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upgrading the panel cable:


The power box has a standard barrel connector on it for direct access to panel power, and it ships with a cable
that goes barrel to powerpole. Unfortunately, the wire in the cable is really thin. (20ga) Initially I was expecting
this to produce a lot of power loss, but after I did some math to see how much the thinner panel wire mattered,
I was surprised to find out that it really didn't help. Current is low (3.3 amps) and length is short (5ft) so at max
panel power, the thin cable only burns up less than 2 of the 60 watts the panel could produce. So that's not a
good enough reason to replace the cable.

One other problem I do have more experience with though is running thin wire out a PP35 powerpole housing.
This one uses a trick I sometimes do, using a PP35 "boot" as a strain relief, by running the thin (20ga) wires
out through a hole cut in the back of the boot. Even with this though, it can still be very easy to pull too much
on the wire when trying to disconnect the cable, and that can rip a thin wire out the back of the powerpole. I
found a higher quality (5ft) barrel pigtail on Amazon, and that's got much thicker (16ga) wire on it that I trust
to survive getting pulled on by the wire. I've already built up one replacement, and may build four more for
the other panels, since it would be incredibly annoying to have those wires break in the field.



barrel pigtail (in 12 volt DC)



last updated 05/24/2025 at 19:59:44 by make_www_index.command version 2025.05.20.B