I'm a construction guy by profession, this is my first solar project. I have land on water a little ways from my house that I take my kids to fish and hang out at the dock I built them a couple years ago. I'm trying to build a dual 10" diffuser setup that is direct drive since there is not electric on the property. I'm fine with the pump only running on sunny days and not at night.
The components I have: I have 2-100 watt 12 volt Mono panels wired in parallel . They feed to the input side of a buck converter. The voltage output coming from the buck converter is adjustable. Ideally I'm shooting for a 14V output range. The positive wire on the output side goes to the input side of a low voltage disconnect. The negative wire from the buck converter attaches inside a wire nut, where the negative wire from the inverter also comes into, then splits off to the input side of the low voltage disconnect. On the output side of the low voltage disconnect the positive wire runs to the inverter. I have a Matala 120L 210V 130W 4.4 CFM pump plugged into the inverter. I want to stick with the AC pump because I have heard DC pumps have issues in temps below 0 degrees F. I live in central Iowa. We get extremes in both directions. All of these components are housed in a weather tight metal cabinet with a small fan that also connects to the inverter.
A picture of my set-up is attached.
The issues I'm having:
When in full sun I'm getting 20 volts of power out of the panels. I've got 14 volts coming out of the buck converter and the inverter powers up. When I hook anything up to the inverter the voltage drops and trips the low voltage disconnect. The computer fan won't even run. My low voltage disconnect is set up to disconnect at 12 volts with a difference value of 2. It's set to reconnect after 10 mins if the voltage is above 12V.
I'm sure at least one of my components is undersized.... which one is it?
