I have 400W of CIGS solar on my vehicle roof. Have seen 200W come through to the box. Today I went out and the display showed 0 charging.
I believe I have the two 200W panels connected in parallel. Could this be making the difference? Manual says series. I’m thinking some sloppy math and I’m either not pushing enough volts or too many amps.
AC200L + 2x 200W BougeRV CIGS panels.
The panels worked fine with a Jackery 1000
Check if the panels are connected in series as required. Ensure the voltage meets the AC200L’s minimum input for charging.
You face 2 problems : limitation to 8A of AC200l when the voltage is less than 30V (mounted in parallel your panels must give 24V)…-> you lose 50% of the power of your panels (because your panels in parallel must provide 2X8A in direct sunlight).
You must probably encounter a second problem: the MPPT of the AC200L does not manage your 2 panels in parallel well (it has difficulty finding the maximum power point) which means that sometimes you have 0W. In any case, as you say, you have to mount your panels in series!
Hi @MikeOutside, We found that your solar panel’s VOC is 31.5V ±5%. Is that so?
We agree with @Snips1 and @abuislam ’s professional advice!
We’d like to know if you’ve followed @Snips1’s suggestion to reconfigure your solar panels in series, and if that helped resolve the issue. We hope the problem has been resolved. If not, please record a video of the solar charging process, upload it to a cloud drive, and share the link with us for further troubleshooting.
Thank you for this. I’ve looked all over for a clearly stated minimum.
As I understand it now, switching them to series should solve this problem. I’ll try that today and report back
Yes I did. I reconfigured the two 200W panels into a series configuration and immediately the AC200L registered 10W of incoming PV power. They were a little dusty but able to see up to 351 watts at one point with some clouds in the sky.
Thank you everyone for the assist!
Hi @MikeOutside, Thank you for getting back to us so quickly.
I am glad to hear that good news!
Thanks again to @Snips1 and @abuislam for your assistance!
