After you've connected the charge controller with the battery, it is now safe to connect it to panels. Out of the junction box of a panel come two cables, a positive and a negative. In some situations it's just two wires that go straight to the controller. More often, there are so-called MC4 connectors on each end, a "male" connector for the positive cable and "female" for the negative one.
1. Connect MC4 connectors with a complementary pair of connectors with wires on other ends. If you have two wires coming out straight of the junction box, skip this step.
2. Plug these wires into the regulator: positive into "plus", negative into "minus".
3. Once you've connected the panels to the controller, it should be able to recognise them. Check the status of your array on the charge controller screen.
4. PV modules start to generate electricity as soon as they face the sun.
Here's the diagram, which gives an idea on how to connect these parts of a solar panel system together. We have one
12V KiloVault solar battery, one
96A Midnite MPPT-controller and two
330W Panasonic solar panels.