2x 200W 40V + 8x 48W 19.8V??

[Jedon]

Right now I have 8 Siemens M75 48W panels hooked up in series and parallel to give me 65V or so directly into my 48V battery bank ( 16 trojan L-16H's ) which works pretty good and powers my huge fridge ( 26cf! ) as well as a computer during the day, we run a generator a few hours at night to do the laundry, watch TV and run the well pump but we'll be hooking up our freezer soon so need some extra juice.

A guy locally is selling 2 year old used Sanyo HIP-200BA19 HIT panels, 200W 40V for $2.25/W which seems like a great price to me but I'm not sure how this would work with my other panels. I know for this I would now need a charge controller, and probably an expensive one to support 48V and MPPT, maybe the Xantrex XW SCC Solar MPPT Charge Controller to match my two 5548 inverters?

Here are the stats on the new panels:

Electrical Specifications

Model: HIT Power 200 or HIP-200BA19

Rated Power (Pmax)1: 200 Watts

Maximum Power Voltage (Vpm): 55.8 Volts

Maximum Power Current (Ipm): 3.59 Amps

Open Circuit Voltage (Voc): 68.7 Volts

Short Circuit Current (Isc): 3.83 Amps

Temperature Coefficient (Pmax): -0.29%°C

Temperature Coefficient (Voc): -0.172V°C

Temperature Coefficient (Isc): -0.88 mA/°C

Cell Efficiency: 19.7%

Module Efficiency: 17.2%

Watts per FT2: 16.0 Watts

Maximum System Voltage: 600 Volts

Series Fuse Rating: 15 Amps

Warranted Tolerance (+/-): -0% / 10%

Thanks!!

-Jedon

[Jedon]

The Siemens M75's are rated 19.8V open, 15.9V rated and 3.35A short, 3.02A rated.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Looks like an MPPT controller would only buy you a few percent.  And the rated maximum power voltage of the new panels is close to the battery float voltage.

I'd just hang the new ones across the batteries (with a blocking diode).

With "enough" panels you also have "too much" panels.  So you some kind of controller.  But those can be pretty cheap.  (You've only got 11A or so to dump.  Or just set 'em up to short the panels upstream of the blocking diodes.)  I'd get a couple of Ghurd's controllers and tweak them for 48V service.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Make that a tad over 13A.

[DamonHD]

BTW I have nearly 4kWp of those Sanyo HIP panels: I think they're great.  And I pay over £4 per Wp!

Rgds

Damon