Well said Steve - those are my thoughts about why I'm going parallel. This is from the AM Solar web site:
"Case in point ... We have two customers who both have the same solar panels and controllers. They ended end up parking side by side in the desert by chance. One of them had four 100 watt solar panels in series and the other had four 100 watt panels in parallel. They decided to see how the two systems compared since they were both in the same climatic conditions. They looked at the charging amperage when both systems were in full sunlight with no shade on the panels and found the guy with the paralleled panels had a slightly higher charging amperage. Then they had their wives monitor the charging amperage while they went up on the roof of their RVs. They stood so that their shadows fell on one out of the four panels on each of the arrays. The guy with the four panels in series had a drop in charging amperage that was very dramatic, almost to the point of having none! The guy with the four panels in parallel found that his charging amperage only fell by one quarter. The three unshaded panels kept on cranking out their power. The message here is that in the world of RVs (where shade can happen depending on where you park and where you place the panels), it is better to have your solar panels wired in parallel.'
"Case in point ... We have two customers who both have the same solar panels and controllers. They ended end up parking side by side in the desert by chance. One of them had four 100 watt solar panels in series and the other had four 100 watt panels in parallel. They decided to see how the two systems compared since they were both in the same climatic conditions. They looked at the charging amperage when both systems were in full sunlight with no shade on the panels and found the guy with the paralleled panels had a slightly higher charging amperage. Then they had their wives monitor the charging amperage while they went up on the roof of their RVs. They stood so that their shadows fell on one out of the four panels on each of the arrays. The guy with the four panels in series had a drop in charging amperage that was very dramatic, almost to the point of having none! The guy with the four panels in parallel found that his charging amperage only fell by one quarter. The three unshaded panels kept on cranking out their power. The message here is that in the world of RVs (where shade can happen depending on where you park and where you place the panels), it is better to have your solar panels wired in parallel.'