I was surfing around this morning, looking for panels close to my BPSX170s Voc. It freaked me out the difference in Voc and Vpm between brands, and even between the same manufacturer. There's weird crap like 18V and 36V panels being manufacured today, mostly for grid-tie, I presume. The conspiricy theorist in me thinks this is a great way to obsolete all the single or paired panels sold four or six years ago.

It would be of great benefit to the consumer if all this stuff was standardized. The guys who build charge controllers could focus on a standard Vpm, the consumer could compare apples-to-apples on the different brands of solar panel, and a system could be upgraded with similar components years later. However, it appears that there is more profit to be made in producing a hodge-podge variety of solar panel. Strange days indeed.

Volvo Farmer

Actually there are quite a few larger charge controllers on the market such as the following...

http://www.solarelectricsupply.com/Charge_Controllers/PV-2-Center/charge-control-center.html

But they are fairly expensive.

I happen to have two brand new 120 amp charge controllers still in box that I have never used. It's a different brand then the above one, and If you'r interested I can give you the details on them. I would sell for a lot less then I paid for them as I don't think I'm going to use them.

Email me at :

jjones2(at)inter-linc.net

(note.. replace the (at) with ( @ )

Sincerely,