Association Forum - Solar panel wiring?

Assn Members Area · Join

Home.

Association Forum

Ships Store

Cruising

Racing

Technical Tips

Photo Gallery - New

Boat Search - Updated

Manuals & Brochures

Swap Meet

Links

Officer Flag Line & Staff

Bylaws & Constitution

Members Area

Join the Association

Notice:
The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.

Association Forum

Username:	Password:
Save Password
Forgot your Password?

All Forums

Catalina/Capri 25/250 Sailor's Forums

General Sailing Forum

Solar panel wiring?

New Topic

Topic Locked

Printer Friendly

Author

Topic

tingwc
1st Mate

Member Avatar

31 Posts

Initially Posted - 09/25/2005 : 12:32:46

hi everybody, i just bought a 50 watt solar panel for my c-25 and am wondering how exactly to wire it.

at the moment, i only have one battery. do i attach the wire from the charge controller DIRECTLY to the battery, or is there some other place i should connect it to?

secondly, if i add a second battery, i was planning on getting a switch for "1-2-both-off" controls. where would i hook up the connection from the charge controller then? to the switch itself?

finally, if i were to add an inverter to my electrical system, where would i attach the wires from the inverter? would i take the wires directly to the switch, or should i make a connection directly to the house battery?

sorry for the newbie questions, but i'm just a bit confused on where to make the connections! i've done a lot of reading and research, but this question is still making me scratch my head. hopefully the answer is a lot simpler than i think. thanks in advance guys.

Wallace Ting
Queens, NYC
1988 WK

Edited by - on

JimB517
Past Commodore

Members Avatar

USA
3285 Posts

Response Posted - 09/25/2005 : 12:46:32

well, let me try to answer those questions. I have all those items on board and have had an electrical fire several miles offshore so I have had some experience with doing it right.

1. connect nothing directly to the battery except the 1-2-both-off switch. When I had the fire that was turned off and that was the end of the fire.

2. There should be a buss bar with a large common negative next to the switch and the switch should be wired to control the positive leads.

3. 50 watts is a big panel and so it should be wired to a voltage regulator. That is wired to the common negative and to the positive lead coming from the battery to the switch. I made a small 3 way switch that is on the wall above and towards the bow from the stove. This is a 3 way switch to select charging from off, solar, engine, or shore power. I have a plug for test leads and a voltage gage. This is wired to the common negative bus bar and to the switch on the lead coming from the batteries.

4. Since I have have this nice switch and buss bar installed, my inverter is wired to the buss bar and to the hot side of the switch.

The buss bar has an insulated cover. All leads use ring terminals, and all have heat shrink insulators. My wires are soldered and insulated with double heat shrink tubing. I prefer soldered connections to crimp on but most people use the crimp on.

Marine grade wire is tinned, and wire runs should be supported every 18 inches, try to avoid having bundles of wiring laying in the bilge.

Catalinas factory wiring is very shoddy, its not tinned, nor supported properly. Plus wires are glassed in the deck - we all hate that!

I have not rewired the boat but mine is safe now. Also DO NOT bypass the fuse panel and use properly sized fuses.

Edited by - on

Ben - FL
Admiral

Members Avatar

880 Posts

Response Posted - 09/25/2005 : 15:51:09

I'm not sure if Catalina or PO wired my mast but it was atrocious. Green at the steaming light was black at the foot and black up there turned white and so forth. I spent several hours with Tom of Cort de Azure sorting it all out. We finally gave up trying to salvage the old and I pulled all new 16 AWG marine grade wire using heat shrink. Had to drill the rivets on the mast step and then peel off lots of gooy electrical tape. What a mess. Hopefully now everything works correctly. I still have to raise the mast and plug it back in. When I removed the mast step one of the ears had broken off so yesterday I impulsively stopped at an auto body shop and they happened to have an aluminum welder. I gave the guy $20 for fixing it.

Edited by - Ben - FL on 09/25/2005 15:55:43

Gloss
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
1916 Posts

Response Posted - 09/25/2005 : 20:16:48

You didn't tell us what kind of charge controller you have. Didn't it come with instructions and wiring diagrams?

Mine is a Morningstar digital pulse width modulation controller with digital readout. It's good for 50 amps. It does three stage charging of my battery bank. All of my power goes through the controller, and the digital readout tells me how many amps my solar panel is putting out, how many amps my system is drawing, and what the voltage of my battery bank is.

I do not run the motor wiring through the controller though.

Make sure you have fuses near your panel, and on every hot lead coming off your battery, very important.

Chapter 6 of Nigel Calder's new third edition of his Boatowners mechanical and electrical manual Covers battery chargers, inverters, and Solar Panels. I got my copy from Amazon.com for 35 bucks.

Edited by - on

tingwc
1st Mate

Members Avatar

31 Posts

Response Posted - 09/25/2005 : 21:50:10

Hi Frank,

I bought the solar charge controller from amazon. it's a simple 7 amp controller with a hookup to go to the solar panel and another to go to the battery. the instructions were very simple, indicating for me to hook it up to the battery directly, but that didn't seem right. i went to the boat-us store here in connecticut and the person working there also told me that i should wire it directly to the battery, but my gut tells me otherwise.

I bought Don Casey's Sailboat Electrics Simplified book and while I've learned a lot, it really hasn't told me how exactly to wire a solar panel to work with the things already on your boat... the alternator from the engine, electrical panel, etc.

when i go back to the boat this weekend i'll have to study the wiring on the boat more carefully and work on the switch as Jim is talking about.

Edited by - on

Gloss
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
1916 Posts

Response Posted - 09/26/2005 : 06:03:32

I forgot to mention that my solar panel has an in line fuse near the panel too.

Edited by - on

Topic

New Topic

Topic Locked

Printer Friendly

Jump To:

Association Forum

Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.