Series VS Parallel! A Beginner's Guide for Solar Panel Connections - With Basic Diagrams!

hey everybody welcome back to a new video now there are two main ways to connect your solar panels together you can connect them together in parallel or you can connect them together in series and in this video I want to talk about the basics of what happens with the power output when you use either scenario now on the table in front of me I have a 100 watt glass rigid solar panel laying face down now on the back you have two main power outputs you have a main positive and a main negative and these use a waterproof connection called an mc4 connection you also have a data sheet on the back of the panel to show you how much power you'll get out from it now looking at the basic power equation it's volts times amps equals watts and so we'll have a combination of voltage and amperage to get us the 100 watt output from the solar panel now looking at the back of the panel on the tech sheet we can see how it achieves the 100 watt output and at the top you have your maximum power or 100 watts and right below that you have your max power voltage and your max power current or amperage so a few times these two together you get your maximum power for example 18.15 times 5.51 gives you a hundred Watts so if we were looking for the maximum power output from these panels put together in series or parallel we'd want to pay attention to these two numbers now there are a few other things that we want to take note of the other thing is the open circuit voltage or VOC this is the maximum voltage that we'd ever see from this panel and you can see it's slightly higher at 21.4 volts and that's because when a solar panel has no load on it the voltage is slightly higher the other number that we want to pay attention to is the short circuit current or amperage that is 6.11 amps so if we connect a positive and negative terminals together and Short Circuit the panel the maximum amperage we're going to see is 6.11 amps now charging up your power station or your battery with 100 watt solar panel is very easy for example I have the blood eb3a here it comes with an adapter that has mc4 connections on it so you take the mc4 connections from the solar panel and they connect right up they just plug right in and snap together and then you're good to charge up the power station at 100 Watts now the funny thing about solar is that it's completely addictive you see this 100 Watts going into your power station and you want more power so the rest of the video is about how we connect multiple panels together in parallel and series now outside I have an array of 480 watt booze RV panels that are very similar to the one here on the table they just put out more power so we're going to be using those panels to demonstrate connecting panels together in series and parallel and even a combination of the both now taking a look at the data sheet for these 180 watt panels there's four things that we want to pay attention to the first thing is the max power voltage I'm going to round that to 19 volts the max power current I'm going to round to 9.5 5 amps we're going to want to look at the voltage open circuit which is 23 volts and our short circuit current is 10.23 amps now gone ahead and created a wiring diagram for connecting these panels together in series so we have 480 watt panels and each one gets Peak power at 19 volts and 9.5 amps you can times those together to give you 180 watts per panel and connecting them all together you get a total output power of 720 Watts now when you connect solar panels together in series the voltage adds up for each panel in the array and the amperage stays the same for example you take 19 plus 19 plus 19 plus 19 gives us 76 volts at Peak power and the amperage of 9.5 amps stays the same multiplying those two numbers together gives you 720 watts of power now connecting solar panels together in series is very easy each panel has a positive and negative connection and you basically take the positive F1 and connect it to the negative of the other they snap right together and connect them all the way down the line and that leaves you with one main positive at one end and one main negative at the other and that's where you get your Peak power now when connecting solar panels together in series you actually don't need any fuses in this setup now let me explain how that works now if you remember the short circuit current for these panels was 10.23 amps and because the amperage just stays the same if you short-circuited this entire array you'd only see 10.23 amps now if you use 12 gauge wire in this setup That's rated for a full 20 amps and so if you short circuited it you wouldn't have any issues with your 12 gauge wire so that's why this setup does not require any fuses now of course you can install them if you want but just keep in mind you can save some money and you don't have to have them for connecting solar panels in series as long as you use the proper wire gauge now the last important thing to think about with connecting solar panels in series is the total open circuit voltage remember when panels are under no load at all they do have a higher voltage the 76 volts is a peak power voltage the open circuit voltage is actually 23 volts per panel so if we add 23 plus 23 plus 23 plus 23 that gives us 92 volts open circuit and that should be the average open circuit voltage to plan for now thing to think about is when solar panels get a bit cold the voltage can go a little bit higher so I plan for a total Max voltage of 100 volts with this array so you'd want to make sure that your charge controller or power station can handle that total voltage of 100 volts now just as a word of warning whenever you're working with solar panels in series and you get high DC voltages you do have a risk of electrocution or shock anytime the voltage is above 60 volts DC and you touch the conductors you can be electrocuted so you want to take the precautions necessary you want to cover up your conductors you want to use insulated gloves and you want to make sure you use insulated tools whenever you're working with high DC voltages okay so I'm outside and these panels are connected together in series if I have my main negative connection here the main positive connection there now I did roll this forward usually when it's rolled back there's no tension on these wires at all now they just easily connect together you can see that they're hanging down positive negative positive negative