I have a couple of 200w panels in the garden I use to charge a bluetti ac180 battery. I'm wondering if I can wire them into my Gen 1 3.6kw GE inverter but the cable would be about 40m in total length.
Would I be wasting my time? I've never seen the panels output more than 260w. What would the volt drop be for something that long?
With normal 4mm2 cable, you'll lose about .55V for every 10m of total length at 10A, which is a typical full load current.
Given that solar panels work in a 'constant current' mode in normal usage that loss would be trivial.
A more significant problem will be that the gen 1 inverter won't start using solar power before it sees about 150V from the panels. That usually needs four panels minimum.
Perfect reply, thank you.
mrand31 I think there is a minimum voltage setting that Givenergy support can set on the inverter, but 4 panels is the typical recommendation IIRC. There have been other people on the forum with issues with small numbers of panels on a string and the inverter doesn’t respond until its pretty full sun
geoffreycoan 120V is the minimum startup voltage but that register isn't exposed so you need installer (engineer) access to change it.
Vestas agreed, that’s why I said Givenergy support could change the minimum startup voltage
geoffreycoan Maybe "AI Rachel" could help, I doubt anyone else will 😃