The currents from the panel are not of importance as these are not at the lower voltages the controller outputs to the battery. A half decent controller will output quite a lot higher currents than it receives from the panel.
Watts is a multiplication of Volts and Amps, so if you divide the Watts you are handling by the lowest voltage you could ever be at it gives you the maximum current [Amps] handled. So lets us take a bright sunny day with a pretty depleted battery keen to receive anything going. Than could mean it is way down at 12.5 volts maybe lower.
So 160 Watts divide by 12.5 Volts = 12.8 Amps.
As the battery gains charge this progressively moves up to 14.4 volts, so the current drops to 160/14.4 = 11.1 Amps
So the controller is overloaded; the only thing saving it will be some cloud etc where the panels yield could be much lower.
Morningstar do make excellent controllers , both mine are, but they are far from the budget priced unit being shown here.
Yes you need to select by amperage and to be safe use 12 volts as your reference; so in this case with 160 Watts of panel look for at least 160/12 = 13.33 Amp unit.
Watts is a multiplication of Volts and Amps, so if you divide the Watts you are handling by the lowest voltage you could ever be at it gives you the maximum current [Amps] handled. So lets us take a bright sunny day with a pretty depleted battery keen to receive anything going. Than could mean it is way down at 12.5 volts maybe lower.
So 160 Watts divide by 12.5 Volts = 12.8 Amps.
As the battery gains charge this progressively moves up to 14.4 volts, so the current drops to 160/14.4 = 11.1 Amps
So the controller is overloaded; the only thing saving it will be some cloud etc where the panels yield could be much lower.
Morningstar do make excellent controllers , both mine are, but they are far from the budget priced unit being shown here.
Yes you need to select by amperage and to be safe use 12 volts as your reference; so in this case with 160 Watts of panel look for at least 160/12 = 13.33 Amp unit.