A friend of mine has purchased several solar panels, some are 14V at 1 A, some are 24V at .5A , he has quite a bunch of them of them and wants to charge a 12V 250VA lead acid pack. He actually has 5 different panels with significantly different ratings. So the question becomes, in dealing with the different voltage ratings, parallel them or should I build a polyphase inverter and charge a inductor for each panel and dump them sequentially so each panel runs at maximum current without fighting each other. Any ideas so he gets the max bang for the buck? He started the project before consulting me, or I would have had him purchase one large panel instead of a pile of random junk.
Anybody worked this problem before? What happens when you wire a half amp panel in series with a one amp panel?
Its been 15 years since I have had to do current source math, so I'm a bit rusty,
Steve Roberts