I apologise if this has already been covered somewhere else!
240 to 260-watt
panels are cheaper than the smaller
panels watt for $, largely because they are the industry standard size for putting on house roofs. The problem is that the output voltage of these panels tends to be in excess of about 25V, which is what the majority of charge regulators for smaller
solar arrays are rated to. For open-circuit panel voltages greater than this there are much larger controllers available but they really are MUCH larger (eg. morningstar's 'tristar' controller, which goes up to 150Voc and 45 amps max current) and are correspondingly more expensive. Does anyone know of a decent
MPPT charge controller that has a max input voltage of 40 to 50 volts and a max
current of around 30 or so? It seems like such a controller would be quite popular for the
marine market. In fact, Blue Sky will shortly be coming out with a 3000i model that satisfies this gap in the market, but it's not available until around August and in the meantime i need power! Am i missing something?