Fuse you need at least one large fuse at the battery to protect the smallest wire you have connected to it.
Fuse individual solar panels or array.
Connecting the solar panel charge controller mppt or pwm are the same solar battery and the pv array in the right way is the essential work before enjoying the solar energy.
My question is about providing a fuse or circuit breaker for the output of the panels.
In a parallel system a combiner box is used that holds the fuses breakers to each panel plus one or more combined fuse leading to the charge controller or grid tie inverter see figure.
On jack danmayer s website he recommends putting a fuse or breaker on each individual solar panel.
I assume this is so if a panel shorts internally the other panels don t pump all their current through said short and cause overheating.
Solar panel charge controller wiring intro solar panel charge controller wiring diagram and step by step guide for off grid solar power system wiring.
I oversized the cabling between the panel array and the controller to minimize any voltage drop from the panels but i m at a loss as to what size fuse or breaker i should use in this cable run.
Now jack recommends these huge breaker boxes that look like they are the size of a small loaf of bread.
This means each series needs a fuse breaker placed in the combiner box as shown here.
If your panels are smaller than 50 watts and use only 12 gauge wires and 20 amp fuses are required.
To understand how wiring in series works in comparison to how parallel wiring works let s think for a moment about how christmas lights used to work.
Maximum power point tracking mppt charge controllers are for wiring solar panels in a series where pulse width modulation pwm charge controllers are used to wire solar panels in parallel.
First between the charge controller and battery bank second between the charge controller and solar panels and third would be between the battery bank and inverter to determine the fuse size needed between the charge controller and battery bank you simply match the amperage rating on the charge controller.
I also installed a solar charge controller inside the boat.
Fusing solar panel arrays wired in parallel.
There are many fuse wire gauge tables on the web.
