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Solar Cable Upgrade & Pseudo-MPPT

New Cable
New Cable

As the cable supplied with the panel is far too short, inflexible & does not even allow the cable gland on the terminal box to form a seal, I have replaced it with some high quality twin core guitar cable, with silicone insulation.

The cable is removable from the panel tail by means of a screwlock two pin connector.

 

On another note, I have noticed a side effect of fitting a switchmode regulator to the panel: it seems to have formed an MPPT-type regulator setup, as even in low light conditions, when the bare panel is outputting 18.5v at 50mA short circuit, with the switching regulator I can get a useable 13.25v at ~170mA.
This effect is increased in full light, where I can obtain 4.5A short circuit current & ~1.8A at 13.25v output.