positive negative the benefit of having a serious connection with these solar panels so you don't have to have fuses you get very low amperage which also means that you don't get much voltage drop between the solar panels and your batteries so lots of benefits to having solar panels in series one of the downsides to having solar panels in series is if you happen to get shade on one of the panels it kind of stops the whole thing so you want to make sure that these panels are in an area where they're not getting shaded at all and so as long as you avoid partial shading you're good to go now in the next scenario in the video we're going to talk about putting panels together in parallel so this is the wiring diagram I've come up with now we're using the same 4 180 watt boost RV panels they still get Peak power hour at 19 volts and 9.5 amps and we get a total power output of 720 Watts now when you connect panels together in parallel the voltage stays the same so it's 19 volts across the board and the amperage actually adds up for each panel so 9.5 plus 9.5 plus 9.5 plus 9.5 gives us 38 amps total now connecting solar panels in parallel is very simple but it does require an additional adapter you take all the negative mc4 connections from each panel and plug them into your negative parallel adapter then you take all the positive mc4 connections from your solar panels and plug them into a positive mc4 adapter and then you get your total output now it's important to note that when you have this many panels together in parallel fuses are going to be required you want to have a fuse on your array anytime that the combined amperage will go over the rated amperage of each panel for example here we have 38 amps and these 12 volt panels are rated for 15 amps and so if you have an issue you can actually burn the wires power likes to follow the path of least resistance so if we had one panel fail here all the amperage would inrush to that one panel burning the wires coming in and out of the panel however if we put a fuse on the positive line of each of the panels one panel failed it would just stop working and the other three panels would continue to Output power now breaking down the total voltage open circuit for this type of array it'll be at 23 volts because that's what these panels are rated at and the voltage stays the same and your total short circuit current would be slightly above 40 amps so you'd want to make sure that you use very heavy duty wiring to wire towards your charge controller for this type of setup now this will have a lot of heat and resistance and you'll lose a lot of power if you plan to go a long distance so most setups require either a series connection only or a parallel and series combination so let's go ahead and talk about that type of build now in the next scenario we'll be talking about taking these same four panels and putting them together in a series and parallel configuration which is a 2s 2p array now the reason you want to choose this type of configuration for your solar panels is that you get a balance between both worlds for example the two left panels are wired together in series the two right panels are wired together in series and then you take the outputs of those panels and put them together in parallel using parallel adapters the voltage adds up to around 38 volts and the amperage adds up to around 19 amps for a total output of 720 Watts like before but now instead of having a super high voltage or super high amperage you have a balance in between both now it is important to note that fuses may be required on this type of configuration depending on if your total amperage will go over the Max rated amperage of each panel so if it does you will have to put inline fuses on your positive wire connections now I'm out here with the panels and change the wiring configuration to the 2s 2p configuration so these two here are wired together in series those two panels are wired together in series and then the outputs are wired together in parallel so we get a good balance between voltage and amperage now the other benefit to doing this is that it does improve partial shading compared to just having your panels in series for example if those two were shaded then you'd still get power output from these two here so you get an improved performance over just having panels in series with partial shading the other benefit to going with something like this is if your power station or charge controller doesn't accept a high voltage input you can still get quite a few watts into it for example the Anker 767 uses this type of wiring configuration same with the Alcatel or FF power p2001 so you just have to use the best wiring configuration with your solar panels for the power station or charge controller that you're planning to use now in this video we only cover three different scenarios of connecting your solar panels together but hopefully with the concepts of this video and using the tech sheet on the back of your solar panel you're going to know what's going to happen with the voltage and the amperage when you connect those panels together now if you're feeling overwhelm that's completely normal the learning curve for solar is very steep there's a lot of new jargon but what I recommend is you just keep watching videos keep reading about solar and eventually you're going to get familiar with the topic now I just hit the 200 video mark on my YouTube channel and I have quite a few videos that break down solar and to make it simple for you guys so if you guys are interested I'll have that down in the video description a couple of those videos and also at the end of this video so once this one's done you can see those ones now I'd love to get your guys's feedback was this video helpful to you if it was please give me a thumbs up if you guys would like to see any other content around solar panels throw a comment down below and let me know what type of video you guys would like to see thanks for watching guys really appreciate it if you like this type of content I suggest you guys subscribe to the channel channel so you don't miss out on any future videos thanks for watching see you guys in the next one [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Jasonoid - Solar Power, Batteries, and More!

Views: 153,181

Keywords: Connecting Solar Panels, Wiring panels in Series, Wiring panels in parallel, BougeRV, How to Wire Solar Panels, How does solar work

Id: OZvrTuhJhXs

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023