Provided your existing controller has sufficient capacity then 'Yes'.
Solar controllers are always more effective closer to the batteries anyway, & those supplied fitted to the rear of panels are rarely of decent quality.
Apart from quality, as Cuppa said, controllers closer to the battery are more effective. This is because voltage loss before the controller matters little. Losing 1 volt from an 18 volt panel still feeds 17 volts to the controller. But lose 1 volt after the controller from say 14.4 charging volts to 13.4 volts means insufficient voltage to charge the battery. And with 5 meter leads, often undersized, there is much more opportunity for losses compared to the shorter cabling from controller to battery.
Brodie, in theory what they say is correct,.... 1 controller, .....close to battery,.....heavy duty wiring.
In practice,.....Kings 160W cheap folding panel, with PWM on back, 5.0m lead, small wiring and it pumps 21V into van via front Anderson Plug when facing the sun.
In actual fact when the battery is not that low, the solar controller in the van goes into over voltage-mode with the 300W panels on the roof pumping in as well.
Works for me, probably someone will say it could do better, but I'm fully charged up by 11am or so.
Thanks Bobbin, thats exactly me. Theres an anderson plug on the chassis and i have traced the wires to one of
The controllers - specifically the one that is only managing one panel on the roo whereas the other controller
Manages two panels.
So based upon your info i will run the folding blanket to the input on the chassis and see what happens.
Will only need it when the sun aint going too well.
