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How to Wire Solar Panel to 120-230V AC Load and Inverter?

Wiring PV Panel to UPS-Inverter, 12V Battery and 120-230V AC Load

In this very basic solar panel wiring installation tutorial, we will show how to connect a solar panel to the AC load through UPS/Inverter, charge controller. You will also know how to connect the PV panel to the battery and direct DC load as well.

We have used a single unit system i.e. an 120W, 12V solar panel, 100Ah, 12V battery and 120/230V Automatic UPS for auto ON/OFF operation of the system. You will need all the four basic components of a solar panel installation system e.g. PV panel, solar charge controller (PWM or MPPT), battery and an inverter.

The PV panel wiring can be used for both AC & DC loads. AC load can be powered by UPS/Inverter where it uses the storage energy in the battery as backup power. It can also be used without the battery if you don’t need the backup (stored) power later at night or shading. This way, the solar panels will direct power up the AC load via Online UPS. In addition, the DC load can be directly connected to the charge controller (only DC load terminals).

The following solar panel wiring diagram shows that an 120W, 12V solar panel is directly connected to the 12V charge controller. Battery and inverter are connected to the battery terminals (Positive & Negative) of the charge controller. DC load is also connected to the DC output terminal of the charge controller. The 120V or 230V AC load (i.e. fan and lights etc) is connected to the UPS output terminals.

How to Wire Solar Panel to 120-230V AC - Wiring PV Panel to UPS-Inverter, 12V Battery & 120-230V AC Load

The whole system can light up both AC and DC loads at the same time. Keep in mind that use the rated and well designed system according to your needs as you know that a single PV panel and battery won’t support that much load. In addition, The charging time and rate of the battery will be too low due to other loads connected to the PV panel at once. To avoid the overload conditions. you will have to connect multiple units (solar panels and batteries) in series, parallel or combination of series and parallel connection depends on your system requirements.

For this reason, you will have to find how much wattage solar panel do you need and what is the required amount of backup power stored by later for later use etc. We have covered up all the details in previous posts (links added in this post for more explanation).

The good thing is that all the power changing process (from solar power to battery and vice versa) is fully automatic due to automatic UPS wiring and you don’t need to use an extra manual or automatic changeover or auto transfer switch to transfer the power between batteries and solar panels to the load points.

Related Solar Panel Wiring & Installation Diagrams:

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19 Comments

    1. Hi Shephie,

      You can increase voltage by putting a step up transformer but the power would remain the almost same ( a little lesser actually due to losses).

      For example you can convert 110V AC to 220V but the current would drop to half.

  1. Can I hook up my solar panel directly to a ups without a battery because I only want to use it during the day time and no back-up for night.

  2. I have 2000w inverter ,800watts solar panel and also 20A charger controller ,though i bought the charger controller before i got your site , i can change the controller to bigger one if recommended. But,i did not get the wiring of how to connect solar panel directly to sunlight in the day time. I have also search everywhere on your site to check proper connections but i cant find it.

  3. How many batteries do i need to connect to my 230 watts solar panel,and what sort of gadgets can i connect to my system, i.e. TV, computer, decoder, 5 bulbs etc.

  4. for this wiring, if we take the input of inverter not directly from the battery but from the 12 Vdc output of controller… what will happen? what are the pros and cons? thx..

    1. This way, you will only be able to power up the DC 12V load. You won’t be able to charge the battery quickly. If there is no battery at all, You can only power up the DC load during normal sunshine / day time. In other words, without battery, you won’t be able to power up the AC or DC load during shading/night.

  5. Excellent graphic showing the wiring arrangement for the 120 W solar panel, and I especially appreciate the link to your other article concerning how much wattage solar panel do you need. What type of electrical wiring would one want to use to connect the solar panel(s) to the charge controller and then inverter for the DC to AC conversion? Also thankful for the section highlighting the differences between connecting the solar panels via series or parallel connections. Thank you for the time and effort you put into this article for those of us that don’t do this all the time.

  6. Hi I live in South Africa and have a home back up system, two 100ah 12v Lithium batteries a 24v balancer/equalizer and a mecer 24v inverter, Inverter is plugged into the mains 220v, power off inverter on via battery, because our electricity supply is so unreliable here, I want to hook up solar panels to help charge the batteries, how do I do this, the inverter has no solar input, and what size panels would I need Hope you guys can help Kind regards Robbie

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