I have seen the spec's of the GT 3.0 needing at least 165 volts to power it up. The only way I see to do this is to put about 10 panels in series giving you (16.5v x 10) 165 volts, but the stock wiring on most panels would not carry the final amperage as far as I can see... This would also be around 800 watts (using 80w panels), or around 67 amps, needing very heavy gage wiring in place of the stock wiring.
What am I missing here? Thanks-

(I didn't post on the Xantrex thread because this is more theory than ready to go...)

When panels are in series, the voltage adds but the current stays the same. When panels are parallel, the voltage stays the same and the currents adds, so this is the basics that you are missing

The minimum operational voltage for the Xantrex GT3.0 is 195V and I would recommend nothing less than 220-230 vmp typical, or about 14 of the 80 watt panels 12volt nominal panels

Xantrex has a nice string sizing tool on their web-site, located at:
http://www.xantrex.com/support/gtsizing ... p?lang=eng


I used the above tool and it agrees with my guess, 14 12volt nominal panels would be the smallest array you could have, the current is only about 4.6 amps so I would use 10 gauge which is about 70 bucks for 500ft at home depot.

Solarguppy, thanks so much for this info. It is exactly what I was after!
Thanks too for this website, it has helped a lot so far-

-Rick-