How to wire solar panels! Series, parallel, series/parallel explanations. #720

so welcome my name is Andrew and you're watching the Kelly's Country Life and in today's episode I thought I'd take some time while my custom built solar array over here has the paint drying and explain how to wire up solar panels it gets confusing to a lot of people and I had several of y'all ask to please include this when y'all heard that I was building a solar array so what we're going to answer today what is parallel what is wiring panels in series and what is wiring panels in series parallel that's where you take a couple of different sets what this is ultimately doing is we're either changing the voltage here or the amperage or both so first and foremost follow your manufacturer's recommendations whether using a solar charger or a portable power station like this Eco flow Delta Pro they're all going to have limitations on how much voltage wattage amperage or a combination of both that they can handle this particular unit right here can take up to 1600 watts of solar but then it also tells you no more than 150 volts and it's 15 amps if I remember correctly so what we're really wanting to pay attention to more than anything is voltage and amperage so in order to meet a certain voltage and amperage range you may have to wire panels differently either parallel series or a combination of both so let's discuss it on these few panels that I have right here of course the sun just went behind the clouds but we're going to try to get something out of these panels we're going to wire these up and I'm going to show you on this little Nifty device that I have right here that'll tell us the actual voltage and amperage going to this unit and I'm going to show you how different wiring configurations will change what this unit sees so if I can get this to focus today I am using the renergy RNG 100d panels these are 100 watt solar panels you can see they have lots of different ratings on the back side what we're really looking at is the open circuit voltage and short circuit voltage you'll notice that it also has an operating voltage and current that's most likely what we're going to be seeing here but just know that open circuit not making an actual connection and providing that can be up to the rated voltage and amperage that you're seeing right there so it's best to use those numbers in the calculation of all your panels added together before you hook up to whatever controller that you have all right so if we were to take our little meter here and hook it up to the side that says Source we have a source and a load loads obviously load that you're going to put on it with a unit let's go ahead and connect that we should see some similar voltages to what this is showing sadly not enough sun right now to show the wattage so now with this single panel flipped over we should read something if you take a peek right down here 21.92 volts and that is with us being nice and cloudy and no sun really being out but we can see that we're working and we're already within the recommended voltage range so again keep in mind there's no sun out right now but I just connected this to my Delta Pro so now we're putting a load on this system you'll see voltages have changed we're showing a little bit of wattage and a little bit of amperage up there almost one amp we're not going to get proper Factory readings until the sun is out completely but I just wanted to show y'all how actually hooking up to a load does change some things and you can see we're staying right around 22 volts okay so that's a nice and simple hookup a single panel doesn't get any easier than that what you see on the back is what you should be getting so what happens when we connect two panels together there's two different ways you can do this either that series that we were talking about or the parallel let's show you what happens when we do both of those okay so now there is two ways we can hook this up let's first go with the parallel route now keep in mind these are a little over 20 volt panels rated right around 5 amps that's in full Direction I'm like good to go so just for the ease of this demonstration let's just call them 20 volts and 5 amps that keeps things nice and rounded off for this test so if we do what's called parallel that's where you actually hook a positive to a positive and a negative to a negative what this does is that changes your amperage so now we have two five amp panels we should go to 10 amps and direct full sunlight but our voltage of 20 volts stays exactly the same so whenever you do parallel positives to positives negatives to negatives what you're changing is amperage not voltage all right so what I've purchased here these are called y Branch connectors as you can see they'll accept two cables in one cable out they have a combiner built right into them it's a good well we won't have the Sun for long here so if I take the two labeled positives and hook up and then I take the two negatives well again we've just paralleled the system and we have just increased our amperage but we've kept our voltage the same let's see if I can quickly get these over before I lose the sun I see more clouds coming all right so again just so we're clear both positives one from each panel coming to this y Branch connector and just making one positive both the negatives while I branched together coming out one negative let's see what we're showing so as you can see we're still low on the voltage you know it's always going to change based on the sun we're heading right back towards 20 volts that did not change you can see our amperage is quite a bit higher but what I wanted to show you was voltage did not change that never does whenever you parallel all right so now let's do series let's disconnect all this and do the exact opposite let's put some positives and negatives together that is perfectly normal to do with a system like this okay no point in flipping these back over but you can see I have two wires a positive negative coming from each panel so check this out now what we'll do is take a positive right here from one panel a negative from one panel plug them together this is called series now we are left with one positive one negative this is the same way you up your voltage four batteries for example if you have 24 volt system on heavy equipment a trolling motor for a boat you would actually hook positive negative on two separate batteries to up the voltage so now what we can expect to happen our voltage is going to double but our amperage will stay the same so if we were in full sunlight we should go up to around 40 plus volts and our amperage will stay at 5 volts because we did not parallel so check that out hopefully you can see it now we are showing 42 volts and we're back down less than an amp but let's focus on that voltage it's changed now all right so did you follow that very nice and simple a positive and negative from two different panels connected together you're left of the positive negative you have just increased you've just doubled your voltage that series you did not touch your amperage whatever one panel is rated that's what you're going to get now whenever you start talking bigger systems like this device can take up to 1600 watts of panels so that is a lot of combinations of panels depending on how you want to get up too close to the maximum wattage that this will take but again today we're focused on the voltage and amperage that's just as important in my mind so what that means is we may have to do an odd combination you have to sit down and do some basic math