp panel. Being a single panel, series vs parallel is irrelevant, but I have noticed that if part of the panel is shaded, the whole panel seems to shut down. I suppose this is consistent with Jim's experience with his series panels. I do like the high-voltage setup for the reasons that Jim mentioned. I have about 45' of #10 wire from panel to controller. I wish I could add more panels, but because I have a Winegard Traveler DirecTV automatic dish, the one remaining spot big enough to take another high-voltage panel is taken, and the roof obstructions always seem to be in the worst locations.

[DaveMatthewsBand]

I’ve heard people from both sides, some wire parallel some in series, in the end I went with parallel because the installer, who’s been in the business 16 years says that’s the best method. And since our solar charges our bank nearly as quickly as shore power, whether it’s sunny or cloudy or we’re under a little shade, I’m satisfied.




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[klenger]

I’ve heard people from both sides, some wire parallel some in series, in the end I went with parallel because the installer, who’s been in the business 16 years says that’s the best method. And since our solar charges our bank nearly as quickly as shore power, whether it’s sunny or cloudy or we’re under a little shade, I’m satisfied.




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You certainly do have an adequate system. Makes me a bit jealous, but in reality, we seldom camp w/o power so I didn't want to get overboard on the solar.

[DaveMatthewsBand]

In retrospect, we could have gone with a setup half this size, 600w of solar, 200aH of Lithium and a less expensive 2000w inverter and we would still have had enough power to maintain our current lifestyle.
A savings of about $3k.
Oh well.




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