Comparison between Serial and Parallel

Solar Panels in dim light conditions

Because what I read online had so widely varying opinions vs what solar providers were saying, I did a
test on my panels.

Setup
I have three solar panels. These panels are inside my apartment sat in my living room window and face
North in the Northern hemisphere, a most challenging situation to say the least. Today was a clear and
sunny day, early in the season (May 9, 2023).

Input Equipment
Solar Panels
I have three of the same panels, the rating label for them is as thus:

Figure 1 - Solar Panel Rating Label

As you can see from the tag, they are rated for:

• 40 Watts output (under ideal conditions)

• 17.1V Vmp, and 21.5VOC (Max power and Open circuit)
• 2.3A Imp and 2.7A Isc (Max power and Short circuit)

Charge Controller
The charge controller used is a Renogy Rover 20A MPPT Solar Charge Controller.

• 100V Max Solar Input

• 20A Max output (12 or 24V)

Figure 2 - Solar Charge Controller

Test Equipment
I used a Fluke multimeter to measure OCV and the Renogy 20A MPPT Solar Charge Controller with
Bluetooth to measure under-load output.

Procedure
I have pre-built a harness to put the panels in parallel and a separate pre-built harness to put the panels
in series. I have to manually connect from one to the other, but that only takes a minute or two.

I did the tests on a clear day, but as the sun was still coming up, about 2 hours after sunrise April 9, 2023.
Sunrise today was 5:55. The tests were carried out about a quarter after 8.

I connected the panels in series, measured the OCV and measured what the charge controller showed as
charging voltage and amps (to 2 digits).

I then connected the panels in parallel and again measured the OCV and measured what the charge
controller showed as charging voltage and amps (to 2 digits).

Results
Series

Figure 3 - Series OCV

Figure 4 - Serial Output - App Screen
Parallel

Figure 5 – Parallel OCV

Figure 6 - Parallel Output - App Screen
Analysis
Under ideal conditions, one would expect to get up to 120 Watts out of these panels combined, but I
know these are far from ideal conditions.

Serial
• OCV Achieved: 53.9V
• OCV Possible: 64.5V
• OCV % Achieved: 83.6%
• Current Achieved: 0A
• Current Possible: 2.3A
• Current % Achieved: 0%

Parallel
• OCV Achieved: 18.19V
• OCV Possible: 21.5V
• OCV % Achieved: 84.6%
• Current Achieved: 0.07A
• Current Possible: 6.9A (I wasn’t going to short the panels and try to measure current.)
• Current % Achieved: 1.0%

What was initially most surprising to me is that the loaded voltage was *lower* under load in the series
configuration than the parallel configuration. I need to go back and test individual panels and compare
them.

The second result of note is that there was no measurable Amps in the serial configuration, not even mA.

Parallel achieved 1% more OCV, a real surprise for me. In addition, since the serial configuration had no
output, the parallel put out infinitely more current, even though it was such a small current.

My conclusion from this data at this time and under these conditions is that paralleling these panels
attached to this controller is best. Whether that holds for different panels, different conditions or a
different controller would need further equipment and testing.

Summary
This experiment indicates that paralleling solar panels works better than having them in serial under low
light conditions.

Takeaway
One would be better off purchasing solar panels with a higher voltage inherent output and paralleling
those, especially for low light conditions. This is even though internally, I believe they are just doing the
serial-parallel configuration with the individual cells of the solar panel to achieve their outputs.