7:35 am - New Years Day, 2025 - January 1st - TWW - 27° F, humidity 47%, wind 6 mph out of the east by southeast....partially cloudy today with a forecast high of 57° F. On this date in 2014 I was mountain biking with my good friend Paul Hood....where have the years gone?
When I connected the EcoWorthy Dual Axis Solar Tracker and its 600 watts of solar panels to the Bluetti AC200MAX solar charger for the first time late Monday afternoon, I was expecting more than the 187 watts I was getting. This was one of my fears about buying this system....it wouldn't perform up to my expectations. My expectations were that I would see 4-500 watts of power surging into the Bluetti. I decided to think on it overnight before pushing the panic button.
I'm a novice when it comes to the differences and/or benefits associated with wiring something in parallel, or series, but I had noticed a week, or two ago that all the solar panels for the house were wired in series, whereas I had been wiring the my panels in parallel. Sometime around 2:30 am Tuesday morning I woke up thinking about my dilemma and it occurred to me that I should try wiring the new solar array in series and see what happened, so first thing Tuesday I did just that, and what do you know.....
.....I can connect to the Bluetti AC200MAX via Bluetooth, which is very handy, but look at that number in the upper left portion of the above picture.....576 watts!!!! I wasn't expecting anything near that high, but WOW! A later check saw the wattage at 583, which just blows m mind. Getting 583 watts out of 600 watts of panels is amazingly efficient (these are bifacial panels), especially considering there is a 100', 10 gauge cable connecting the panels with the Bluetti. Talk about a sense of relief....I've got about a thousand bucks invested in this system, and was beginning to doubt the wisdom of having spent that much on something I wasn't sure was going to work.
In order to speed up the time sun first hits the solar tracker each morning TLE and I decided quite a bit ago that we needed to 'top' some of the trees to the east, which were casting shadows over the tracker until around 9, or 9:15 am each day. Being able to catch solar rays earlier in the morning would mean we could get recharged earlier each day. We spent around 2 hours 'topping' those two trees before we were satisfied with the result. This morning, Wednesday (New Years Day) will be the test of how effective our trimming was. As you can see from the above picture the Bluetti was at 99% by 10:37 am Tuesday morning......
....it was 11:30 am when 'we' finished 'topping' the trees, but I still had another couple of hours of work to do, such as zip tying all the wires into some kind of orderly fashion, and then wiring the two 325 watt panels together in series to power the trailer Bluetti (AC200P) exclusively. The result I got was amazing! With just one of the 325 watt panels powering the trailer Bluetti I was getting 275 watts of solar power. With the two of them wired together in series I was now getting 575 watts....300 more watts per hour! At the time I hooked them together the trailer Bluetti state of charge was at 54%, which was around 12:30 pm. By 3:30 pm it had recharge to 100%.....just 3 hours! By the time I was done it was almost 2 pm, and I was one tired, but very happy puppy.
I put my tools away, and headed inside to change clothes, have a snack, and take a much deserved nap. We are now, finally, to the point where we can begin, theoretically, to cut back on generator run time, which will reduce our propane usage, and will also make it easier for us to leave the property for days at a time knowing our Bluetti solar charger batteries will recharge each day.....
.....thanks for stopping by!
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