hello hello thanks for tuning in today we're going to take a look at two of the new harbor freight
solar panels and whether or not you can connect them if you haven't seen the video on it click
the link above appreciate the support the comments i read all of them you guys are what makes this
channel happen so we got two of them connected running into the little diy battery box that i did
and i finally completed it so i may do a video on it i'm not sure drop a comment if you want to see
a video on it don't mind the mess here it serves my purpose it is water resistant water resistant
12.8 volts you see we're bringing in 33 34 watts almost three amp hours into the batteries
36 watt hours we're still bringing in about two and a half amps we had 7 amps peak
12.14 volts was the minimum so we have charged up 96 watts per peak and it has been raining out
all day for the past couple days there's no real sun just breaks in the clouds
but yeah you can connect these panels together um if you look on the back
you'll see it says do not connect in series
and i believe there's a reason behind that and it's my theory i'm not sure if it's the truth but
we'll try it out eventually is when you run these in series you're going to be adding up the voltage
so if it's a 18 to 22 volt panel when you bring it back to the charge controller it's going to be
upwards of 48 volts a pwm charge controller most of them especially the ones that harbor freight
cell are only good for 12 volt systems so when you run them in parallel like this is right now
if you see these are run in parallel it's an old harbor freight splitter that comes off the 100
watt panel kit the old one and i'm just doing a quick test with it and that puts it in parallel
that brings it back now parallel if you see is gonna double the amperage and the wattage but
the voltage is going to stay the same so it's still putting in the charge controller i think
on this cuts off at like 14.2 14.3 so this will bring in the 14 volts and then cut off
but it's the amperage that shoots up when you run them in parallel so that's another
thing you have to watch out for because i think their controllers are only rated for
maybe seven for the small one and i think 30 or 20 for the big one but they they're no good i've been
through a lot of them yet to get a decent quality one so you can definitely add two of the panels in
together it's going to be limited by the pwm charge controller or any other type that you
use you just have to watch the amperage and then if you want to run these in series you have to
watch the voltage but these are run in parallel parallel is going to bring the 12 volts back
with high amperage and the charge controller i got inside this box
takes care of that you see it shot the 7 amps already so it's holding it just fine 12.8
so we'll test it out some more and see what happens all right so i hope that clears up
why harbor freight says you cannot hook these or it's not advisable to hook these in series
i do believe it's just because their charge controllers can't handle it's not that the
actual panels can't be hooked in series but we'll test at a later date so i hope this helps
everybody in deciding how to step their solar system up we'll check real quick with this guy
56 watt hours in it's not too bad for a rainy day
7 amps peak that's because like i said we are running in parallel
all right i hope this helps thanks for watching please subscribe