Hello, new to this forum.
I'm planing a solar system for our caravan currently. We try to maximize power on a small and pretty cluttered roof. The best I could achieve so far is using 6 panels (including a bypass diode each) with 30Wp each.
Entering this into Victron's configuration tool results in two recommendations depending on whether we connect the 6 in series or have 2 parallel series with 3 each:
- 6 panels in series: MPPT 250/60
- 2 series with 3 panels each connected in parallel: MPPT 100/15
The first one looks heavily over dimensioned and is too expensive for the purpose.
For the second one I see a major disadvantage: these 6 panels will have slightly different orientation and very different shadowing situations (antenna, AC). So using a parallel connection seems like a chaotic solution with unexpected results.
For a home solar solution I'd go for an inverter with two strings / MPPT, but this isn't a solution with Victron products to my understanding. Instead, the solution could be using two MPPT 100/15 in parallel?
Questions: pros/cons for each of the solutions beyond the above findings? Other options? For the last approach: do two SmartSolar chargers work fine in parallel and are they synchronized somehow? I saw older discussions on the later from 2019. At this point a sync feature has been planned...
Thanks for your thoughts.
