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jeepster asked

2s2p will this reduce the effect of shading

Hi all, were building a small off grid office / craft room solar setup , i work from home and have pc / mac / laptop on from 8am to at least 5pm, currently powered by mains from the house, we will keep that facility but have additional wall sockets wired independant of the mains supply, thinking of installing 2 panels, 400w each on the roof facing sss east, and 2 on the ground attached to the summer house at about 47 degree angle. The sun moves from right to left during the day, so i was going to wire both left hand side panels in series and the right hand panels in series and have 2 charge controllers one for each string, hoping to reduce the effect of shading as the sun moves accross the sky by doing this, if i instead went for a 2s2p, setup so keeping the 2 strings as above would i get the same effect. hope this makes sense.

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2 Answers
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wkirby answered ·

Wiring both stings in to one controller does reduce the effect of shading as opposed to having all in series. However with one charge controller you only have one MPPT tracker and so only one point of maximum power for the array.

The ultimate is to have two controllers, one for each array, then the best power point for each one can be achieved on its own MPPT tracker.
The sum of power form two independant trackers will be more than what one tracker can make with two different arrays wired into it.

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jeepster answered ·

hi @WKirby, i guessed that was the best way, as prev said my garden is south facing but alas my house roof is not hence the reason for the multiple arrays, going to do as you suggest and get 2 mppt smart controllers so i will have 3 in total as also have 500watts on the rear of the house, going to go for 2 * victron smart solar 150/35, ive laready bought a victron smart pheonix inverter 3000kva model, what shunt would any one recommend, ive got 4 lithium batteries, going to wire them in 2s2p, giving me 24 volts, also considering getting a lynx power in, weve made a reasonable investment in victoron solar kit, but when i get a motorhome some of it will be transfered to that





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