Apr 19, 2026, 9:59 PMSpent the morning helping my dad finish up the wiring for four solar panels along the side of their house to feed into a pair of EcoFlows for the office and living room.
So as long as they don't use more than 1kWh overnight in either room, all the computers and network gear in the house is now solar powered and battery backed.
Apr 19, 2026, 10:01 PMThe solar panels were free, but unfortunately were too high of a voltage for the EcoFlows, so I got to dust off my experience as a solar test and applications engineer and we popped open the diode box on the back of the panel and disconnected one of the three strings of cells, so instead of it being a 350W panel with 65Voc, it's a 280W panel with ~47Voc and the EcoFlows are happy.
Apr 19, 2026, 10:48 PM@kwf could you rig in a 2s2p config?
30V but twice the amps?
Apr 19, 2026, 11:09 PM@M0YNG negative. The cells are wired in series inside the panel. The taps in the diode box are just for the shading bypass diodes, so you can only disconnect chunks of it.
Apr 19, 2026, 11:10 PM@kwf boo. Oh well, still more watts than you had before for zero money isn't bad
Apr 20, 2026, 1:28 PM@kwf Given your experience, got any good reading material for someone who wants to learn this stuff? We’re getting ready to build a new home and I want to at least understand how the solar install works, if not be able to service it myself. For background, I’ve got a computer engineering degree but it’s been awhile since I’ve used it. Not much experience with power engineering except at VLSI level, but like, I can read a circuit diagram.