Living on a sailboat on the hook we are totally off grid. The power system must be reliable and efficient. We started off with 4 Renogy 100W Monocrystalline Photovoltaic PV Solar Panels and 4 6volt deep cycle AGM batteries in series parallel configuration. Meaning we took two 225 amp hour 6 volt batteries and connected them together in parallel to create 12 volts and then in series with 2 other 6v to 12v to create a larger 12-volt Bank. A total of 450 amp hours of power in this bank was achieved. This configuration worked very well for us but we didn't have the redundancy that I felt we needed to make it more reliable so I added a three-way switch so I could switch it from One bank to another or both Banks together and added another bank of series parallel 6 volt to 12 volt Bank. By doing so we doubled our capacity to 900-amp hours and allowed us to isolate a bank if we had troubles with it. Now back to the panels. To ensure that we had no shading we placed the panels to the rear of the boat on top of our davits. Shading is your enemy when it comes to solar panels. Shading on one panel can adversely affect the power output on all your panels that are connected on your system. Shading just one out of 36 cells in a small solar panel can reduce power output by over 75%on that panel and cause a reduction in power to the whole system as much as 25%. I have seen systems on other boats where literally half of the panels on their system are shaded by their sail or sail bag. A system like that will be operating at a reduced capacity all the time. Depending on the position of the boat one side will always be shaded and cause a reduction in power to the whole system. We also have a 400 watt wind generator that we haven't had to use yet. A follow up on the system with the wind generator will be in future blogs. This is not a sponsored blog. I use affiliate links. Some of the links I provide are affiliate links which means I will make a small percentage from each sale. You do not pay more or less for using the affiliate links. I do appreciate the support. Thank you for checking out our blog remember to keep living the dream but tiny.
1 Comment
Mandy
10/11/2018 10:41:29 pm
I wonder what boat you’ve seen that’s shaded 🤔 lol
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AuthorJoan Stump Archives
October 2019
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