I recently bought a pair of solar panels from batteryhookup

Didn’t read what they were, and just assumed they’d work.

I found out the they used the MC3 connector; my system only has MC4

And the Voc was 46.2V, which in series was higher than the max VOC of my cheap solar charge controller.

Not having the correct part I rigged something together; alligator clips and wire, which worked but is dangerous. Once I sorted it out, I checked the VOC and it was around 113V. My charge controller said it should only handle a max of 90. I figured that the panels wouldn’t really get to the point of causing an issue; there is a bit of damage and it was cloudy

After watching the setup for a bit, I let it gather some rays. I came back about 5 minutes later and it was showing zero volts going into my battery; I knew couldn’t be full. There was a bit of smell and little bit of smoke. I quickly disconnected everything.

For some reason I deiced to try again with only one panel. Th LCD screen didn’t come on, but it started to smoke again so I decided to unplug the system.

I took the charge controller to my workbench to take it apart. I quickly found the issue, the varistor was blackened and deformed; though I didn’t know what it was at the time