Boat Solar Panel Wiring

Mount your panel on your stern rail see photos details below.

Boat solar panel wiring. Mc4 connector a water proof connector used in solar wiring. By tom burden last updated. Click on calculate to see the size wire required in awg american wire gauge. Enter the distance in feet from your solar panels to your battery bank charge controller.

Giving up any of this voltage to voltage drop can affect how quickly your bank is recharged. Individual silicon cells produce only around 0 6v and so enough of them have to be connected together in series to produce a voltage high enough to be able to charge a 12v battery. Small panels maintain or trickle charge batteries while you re unplugged from shore power. This is great for a sailboat with lots of shadows from lines mast boom etc or a cabin in the woods with varying shadows throughout the day.

Choosing whether to wire the panels in series or parallel on a boat affects the wire gauge required which is why many solar power installers lean toward wiring the panels in series. The benefit of parallel wiring each panel works independently. These are dc wires for a 12 volt system so you need 2 sets of wires. Solar controller except for small trickle charge systems all solar systems should have a solar controller.

If one panel is shaded it will not affect the entire solar array. Installing one or more photovoltaic solar panels on your boat is a great way to keep your batteries topped off and in larger installations replace the power consumed by house loads. Most are terminated with standard 8 ring terminals. Enter the total amps that your solar panels will produce all together.

The wiring of your panel to the boats battery bank is critically important. Attach marine grade copper wires to the panel. The purpose of a controller is to prevent batteries from being overcharged apply the optimal charging current to the battery bank and prevent current from back. Connect the negative wire from the solar panel to the negative input on the charge controller.

These connectors are easily disconnected. Enter solar panel output voltage. Most decent 12v nominal panels will output a voltage of around 16 0 to 19 0 volts. Just hookup your existing boat wiring infrastructure to the terminal block and buss bar.

Positives to the terminal block and negative to the bus bar. The positives of course must be installed on the correct gang associated with the respective switch for that load. Typical marine solar panels are comprised of a number of silicon cells normally 32 connected together in a series string. Most solar panels come with mc4 connectors attached to 3 foot solar wire pigtail coming from the panel junction box.

I recommend an inline fuse on the positive wire from the solar panel to the positive terminal to the charge controller use heat shrink butt connectors.