Well, my ac300 and 2 b300’s arrived. All looks good with them. Not sure what to do about the Dokio 320W panels now. I intended on running 5 to 6 of these into one ac300 channel of the mppt in series, but the darn panels have the SAE plug which I should have looked at before buying, but I didnt!!! I know, my fault!!! So, what can I do to still use these panels? Should I run them in parelle with the use of some SAE to MC4 t branch connectors that hook into the Solar charging cable? link below from amazon.
|Maximum Power (Pmax)|320 Wp|
|Voltage at Maximum Power (Vmpp)|18 V|
|Current at Maximum Power (Impp)|17.78 A|
|Open Circuit Voltage (Voc)|22.5 V|
|Short Circuit Current (Isc)|18.03 A|
@slekimt I agree with both @Scott-Benson and @Selfmadestrom Pick up a kit like this… https://a.co/d/2d2qUTf and swap those sae connectors for some mc4 ones if you are planning on sticking with those dokio panels. Those sae connectors just arent going to be the best solution for you long term. Plus adding more and more adapters are going to increase the potential for issues to arrise down the line.
Be careful with the polarity of the two wires when using sae connectors. It is not uncommon to have reversed polarity when using adapters. This can be overcome by using a short gender changer but that does add an additional two connections to each wire.
@slekimt The link you shared from amazon is a branch connector for PV parallel connection, which allows you to easily connect multiple identical solar panels in parallel.
It can be used to connect to our machine, but it is not recommended as parallel connection increases the current.
The maximum input current of PV for AC300 is limited to 12A, which will be greatly reduced if all panels are connected in parallel. Therefore, we suggest connecting them in series.
@BLUETTI Those dokio panels have a ISC of 18.03a and IMP of 17.78a each… so it sounds like they are just trying to “overpanel” the ac300 input. 5 of those panels in series would still keep them under the ac300 150vdc PV input limit… but either way, with the current sae connectors that are on them, they wouldnt be able to connect them this way due to the positive and negative leads being attached to eachother. They are going to need to snip the sae connectors and attach mc4 connectors to wire multiple panels up either way.
@slekimt I do agree tho with @BLUETTI … The ac300 has a dual mppt in the head unit with that fancy 4pin connector. So in your specific situation (and if you have 6 of those panels) I would probably wire 3 of the panels in series together into the DC1 string and then the other 3 panels (also wired in series) into the DC2 input string of the AC300. In optimal conditions, this should give you roughly <60v and 18a for each of the 2 input strings. And since each mppt will throttle the amperage down to the 12a max it allows, thats about 60v x 12a = 720w per input. IDEALLY giving you around 1440w of total pv input into the head unit. You also wouldnt need to then purchase any sort of parallel connector adapters going this method.
So Tim, I def would first snip those sae connectors off, add those mc4 to your leads using @Scott-Benson advice by using a multimeter and checking and then rechecking polarity and then you should be good to go. Cheers and holler if you have any questions or need anything along the way.