There should be fuses near the battery to protect against short circuits in the wiring, but no fuses are required between the panels and the regulator, because the output of the panels is self limiting and the wires must carry all of the possible current.

Cheers,
Peter

Gus1949 wrote:

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EXA41 on the day I tested the panel it was sending 20.1 volts to the controller and the reading on the exit side of the controller (the feed that would have gone to the battery IF it was connected) was 20.1 volts. The controller was not changing the voltage at all but there was a 0.4 amp drop in ampage. This suggests to me that the controller is a dud but there may be something I just don't understand about controllers.

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HI Gus 

The problem could also be an open circuit  in the battery circuit

 Try connecting the battery

 

 

PeterQ

-- Edited by oldtrack123 on Friday 2nd of January 2015 11:50:24 AM

EXA41 on the day I tested the panel it was sending 20.1 volts to the controller and the reading on the exit side of the controller (the feed that would have gone to the battery IF it was connected) was 20.1 volts.

Mine reads like that. I understand that a load (ie battery) is required to give the input voltage to the battery. When you connect the battery and measure the voltage across the battery terminals it should be 12 to 15V depending on the battery state of charge. If it is 20V or more then the regulator might be a dual voltage 12/24V model. Most of these are auto-sensing so that would be unusual.
Re the alligator clips: I cut them off and replaced them with genuine Anderson plugs and then put short fly leads with Anderson plugs permanently attached to both the van and house batteries so I can feed solar into either.
Good luck