Solar Panel Charging

Basics about solar panel battery charging.

Panels

Monocrystalline panels are regarded as being the most efficient panel technology. Second to Polycrystalline panels.

Common configurations of individual panels:

• 100W - common
• 120W
• 150W - common
• 160W

Arrays are usually build by parallel installation of multiple of the same panel type, e.g. 10x150W panels is a 1500W or 1.5kW array.

Some cheap flexible panels:

• 100W 18V Mono panel - 137USD

Solar controllers

There are two kinds of controllers; MPPT and PWM charging mode, with the former being the preferred one on larger (>50W) setups.

A reasonable decent solar controller starts at 50USD, for a 10 to 30A 12V setup.

• Solar controller 30A 12V - 44USD

Batteries

Using regular 12V or 24V batteries makes it simple to get locally.