on how you want to increase the voltage up to a certain range we can't go over 150 volts and once you reach that well guess what we can then increase the amperage because that does not change voltage and we can bump the amperage up to 15 amps let me explain let's wire in four panels right now using the same basic principle tools that we just used and alter things to work for what we need okay so to keep from dragging this out and boring you you can see I got four panels set up all with their individual positive and negative so say for example if I was to hook all four positives together I had the right number of Branch adapters do that they make these with four inputs one output and I hooked all the negatives together that is again considered parallel even though we have all four panels so because we hooked all positives and negatives together and we paralleled four five amp panels we would have 20 amps going to this unit over here well guess what that's already overdue rated amperage this can only handle up to 15 amps that's why we need a combination of some series so let's do what they called series parallel so if I were to take this unit right here and hook the positive and negative together like we just done now go look I'm left with a positive and negative do the same thing over here a positive and negative hook together now I am left with a positive and negative so due to the length of my wires I'm just going to have to move these panels on top of each other but we should still see what we need to see all right I hate to keep repeating myself but I want to get the point across here two different panels positive negative hook together two different panels one panel positive one panel negative same thing over here two panels positive negative put together one panel is positive one panel is negative so now we have two sets of panels in series then let's parallel them back together so by putting two in series we did not change the amperes there's five amps here but we did double the voltage so we're a little over 40 volts here same thing here five amps a little over 40 volts so now if we take the negative off of one panel and hook up negative off of the other so now I just took the negative off of the one set that series negative off the other set the series hook them together this is us paralleling this is called series back to parallel same thing over here two positives from two different sets of series panels so what we've essentially just done by Series in these two we left the amperage at five amps that was routed on the sticker and we've just doubled the voltage to a little over 40 volts same thing right here five amps a little over 40 volts by combining the positive and negatives back together we have just paralleled and remember what parallel does it increases the amperage but does not change the voltage so now we've taken the two five amp setups we're running them to 10 amps but we're keeping the voltage the same so now we have kept the voltage under what's recommended on this unit and we've just brought the amperage back down because we started with seriesing and we're still below the 15 amps rated capacity on this unit okay hopefully y'all can see that I'm having to hold one of these panels up by hand but look at there a little over 40 volts we were getting more sun we'd probably be closer to 48 plus volts based off of what the manufacturer claims so we got a little bit of sun coming out now you can see the wattage flying up there goes the amperage now the Delta Pro just kicked on it's charging it sees that there is enough wattage to do that and you can see the voltage dropped once we put a load on this that's why you get those open circuit and closed circuit voltage ratings on the back side all right we got the sun peeking out again we're flying on up this is the first time look how quickly that wattage and amperage is flying up I don't even have these panels aimed correctly and we're already well over 300 watts out of 320 right there 330 340 and we can only get up to four and watch posing you see we're stopping at 10 amps just barely over so that's really good that means we're wired correctly so our voltage is still saying well below 40 volts and amps is not wanting to exceed 10. and I am shocked 340 350 Watts right there and these panels are just aimed out here in the yard and the Sun is over that direction that's already looking good don't worry on the next episode we're going to run some actual tests on these range panels and see if they can produce close to what they claim and we'll be wiring in a whole lot more of them okay well hopefully that made sense and she's just seen right there we had multiple 20 volt panels which should be producing over 80 volts we were able to cut it down to 40 volts but we have five amp panels we were able to bring up two 10 amps by doing that combination so whenever you're going to set up and design your solar system whether it's got 16 panels or 30 panels whatever it may be or 300 watt panels what you want to do is pull those manufacturer specs and know that anytime positive and negatives go together your amperage just go ahead and double it every time you make a connection anytime you series and hook up positive and negative together well now you've just increased your voltage and left your amperage along it's really easy when you do that and the cool thing is you can break it up into sets whether it's three sets of two four sets of two or two sets of eight whatever combination that you need to do but if you're going to be doing series and obviously you're going to have to have at least two panels to do that now the good news is if that didn't make sense hopefully it did with that little demonstration right there one of the next videos we're going to do we're going to be doing a much larger solar array over here I'm building that over the next few days and we're going to have to do series parallel there in order to make sure I stay underneath the recommended voltage for this unit because with the amount of panels that I have I would be 250 plus volts and this is rated for 150. but we're going to be able to bring it down to close to the recommended voltage and only be at 10 amps not maxing out the 15 amps of this unit now check the specs again on your panels you're going with and whatever charge controller you're using you may have a on the wall DIY solar system that has completely different specs than this Delta Pro here you may be using a smaller portable power station than this that has a much smaller solar charge controller and can only handle maybe 50 volts or 5 or 10 amps so check that out before you go out and purchase all of your panels to make sure you're getting what you need if you have a question about something drop a comment that's what it's there for and we'll catch you on the next episode where we have a very exciting storm ready Solar Ray build coming unlike anything you've ever seen all DIY we'll catch you on the next video

Channel: The Kelley's Country Life

Views: 53,252

Keywords: farming, farm, farmstead, homestead, homesteading, john deere, john deere 4066r, firewood, chainsaw, chainsaws, stihl chainsaws, garden, gardening, stihl, stihl MS170, sharpening chainsaw, polaris ranger, cutting grass, mowing, pto chipper, woodmaxx, woodmaxx chipper, log splitter, county line log splitter, 25 ton log splitter, stihl ms260 pro, pto wood chipper, food plots, barndo, barndominium, pole barn house, building a pole barn house, solar, solar panels, wiring solar panels, off grid

Id: lw15Xb9i7FQ

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2023