Three quick questions

Welcome to Solar Panel Talk, Haltzy!

Here are three quick answers:

1. If your current 30A PWM CC is sending 25-28A to the batteries, then depending entirely on what panel voltages you are using, you would not benefit much from getting a 30A MPPT CC, but could well benefit from getting a 40A or larger MPPT CC instead. Tell us more about your panels.

2. The CC and the inverter should connect to the same battery lugs. But there is more to it than that.
Look at the information at http://smartgauge.co.uk/batt_con.html for a good description of the problems of using batteries in parallel as well as some partial solutions to the problem. With three battery strings, the only way you have open to you is to us a common point (bus bar) with equal length wires to each string instead of making your inverter and CC connections directly at any battery terminals.

3. With either toggle switch or breakers, be sure that what you use is rated for DC use at the current you need. Most inexpensive toggle switches are not rated for DC at all or have a DC current and voltage rating far lower than their AC ratings. Using separate fuses will give you isolation so that a fault in one of the three distribution systems will not take the others down.
Look in other pages of the same smartgauge.co.uk site for information about battery isolators to avoid problems with your feed to the camper battery. Otherwise there may be conflicts between the CC and your alternator among other things.

Thanks for the info, I look forward to reading and learning from this forum.

Some info on my system,

4x100W panels (12v) do not have the exact specs at hand. The panels feed into a combiner box with 10amp fuses for each panel and. All the wiring from the panels to the combiner box is 8Awg. From the combiner box i have a disconnect and 8' of 8awg going to my 30A CC. I feed into the battery bank through a 30A fuse via 3' of 8awg wire. All battery wires are 2awg, along with the wires feeding my 1500Watt pure sine invertor. I have 6 6v 220ah batteries in my battery bank. I will read through the link you sent to see if there are any changes i should make.

Right now our goal is run everything 12v, as this system is only temporary until we are able to build our cabin and have power trenched in. I am wanting to take a video of the system to provide a visual and hopefully get some feedback, as this is a first time project.

Any thoughts and info are welcome.

Thanks.

OK assuming those are 12 volt battery panels wired in series with a PWM controller input and output current to PWM controller will be around 23 amps.

If you re-wired the panels to 2 x 4 configuration and used a real MPPT 40 amp controller max current output would be around 33 amps.

What is your daily watt-hour load?

400w is 33.33a @ 12v... I'd consider inetdog's suggestion of a 40a mppt.

You can wire 2 x 2 batteries with near perfect balance, but will have imbalance with 3 x 2.

4x100 panels is a good charge rate for 440ah, a bit shy for 660ah...

Shelf the 5th & 6th batteries or buy 2 more 100panels for a separate battery bank, if your wh requires it.

Can you explain this a little clearer, what do you mean 2x4?

What would be the recommended panel output for 660ah? Is it a power things that one should stick with a 2x2, or a balance issue. I currently only have 4, but just ordered two more to increase capacity.

I will be looking for a new CC, any recommendations? I am just try to stay low budget, as this system will not increase much from where i am now.

Chris

What is the watts of whatever you are powering? + How may hours per day? = watt hours

You may have already bought too much... or it may exceed your budget to build a big enough system.

Until you know/share your watt-hours, you can't get accurate answers.

I will do my best to figure this out. There are a lot of variables in this situations as all major appliances are typically ran off generator.

LED Lighting - RV's - 20w (2 hours/day) (This is powered off of our RV batteries ties into existing solar bank via 30' 10-2 wire. They are not plugged in to the inverter or generator unless solar power level has dropped.

LED Lighting - Outhouse - 5w (8 hours/day)

Ice Machines - Inverter power - 200w (6 hours/day)

Cell Phone charger - Unsure on watt draw.

12v RV Stereo - 50w (8 hours/day)

So total would be around 1650 watts per day. I have worked through a couple calculators but found them to very confusing. I would like to have it big enough to not have to worry about depletion or battery damage.

No no tyet as you are no where near close to understanding what is going on.

This is what I mean about understanding. For a 12 volt 660AH battery you should be running up around 1000 watts on panels and a 80 amp MPPT charge controller. You are so far from that it is pointless to try to help.

You're close enough to try to guide you, Haltzy...

According to this off-grid calculator,

If you were to run your ice machine only 4 hours per day, you could power it with 4x100watt panels, 40amp mppt and the 4x6v220ah batteries(wired in series to 24v , which is better), and 24vdc-120vac inverter @80%.
This is with minimum 4hours insolation and panels facing south.

For the stereo and LEDs, which is about 850wh, you would build ANOTHER identical system.
Being that you are not losing efficiency in an inverter, the 2nd system would have spare watts.