On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 11:19:25 AM UTC-7, OHM Ω http://aviation.derosaweb.net wrote:
Diodes - @9B - Yep. Watch out for those lost volts. Regular 1N4xxx series diodes commonly used are even worse than Schottky! And you can also loose volts by using too small of wire (14ga for the main run), or too small of breakers. Breakers? Yes, breakers. Stick with 5A breakers or larger as even 4A breakers loose 0.3V and 1A breakers are awful loosing 1.1V (Klixon spec max voltage drop)!! Who knew?

Most new setups use Lithium batteries these days. Lithiums do a very good job of holding voltage until the bitter end. That makes the forward drop from a Schottky combiner pretty insignificant. Agree about the low amp breakers though.