Hey all!
We live onboard a sailboat. We went through the process of installing a DIY bank with EVE 280 cells. We're very happy.
At the same time, we had a solar arch built and doubled our solar to 700w comprising of 4 x Victron 175w mono solar panels, each wired into their own 75/15 MPPT charge controller (into a cerbo and controlled by a REC BMS). For reference we have an 840ah bank of lithium at 12v.
The panels just aren't performing. Some shading but even in peak, direct sunlight without shading, the max input I've seen across the 4 panels is 550w out of 700w. That's best case scenario. The standard is averaging about 100w per panel.
This is rendering our hard work building the arch as useless as we're not keeping up with our energy demand to keep our bank topped up.
I've looked at taking out the two middle panels and replacing with one Canadian Solar 705W TopBiHiKU7 (CS7N705TNAG) Bifacial panel. This is 24v and our system is 12v. I believe this is fine as long as I don't exceed the specs for the MPPT
In addition, I want to take off the two outside panels and replace with two Renogy RSP200D bifacial panels.
Being the Renogy panels are bifacial, should I increase the size of the charge controller to benefit from the increased input. If so, what size? The Victron calculator keeps crashing on me and seems to freeze on suggesting 150/60. Which I think is too big. Or am I missing something? Would the current 75/15 controllers be OK?
150/60 seems to be the preferred size for the 705w panel.
We live onboard a sailboat. We went through the process of installing a DIY bank with EVE 280 cells. We're very happy.
At the same time, we had a solar arch built and doubled our solar to 700w comprising of 4 x Victron 175w mono solar panels, each wired into their own 75/15 MPPT charge controller (into a cerbo and controlled by a REC BMS). For reference we have an 840ah bank of lithium at 12v.
The panels just aren't performing. Some shading but even in peak, direct sunlight without shading, the max input I've seen across the 4 panels is 550w out of 700w. That's best case scenario. The standard is averaging about 100w per panel.
This is rendering our hard work building the arch as useless as we're not keeping up with our energy demand to keep our bank topped up.
I've looked at taking out the two middle panels and replacing with one Canadian Solar 705W TopBiHiKU7 (CS7N705TNAG) Bifacial panel. This is 24v and our system is 12v. I believe this is fine as long as I don't exceed the specs for the MPPT
In addition, I want to take off the two outside panels and replace with two Renogy RSP200D bifacial panels.
Being the Renogy panels are bifacial, should I increase the size of the charge controller to benefit from the increased input. If so, what size? The Victron calculator keeps crashing on me and seems to freeze on suggesting 150/60. Which I think is too big. Or am I missing something? Would the current 75/15 controllers be OK?
150/60 seems to be the preferred size for the 705w panel.