One of my recent projects/hobbies has been the solar setup in my shed. I started with a single 100w solar panel from Harbor Freight, and I’m on my 3rd charge controller after getting the bug (twice) to upgrade.

The location of the shed gets a lot of partial shade and I wasn’t getting much juice out of the single panel. It was enough to get by, but I had to be mindful of how much I drained the battery. I figured if I added a 2nd panel, at least one of them would have sun at any given time, more than doubling the output. I hooked up the second one yesterday, and sure enough today I more than doubled my previous record for watt-hours! Very impressive improvement.

Another bonus… Harbor Freight mailed me 2 panels for the price of one. They’re typically over $100 each so that was very nice of them. I’m a member of an RC airplane club and they have solar panels so people can charge their RC airplane batteries – I’ll likely donate this extra panel to them if they’re interested.

I also got a bunch of little goodies in the mail to improve the wiring. A big DC circuit breaker and some fuses for safety (and the ability to quickly disconnect things if I need to) – some bus bars to make the wiring nice and neat, and some better wire to run outside to the panels. I’m looking forward to reworking everything and getting it nice and neat.