best way to wire my panels

solarsquirral

hi guys
i have 17   panel    all    75 watt  12 volt panels    feeding into my c60 chargecontroller
ive had all my panel wired induvially into my combiner box up till now  
my reason was i get a little shade from trees in the winter so i though the panels that were in the sun still wouldnt be affectedf the same as in strings     correct me if wrong      do you think this arrangment is the best?        how would you recommend
thanks for any insight

zoneblue

The C60 is a PWM controller, thus assuming your bank is 12v, the panels do need to be all in parallel, ie  1S17P Hope you have breakers on each string, as 16*75/12 is 100A, if that was dumped into a single shorted panel it would quite exciting.

BB.

Your basic choices are:

• Leave as is (are you getting "enough" sun for your power needs?)
• Cut down trees providing shade (trees typically grow, and will eventually block a lot more sun)
• Move array to sunnier spot (no shade/trees) use existing controller (usually need very heavy copper cabling/lots of copper to reduce voltage drop--May not be practicable with 12 volt array+battery bank)
• Wire array into higher Vmp-array voltage (say closer to ~100 volts, or even more). Get new MPPT charge controller (high voltage/low current array down converts to low voltage/high current battery bank).
• Move entire system to own shed in sun (array+charge controller+battery bank+AC inverter), run 120 VAC to home (PWM or MPPT controller--i.e., use existing hardware, or upgrade system).
• If making many changes, you might sell older components and start with a new system (better meet your growing needs?).
  

-Bill