Solar help needed

I have two 100w Renogy panels wired in parallel and am trying to hook up my Redarc BCDC for my dual battery set up. Ran the wires down and put my meter on them to make sure I had the positive and negative correct and I am showing 19vdc. I double checked that I have them in parallel and not in series and I do.
Back of the panel says optimum operating voltage is 17.9vdc so I am just a bit over that.

Is that all good? I just now saw the optimum voltage and was previously thinking it would be putting out 14(ish) like an alternator.

 

AFAIK The BCDC will manipulate the voltage to whatever battery type you select. It takes the unregulated volts from the panels and the regulated volts from the alt and creates a stable charging cycle out of them.

Mine is going into a camper and isnt hooked up yet, but that is how all their documentation describes the system.

 

Panels in parallel stack their amps, in series they stack their voltage. So having 2 panels in parallel, I would expect to see <19v.

 

If you are checking it without being hooked to anything, you are checking open circuit voltage not operating voltage.

 

Yeah. Was checking straight off the panels. So is 19vdc appropriate for that?

 

Yep. I believe that is about what my Renogy panels have when disconnected.

 

You should be fine

What specific REDARC do you have?

 

BCDC 1225D

I got everything hooked up and it seems fine.

 

Oh yeah that unit has MPPT built in so it takes something like up to 32v, and uses it more effectively than a standard charger.

 

I have this same system, the BCDC 1225D. What configuration did you set with your orange wire? For my own curiosity, where did you attach your blue wire?

 

I didn’t. I just taped them up and zip tied them to the wire bundle. Tacoma doesn’t have a smart alternator and I selected the standard 14.6v charging profile so the wires did not need to be connected.

 

Great, that's what I have. I have been reading all these threads about smart charging or not and has me second-guessing myself.

 

Yeah. I have seen folks say on here that we do and we do not have smart alternators. I fell back on Redarc where they show smart alternators having a sensor on the positive battery terminal that communicates back to the alternator. So figured we must not have one since we don’t have that.