I just purchased an AC200MAX, been able to charge with solar panels that I purchased from Santan Solar. I am having issues with the configuration on what is the best way to hook them up.
Specs:
Rate power :250
VOC 37.6
VMP 30.3
Short Circuit current (SC) 8.85
max power 8.27 A
The issue that I have is that if I run all 5 connected as Series at some point in the day I get a fault, If i run 4 of them in series the best I can get is about 700 watts (very hot in Texas right now).
I then tried to connect 3 of them in Parallel and 2 in series and the most watts i get is about 400
if i try to connect in sets of 2 in parallel the most i get is about 450 wats.
I have shading in the early hours so trying to run them in series just slows the charge down.
Any suggestions as to what I am doing wrong or what I can do to improve the charging.
All 5 in series is too high of a voltage for the AC 200max. Surprisingly you almost never get the full advertised rating from a solar panel. At least that has been my experience. I haven’t experiment enough with mine yet to give any advice as to why you do worse with a series/parallel arrangement.
When you connect in parallel, you are limited to the maximum amp input of the AC200Max. When you connect in Series, you are exceeding the maximum voltage allowed and may damage your AC200Max.
What you could do is Connect four in series just like you are doing and then connect the fifth to the DO50S charge enhancer (would need to purchase) which would then connect to the AC charging brick input port. This would let you connect to two seperate input points. The reason you are having the issues is the Solar panels you have are high voltage panels and not designed to connect to smaller portable devices and it easily exceeds the limits. If you had lower voltage panels, you could connect more in series. But…with your setup, the DO50S charge enhancer would solve your issue and give you the output of one more panel.