Tuesday, Mar 09, 2021 at 18:33
Based solely on my experience and not theory, I agree with TrevorDavid. I have three arrays that I can connect up to my van which has an MPPT regulator. They were bought over a number of years and consequently they do not share the same characteristics, specifically they have different Vmp, though all are nominally 12V panels.
One is 240watts of portable glass panels, the next is 200 watts of thin semi-flexible mounted to the roof of the van and the third is 2 x 100watt thin panels that belong to the ute, but that I can hook up to the van if I want.
With depleted van batteries on an ideal, cold, clear day with high sun and optimal orientation, I tried an experiment.
First, just the 200 watts rooftop by themselves - they gave 10 amps. Not the perfect result, but with the sloping roof of the van the panels cannot be ideally oriented to the sun.
Then I added the 240 watts of portable glass panels. That took the output from the controller to 28 amps, close to its max of 30 amps.
On that day I couldn't add any more as the regulator would have maxed out. But on another cloudy day I did the same experiment and added the extra 200 watts of panels normally reserved for the ute, for a nominal total of 640 watts. Again, I got close to the 30 watt max output from the regulator.
So IMO, you CAN add panels WITH THE SAME NOMINAL VOLTAGE (ie 12V) but with slightly different characteristics. You won't get the optimum result, but you will get an improvement.
Also, I have blocking diodes in the output of all my arrays so that a stronger array or panel cannot backfeed into a lesser one - all the "juice" goes to the regulator.
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