Anyone know of 48V MPPT Charge controller >150Voc

Looking at a lot of the MPPT controllers and the majority of them seem to be limited to handling a maximum of 150Voc which makes for larger cabling and a lower series panel connection arrangement.

At the moment I have my panels setup as 4 in series with Voc of around 38V so the Voc ands up around 152V (higher in cold weather !) and would ideallk like to have 5 and 6 panels in series to better use the space on the roof, but struggling to find a charge controller that makes economic sense.

Grid tie inverters go upto 680V for domestic size and can track down to use 5 panels in series but I am looking for a 48V charge controller and so far I can't find one that fits....

Anyone know of a 48V charge controller that takes >150V open circuit and does not cost a fortune... ?

completelycharged said:

Looking at a lot of the MPPT controllers and the majority of them seem to be limited to handling a maximum of 150Voc which makes for larger cabling and a lower series panel connection arrangement.

At the moment I have my panels setup as 4 in series with Voc of around 38V so the Voc ands up around 152V (higher in cold weather !) and would ideallk like to have 5 and 6 panels in series to better use the space on the roof, but struggling to find a charge controller that makes economic sense.

Grid tie inverters go upto 680V for domestic size and can track down to use 5 panels in series but I am looking for a 48V charge controller and so far I can't find one that fits....

Anyone know of a 48V charge controller that takes >150V open circuit and does not cost a fortune... ?

Click to expand...

The Midnite Classic series - 150 (150v), 200 (200v), and 250 (250v) come to mind. I have 3 of the 150(s) and very satisfied.
Here's the sizing tool - you can plug in your metrics to see if you need the 200 or 250... http://www.midnitesolar.com/sizingTool/

I have an east west apex roof that would take 5 panels each side with no overhang, but that leaves around 200V and around 1250W each side, which makes the MPPT sizing quite small for the Voc. The midnights would be ok but 500 for a controller is too high for me.

The lager roof is of a similar setup with 8 or 10 panels west and upto 18 east, where 4 in series sort of works but leaves 6 panels worth of space around the roofs (2 on each). This is where I was looking to go 5-6 in series and hence the higher Voc.

This is the shed roof and not the house as the shed roof space is actually larger than the house roof !

As a minimum I can get away with 3 separate MPPT channels, ideally I need around 5 to cope with some shading properly.

OR just re-wire everything in pairs (jam an extra 2 panels on the smaller roof for 6 each side) and go PWM.... ?

I have 3 MakeSkyBlue controllers (older firmware, 150Voc max) and looking to change or add to them as the older firmware (tracking issues) probably has the same performance as PWM on a dual panel setup....

The other route I'm considering is going part grid tie and setup some flatpack2 units to alter the charge current to track the solar output / house net grid loading but I am not sure if the flatpack2 units will actually vary the output quick enough to follow the changes quickly enough....

There are options out there, but they're expensive... I would love to have a higher PV voltage but haven't found anything that makes economical sense for my use cases.

Victron has a 250V series, from what I've seen they start around $800 though.
250|100 > https://ebay.to/2YVuyar

MPPSolar also has a 5kW inverter that has a 4kW MPPT charger, max of 500VDC input, check model 5048GE
5048GE > https://ebay.to/2RY4BoZ

While it has drawbacks, the $400 on amazon, epever 200v/100amp product is pretty nice, software settings are suitable for lithium. the wire lugs can take some thick wires. its hard to get the real-time data into a mobile phone app though and getting any data at all via data logging requires the separate eLog box at an $20 extra cost. I have 4 series, 72 cell modules going into it with a open circuit voltage of 170vdc and its fine, MPPT volts hover around 135-140VDC.