How far away from the battery can I locate a 10 watt solar panel.

[51flood]

In your case that wire is rated for the 12 volts that you are running, For the benefit of other readers who might be hooking up of serial strings of panels it might be necessary to use wire rated for 600 volts.

16 gauge, stranded, direct burial dual conductor low voltage wire..10 ft came with the kit....That is whats on the 100' roll I bought...
Pretty fresh understanding volts. Is anyone saying this wire I am going to use is not correct?

[littleharbor]

In your case that wire is rated for the 12 volts that you are running,



Most of the low voltage wire I'm looking up is rated for 150 volts. FYI

[Ampster]

Thanks sdold....Bought 100' of low voltage from lowes...the kind you would hook sidewalk lights to...
Neat site. I've considered hooking up enough solar to run my nebulizer...

In your case that wire is rated for the 12 volts that you are running, For the benefit of other readers who might be hooking up of serial strings of panels it might be necessary to use wire rated for 600 volts.

[51flood]

Thanks sdold....Bought 100' of low voltage from lowes...the kind you would hook sidewalk lights to...
Neat site. I've considered hooking up enough solar to run my nebulizer...

[sdold]

Hi 51Flood, welcome to the forum. Since you need to buy more wire anyway, a 50-foot circuit of #10 will give you only a bit more loss than 10 feet of #16 (0.1 ohm vs. 0.08 ohms).

[51flood]

"And still have effective charging for a 12 volt battery? Mighty mule has a circuit on the control board to regulate charging.."Sleep draw" is 25mA and "Active draw"is 2 to 5 amps..
Asked m.m. if for purposes of good sun exposure I could put the panel 50 feet from the controller...Said no problem, just keep it in the sun...16 gauge, stranded, direct burial dual conductor low voltage wire came with the kit..only 10 feet..Shopping for more and one seller of another gate opener..ghost I believe..said not to put it, the solar panel, more that 20 feet away from the battery or you would have to add another panel...At 100+ bucks each, I'm trying to avoid that...There are some online voltage drop calculators, which I don't have a clue how to work...Thx.."

^^^
Posted this question on another site...excellent responses including a link to this site..and a link to a voltage drop calculator

https://www.calculator.net/voltage-drop-calculator.html

Used this data per reply..
And I used 16 awg wire..

Enter the wire type, wire size (use 12ga for example, you can enter others), the voltage (use 17v....a 12v solar panel typically puts out 17-18v no load), phase (use DC), then your distance, leave the amp load at 1 and hit 'calculate'. You'll see at 50', the drop is minor, using 12g wire

I plan on renting a trencher and to run the wire through plastic pvc...which is recommended by mighty mule...So trying to get it right...

Do the numbers look reasonable?...thx..flood

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