Winter HyperVOC woah's...

With the coming of winter (and cold temps), I've had our first 'HyperVOC'. And this is happening most all mornings now.

The system has 7x100 Watt panels in series. Each panel has an "Open Circuit Voltage" Voc of 21.9 Volts. So, a total for the system of 153.3 volts. I never saw this in the summer, but the colder weather this happens - I'm learning. The solution will be to add 1 more 100 W panel of the same model and then breaking the 8 panels into 2 banks of 4 and combining them.

My first plan will be to use one of the MC4 combiners and add the 2 banks and bring them into the gararge  on the existing 10 AWG wire. This shouldn't be a problem as the voltage will be going down and the Amps up, but still well within accepteable range for the wire ("Short Circuit Current" Isc of 6.13 Amps). The panels are on sale for $129.

Once installed the system with be 800 watts. It started at 300 watts .. and that was this summer! It started with 1x 12 V battery and is now at 4x 6 V. I'm still using a 12 V 1500 W inverter, but will probably replace it with a 24 V inverter once it fails.

We are running lots of things from the captured energy. Solar power is Great!