No offense taken. Solar is a constant learning curve. I appreciate the insight. We bought the house 2 years ago and the seller installed new batteries before we closed. The house was build it 2010 and I was sure the old batteries were the original and they were dead.
We did add 1400w of panels facing West with an additional controller to keep the power going until Sunset.
These 6v batteries are in two strings of 4 wired in series to make a 24v system, then the two strings are wired in parallel. the old batteries were very similar in size but had three strings of four 6v. According to the Solar Company I consulted with after we moved in, adding a third string was not recommended per the battery manufacturer. The thought was to increase the storage capacity knowing that it would take longer to fully charge.
I do like the idea of using bus bars. I will have to look into that. Correct me if I am wrong, but I would only have the Two "Strings" of four wired into the bus bar. Each string would still be series with the ends connected to the bus?
I didn't notice it was a 24v battery bank. Yes, using bus bars, or just a common post connected to each string with equal length cables would work.
I'm really glad you're using 24v, much better than a 12v system for higher powered use like an entire house. What are you using for an inverter? If you haven't seen them yet, they have hybrid inverters now. The solar panels connect to this one unit, as well as the 24v battery bank, AC input and AC output. There's a big menu that you setup, pretty easy, to tell it which way the power flows. Solar to battery charging first, then if an AC load starts up, it puts out just enough to power it. If a 3,000 w load comes up, it puts as much solar as is available, then adds battery power if necessary. After the sun goes down, it automatically powers any AC loads from the battery. If you connect a generator, it charges the batteries first priority, if an AC load starts up, it passes the AC from the genny to the load. The beauty of it is, there is no switching between inputs and outputs. It all flows to or from the batteries to the AC loads seemlessly. As soon as the sun comes up, it automatically charges the batteries. It's a 60A MPPT solar controller, 80A AC battery charger and 3,000w inverter, all built into one unit. Instead of spending $3600 for a Victron inverter, or $2,000 for a Magnum inverter, these are only about $500-600 ea. I have 2 for each trailer, so they can provide 6,000w to the A/Cs and other AC loads in 240v split phase with an interface board. They have even larger ones that are 6500w per phase, but those are 48v inverters.
As for your solar panels, I'd recommend they all point to the south at the proper azimuth for your latitude. While the east facing panels catch more morning sun, the south panels also catch sun, almost as much, right at sunrise. By facing some to the east and west, they only catch optimal sun in the morning and afternoon. One large array pointing south would catch sun all day and optimal sun most of the day. Unless there's some reason like terrain that prevents a large array.
