we have 3 panels on the roof
they go into these 3 to 1 connectors
and one feed wire comes off the roof into the panel in the barn

we put a volt/watt/ammeter on the end of the wire, before the controller.
problem is there’s no way to know if one panel is underperforming.

we got our replacement panel this week and plugged it in.
turns out another panel went bad after this one did
gah

these early failures are disappointing but so far HQST is replacing them both.

the way forward is we need to see *at a glance*, what each panel is doing. three into 1 meter is ng.

as i said in the last post, we decided we need three feed wires to the roof - one per panel and we’re going back to butt splices as more reliable.

that means we were going to need two more wattmeters - about $15 each.

then it occured to me, a solar controller is only $20.
And yes, you can connect multiple controllers to the same batteries, in parallel!

But the inexpensive ones only display volts, not amps.
and even low voltage (clouds *or* malfunction) still displays as if ‘charging’.

Meters and controllers? no.
i started searching for controllers that display amps and i found one.

so we’re gonna have this:
panel one feed comes off the roof into the existing wattmeter then into the existing controller
panel two comes off the roof into a new controller that displays volts and amps
panel three comes off the roof into a new controller that displays volts and amps

the three controllers will then be wired in parallel to the batteries.
yes one panel per controller is a bit…odd