Solar Panel Wiring vs Volts and Amps

everybody is safe from explora stat life I teach people how to build DIY campers and in this video I am going to teach you how wiring solar panels can series versus parallel effects voltage and amperage now this video is episode number 10 in a series of videos where I am teaching you all the basic electrical skills and concepts you'll need to tackle the next electrical project in your camper over the last three weeks I've taught you three different ways it's possible to wire a solar panel array we covered wiring solar panels in series wiring your solar panels in parallel and wiring solar panels in series parallel and now that you know how to wire those different configurations this video and the next few videos are going to teach you why you would choose one over the other and a few additional considerations now why do we even need to worry about this this is really important because we need to be able to alter the voltage and the amperage of our solar panel array so that the power is being delivered to our solar charge controller at a safe and efficient level now we can alter the voltage and the amperage of the array depending on how the array is wired now before we really dive in I've got a blog post to use alongside this video and it's got all the graphics that we're going to be covering in this video so you can check them out at a slower pace that I'm going to be going in this video now I've made a quiz for you so that you can double check your comprehension of these concepts and this is my first time making a quiz for any of this stuff to help you guys learn and check your comprehension so let me know if it's even helpful and if I should consider spending my time on that in future videos now let's get going the key takeaway from this video is solar panels wired in series adds their voltages together and solar panels wired in parallel adds their amps together series add volts parallel add amps super important now how does this look on paper this solar panel array is made up of four 100 watt solar panels wired in series each solar panel will put out 20 volts and 5 amps since these are wired in series to find the total array voltage we add 20 volts plus 20 volt plus 20 volts plus 20 volts this means that we have 80 volts heading into the charge controller now what about the amps of this array when solar panels are in series the volts get added but the amps don't change they stay the exact same this means this particular array is delivering 5 amps at 80 volts to the charge controller now just because we have only 5 amps coming into our charge controller doesn't mean that our power output is less we have 4 100 watt panels so we should be expecting to get 400 watts out of our array and by using Watts law of volts times amps equals watts we can see that 80 volts times 5 amps is indeed 400 watts now this exact same theory holds true for no matter how many panels are in the array for a solar panel array wired in parallel if you'll remember from earlier we add the amps together and the voltages stay the same so let's use this exact same array this time but in this case the panel's will be wired in parallel since parallel wired panel amperages get added together we're going to add 5 amps plus 5 amps plus 5 amps plus 5 amps for a total array amperage of 20 amps since parallel wired array voltages don't change this solar panel array is delivering 20 amps at 20 volts through the charge controller now in comparison to series just because we have more amps flowing into the charge controller from the array doesn't mean that we have more available power we still only have 4 100 watt solar panels so we can expect to have 400 watts of power coming into the charge controller now we can verify that by using Watts law of volts times amps equals watts and we can see that 20 volts times 20 amps is indeed 400 watts now this exact same theory holds true for no matter how many panels are in the air right now let's talk about how wiring in series parallel affects the array voltage and amperage this is the same solar panel array as before except this time it's wired in a series parallel configuration with two series strings of two panels wired in parallel since these two panels and these two panels are wired in series let's tackle the first when solar panels are wired in series their voltages get added together and their amperages stay the same that means that these two panels are delivering five amps at 40 volts as a series of string and these two panels are also delivering five amps at 40 volts as the other series string now these two series strings are wired in parallel and since solar panels or series strings wired in parallel get their amps added while their votes stay the same this means that we have 10 amps at 40 volts being delivered to our charge controller now we can double-check our math here because the same as before we have 4 100 watt panels we should be expecting to deliver 400 watts of power to our charge controller and by using Watts law of volts times amps equals what's we can indeed see that 40 volts times 10 amps is 400 watts now let's do another series parallel example this time it's going to be on a much bigger system to show that the theory is the same now this array is 16 100 watt panels