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hi youtubers  jeff cote here with ask pys so we've got  a question from a fellow boater named  joe  joe's got groundbanks 42 and he's  installing 200 watt solar panels  should the panels be installed in series  or in parallel  so this is a common question we ask we  get asked all the time and all boaters  should wonder like how are you going to  wire these panels  uh well one option that's not even  brought up in the question is dedicated  controllers  and whenever shading is an issue and  you've got  multiple sort of shading constraints  then i would recommend and that's  certainly what i did on my boat and i've  done on hundreds of boats is  actually installing dedicated  controllers per solar panel especially  if you're going to have  this for sailboats with um let's say a  boom  or it could be even a radar pole at the  back of the boat like i have on my boat  or for even for power motors they've got  an arch or they've got  you know sat domes radar domes if you're  going to experience  shading on your solar panels then i  would recommend dedicated controllers  if you're not going to have shading  issues or the shading issues are going  to be the same let's say you put two  panels on port  or two panels on starboard then what i  would do is i would wire them in series  and i choose series over parallel  because as you add the battery  the solar panels together in series the  voltage  increases but the current stays the same  so that means that our concerns about  maximum current going through a 10 gauge  wire which is what basically solar  panels are connected to is a number 10  solar wire  is not an issue so i rather go  series versus parallel and then have 200  watt panels  in series going to a single controller  assuming of course  that those panels are going to  experience no shading or if they do  they're both going to be down so that's  my basically  recommendation on if you should go  dedicated controllers for solar panels  or in series for solar panels  thank you for watching this video if  you've got further questions  and you're wondering about your own boat  please ask questions below or send us an  email with your questions and we'll get  to them  hopefully as soon as possible if you haven't done so please subscribe  to our youtube and get our weekly  updates we're posting about four videos  a week right now  and also thanks for watching