Most solar panels on the market come with pre-installed PV connectors that look like these:
To connect our solar panels or arrays of solar panels to a charge controller, we need to know how to crimp PV connectors onto wire to make extensions and that’s exactly what we are going to cover here in lesson #7 of this Wire Terminals playlist.
PV Connectors – VIDEO
Crimping PV Connectors – Tools
What are the differences between the two halves of a PV connector?
PV connectors are a little confusing, because at first glance, this seems like a ‘male’ connector and this seems like a ‘female’ connector for semi-obvious reasons. Don’t come after me; that’s just what they are called.
But on the inside, there is a pin and socket that is backwards from what the outside appears; so when I’m making PV connectors, instead of trying to simply remember which is which, I’m just going to look at what I have available, and install the opposite. Let’s keep moving and you’ll see what I mean:
What Crimpers are best for PV Connectors?
The metal electrical connectors inside of a PV connector is called an ‘open barrel connector’, which looks like a ‘U’ shape.
This is the crimper that we use for open barrel terminals like PV connectors, and I’ll leave a link HERE.
The jaws of this connector have a ‘U’ shape on one side and an m shape on the other.
We put the ‘U’ part of the terminal on the ‘U’ part of the crimper, and when we squeeze the crimper handles, the crimper rolls the terminal into basically two crimps, pushing the wings of the connector to the middle.
And here’s how that works with a wire in place:
- Put the terminal into the crimper
- Put the stripped wire into the terminal
- Squeeze the crimper until the crimper releases
- Give the terminal a tug to make sure it’s secure
It’s also worth noting that these crimpers have 3 spaces, the largest is for 10-12 AWG Wire, middle for 12-14 AWG, and the smallest for 16-18 AWG. We only install 10 AWG PV wire and PV connectors in EXPLORIST.life system designs, so we only use the biggest space of the crimpers.
How to Make a PV Connector
If you buy a PV connector, it will come with 4 pieces:
- Male Electrical Terminal
- Female Electrical Terminal
- Male Connector Housing
- Female Connector Housing
Coming from a solar panel, we have two connectors:
- The Positive wire is almost always has a Male Connector Housing
- The negative wire almost always has a Female Connector Housing.
If we look inside of each, we notice that:
- The Male connector housing has a Female Electrical Terminal
- The Female connector housing has a Male Electrical Terminal
So to make our extension wires and crimp on the proper ends, I’m just going to look at what’s here, and install the opposite onto my wire. If I’m making a wire that connects to the positive PV wire, I’m going to look inside of the Male connector housing and see the Female Electrical Terminal and then I’m going to:
- Crimp a Male Electrical Terminal onto my new wire
- Then I’m going to loosen the collar of a Female Connector Housing
- Push it over the Male Electrical Terminal until it clicks
- Then tighten the strain relief collar.
As a heads up, once the plastic housing is clicked onto the metal terminal; there’s no easy way to remove it and if you mess up, you’ll need to bank on cutting it off and trying again; so don’t mess up.
For the negative wire, I’ll repeat the process, just opposite.
- Crimp a Female Electrical Terminal onto my new wire
- Then I’m going to loosen the collar of a Male Connector Housing
- Push it over the Female Electrical Terminal until it clicks
- Then tighten the strain relief collar.
With both ends crimped and assembled, we can connect them to the pre-connected wires of the solar panels:
These simply click into place like so:
And if you need to disconnect them, you can just squeeze these little tabs on the side of the Male Connector housing and pull to release it.
And ‘here’ is a cheatsheet for which connectors go with which housings.
PV connector vs MC4 Connector
MC4 Connector is just a specific model of PV connector made by Staubili; much like how Kleenex is just a brand name of tissue paper, and I’ve called these PV connectors instead of MC4 connectors throughout this video because if I show a non-Staubili brand, and call it an MC4 connector; Staubili come after me for trademark infringement. Ask me how I know.
Conclusion
Now we are going to be putting PV connectors on a lot of wires throughout the rest of this academy, so be sure to bookmark this lesson for future reference and come back to it if you need a refresher because going forward, I’ll just assume that you now know how to crimp and assemble a PV Connector.
