Quote:
Originally Posted by buteman
Thanks for the quick reply Xringer.
Not really studied it. It was installed before we bought the house. It's around 4 Kilo watt and appears to have 16 panels arranged as 2 banks of 8 with 192 volt per chain.
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That voltage is right in the range to run a switching power supply from. Just add a connector to allow easy connection if needed.
Most likely the easiest/cheapest way to build a power tap device would be to hack some ATX power supplies. Mod them to output 14.4V for charging lead acid batteries (or 16.4V for 4S lithium, or even 12.3V for 3S lithium), have a current limit to prevent exceeding the rating of the PSU, and add an input voltage control loop to prevent them from trying to pull the input voltage below the MPP rating of the panels.