AIR40 and Whisper-100 - Connect to Xantrex XW and grid-tied?

aj164

I am having a hard time verifying whether an AIR40 or a Whisper-100 can hook up to an existing Xantrex XW system, 48v, grid-tied. I see that I can hook them up to the 48V battery bank, but each has its own controller to prevent "overcharge". Will either of these generators output full power at the grid 'sell' voltage, or will the controller go into dump mode because the batteries appear to be full charged?

Thanks,
AJ

BB.

Re: AIR40 and Whisper-100 - Connect to Xantrex XW and grid-tied?

In Grid Tied mode (XW Hybrid inverter) and sell mode turned on... Just connect the turbines to the battery bank and the XW will be a very nice dump load controller.

If the XW sees the battery bank drop ~12.7 volts for XX Minutes, then it will assume the battery bank needs charging and let the battery bank voltage drift up to ~59 volts until it decides the bank is fully charged. Once the bank is "charged", the XW will bring the voltage down to ~53-54 VDC and sell "excess power" to the grid.

This gets a bit more complex when the XW is off line or running in Off Grid mode. In theory, you should have a second dump controller rated to the maximum expected from the wind turbines. Set the dump load to 59-60 volts, and it will turn on the dump load (typically resistance heater) and bring the voltage back down to float--And alternate the dump on/off cycle while the turbines exceed the load current into the battery bank.

If the wind turbines your looking at have some sort of RPM control (brake, feathering, furling, etc.) than can be controlled by a charge controller--that would probably be better/more accurate than throwing a dump load on the battery bank.

The solar panels and their charge controller should make their own decisions about battery state of charge and behave accordingly. If you have an XW MPPT controller--they may exchange state of charge information and coordinate the bulk/absorb/float state of charging (guessing--I don't know one way or the other--but they do talk on the shared data bus).

Things probably get a little "strange" if the XW is trying to charge to 59 volts and the dump controller is dumping at 58 volts--You could see the system just powering the dump loads. Calling Xantrex/Schneider directly, or one of their retailers (as a starting point) is probably a good idea (XW has all sorts of "sell modes" and settings--Don't understand the details of most of them).

-Bill