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hi everyone

jeff cote here with boatingtechtalk.com

god i love saying that all right so

we've got a question from a fellow

boater

this boater darren says jeff i'm the

owner of the manito 34

and i've just purchased two 70 watt

panels

so these are solar panels to mount on my

bimini great

each panel has its own dedicated victron

7515

75 it means 70 max 75 volts max amperage

15. by the way he definitely sized

this controller well because of the

shading issues with the boom

good one darren yes the boom will cause

shading and putting two panels in series

on

the dodger or bimini especially if

they're going to experience

different type of shading is probably a

faux pas

so good on you to have a listen to my

advice and put dedicated controllers

that's really what i did on my boat

should the controllers be mounted closer

to the battery or the panels

and should they be wired with a

disconnect at the battery

okay let's start with the first part of

the question

when you're actually installing solar

panels on your boat

or on a friend's boat maybe we're

helping another friend do an install

what i would advise is to try to have

the controllers as close as possible to

the batteries

now it doesn't need to be on top of the

battery but

given a choice if you've got a cabinet

that's close to the batteries and you've

got another cabinet far away

then i'd rather that you put the

controllers closer to the battery

one of the reasons to do that is these

panels are generally higher voltages

than the battery voltage so having the

controllers

further from the panels means that the

voltage drop issues are going to be

minimized

on that segment from the panel to the

controller

furthermore some controllers are also

temp compensated within the controller

so

the closer they are to the battery is

probably more indicative

of what's happening to the batteries so

given a choice

always have the controller closer but it

doesn't have to be that way right

sometimes

the controllers have to be further and

that's okay

the second part of the question was

should i have a

wired with a battery a disconnect well

yes you can

yes commonly what we do is we install a

fuse we label the fuse

and we install the fuse at the battery

to the controller

and from the controller to the solar

panel by the way for some of you that

are sort of new to this

concept the controller is really the

brain right

and it's sort of like a wind turbine a

wind turbine turns but

do you need power at that moment depends

so harnessing

the energy from the sun is really a

decision that the controller does

based on the battery voltage your

batteries might be full and it's sunny

and so the controller might decide you

know what i know i've got lots of sun

and i could

do something about that energy and put

into the batteries

but good news is a solar controller

smart enough to know that the batteries

are full

or maybe they're nearly full and it's

not going to give you max output when

you don't need max output so a solar

controller is essential

big fan of mppt controllers there's an

alternative called pwm but the mppt ones

are

more efficient so that means you lose

less energy

in converting the sun's energy to a

battery voltage that you want on your

boat

so i would probably put in a fuse holder

on that circuit and i would probably not

put a thermal circuit breaker

on that circuit now if you're planning

on constantly disconnecting

i believe there are definitely circuit

breakers out there that are meant to be

connected

on a solar controller and different

companies make those

i've never deployed one because

generally once the solar panel is

connected

what we do for disconnecting them in

case we need to do warranty or we want

to remove them in the winter time

we'll put maybe sort of make sure that

the solar panels are disconnected

at night or before the sun rises or what

we'll do in the daytime is put a cover

on top so make sure that the panels are

not outputting as we disconnect that

circuit

so two good questions from darren and if

you're tackling

uh solar panels or solar controllers on

your boat

educate first and then do and part of

the

education there's probably hundreds of

articles on our website

including dozens and dozens of videos

just on this very topic so

first educate and then do thanks for

watching

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thanks again for watching