wired in a series parallel configuration of 4 series strings of 4 panels wired in parallel so we first need to find the voltage and the amperage of each individual series string since solar panels wired in series get their voltages added together while their amps stay the same we would add 20 volts plus 20 volts plus 20 volts plus 20 volts for each series string and since amps don't change when solar panels are wired in series each series string is delivering 5 amps at 80 volts now since solar panels or serious strings wired in parallel get their amps added together while the volts stay the same we are going to add 5 amps plus 5 amps plus 5 amps plus 5 amps to get the total array amperage and leave the volts alone which means that this array has 20 amps being delivered to the charge controller at 80 volts and since we have 16 100 watt panels we should expect to see 1600 watts of solar power heading into our charge controller we can double-check our math here by using Watts law of volts times and equals what's and we can see that 80 volts times 20 amps is indeed 1600 watts now why is any of this important reason one MPPT charge controllers work most effectively when they have adequate voltage torque with so we went our voltage to be high enough that our MPPT charge controller can effectively to its job but we want to keep the voltage under the maximum voltage rating of the charge controller reason number two keeping the amps of the solar panel array low means that we can use smaller wire on all the wires on our roof and the wire that goes through the roof to the charge controller without worrying about voltage drop for example that 1600 watt array that we use as an example earlier if we wired it in series parallel like I showed it's very likely that we could use to engage wire for all of the wires from the panel's all the way down to the charge controller but if every panel in that array was wired in parallel aside from the roof being a spaghetti mess of wires there would be 80 amps flowing from where the wires were combined which means we could no longer use mt4 combiners and we would have to use a bare minimum of 6 gauge wire and probably bigger to go from the combiner box to the charge controller which is going to increase the cost of our system as well as introduced a ton of hassle reason number three solar charge controllers with higher voltage ratings are more expensive for example the Victor on smart solar MPPT 150 and Victor on smart solar 150 60 are pretty similar in output capacity but the 150 has a maximum voltage rating of 100 volts the 150 60 has a maximum voltage rating of 150 volts and the difference in price between these two units is just a touch over 200 bucks now let's say we had six 100 watt solar panels with the same panel specs as we've been using all video if they were wired in series we'd be delivering a 5 amps at 124 to the charge controller requiring the more expensive 150 volt charge controller if we were to wire the array with 2 Series strings of 3 panels in parallel then we could be delivering 10 amps at 60 volts to the charge controller which means it's we could save ourselves about 200 bucks by using the expensive 100 volt charge controller now if all of this is to really confusing after watching this video a time or two checking on the blogpost taking notes attempting the quiz remember I have about 20 free solar wiring diagrams of various sizes where I've already done the math for you and you can find those explore start life slash solar wiring diagrams and if you're trying to do the math on your own and have questions about any of it like for sure leave it in the comment section below I actually sit down once every week or two and answer all the questions in the comment section below each and every one of my videos now if you need additional or more personalized help I also have some consulting options such as a private group I'm answering questions in everyday as well as a one on one video call you know wiring diagram reviews customer rating diagrams and that kind of stuff info and all of that can be found in the description below now in next week's video we are going to talk about some of the differences between different solar panels or specifically what does it mean when you hear that a solar panel is a 12-volt solar panel or a 24 volt solar panel or a 48 volt solar panel can you really charge a 12-volt battery bank with a 48 volt panel we're gonna cover that next week now I hope you found this video helpful and if you did it'd be awesome if you could share it with somebody or a group who you think could benefit from it and leave the video a thumbs up drop any questions you've got in the comment section below subscribe if you want to see more DIY camp for building tutorials and I will see you in the next video

Channel: EXPLORIST life - DIY Campers

Views: 81,747

Rating: 4.9595718 out of 5

Keywords: solar panels, diy solar, solar power, solar amps watts volts, how to wire a solar array, wire solar panels in series or parallel, wire solar panels in series, wire solar panels in parallel, wire solar panels together, how to wire solar panels to rv, how to wire solar panels in a van, best way to wire solar panels

Id: KJ5zCY5EBeQ

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 14 2020