Hybrid solar and wind system

otito

Hello,
I am new to this forum and so far, I can't stop reading the threads. I have a solar panel, a battery, two charge controllers and a wind turbine. I will like to run these two components ( PV and wind turbine) at thesame time and was wondering if someone can help me with the connections and the use of fuses. I thought of using one charge controller for each component and connecting the two charge controller output (battery lead) in parallel to the battery. Any answer will be helpful. Thanks

stephendv

Re: Hybrid solar and wind system

The manual for your charge controller will describe how to connect them. The important thing about the wind turbine is that you need a diversion charge controller as well as a dump load to divert any surplus energy, do you have these?

waynefromnscanada

Re: Hybrid solar and wind system

And what do you have for a wind turbine? I hope for you're sake it's not a Skystream!
http://forum.solar-electric.com/showthread.php?4981-Truth-About-Skystream-amp-SWWP

otito

Re: Hybrid solar and wind system

I am using the Air-X wind turbine and osm72m solar panel. I have one tristar mppt 45 charge controller and another bluesky Solar Boost 1524iX. Both of them don't mention about using diversion charge controller and lump load. Instead they use the 4 stage charging (bulk, Absorption, float and equalization) for charging and discharging the battery, even during overcharge.

Cariboocoot

Re: Hybrid solar and wind system

otito wrote: »

I am using the Air-X wind turbine and osm72m solar panel. I have one tristar mppt 45 charge controller and another bluesky Solar Boost 1524iX. Both of them don't mention about using diversion charge controller and lump load. Instead they use the 4 stage charging (bulk, Absorption, float and equalization) for charging and discharging the battery, even during overcharge.

The diversion/dump load is for regulating the output from the wind turbine. Either of the controllers you have will work fine for solar, but not for wind (except possibly the TriStar - I've never looked at using one of the MPPT versions and a diversion controller).

The panel(s) to battery connection is fairly straight forward. The wind turbine would be connected directly to the batteries, and the diversion controller is attached to the batteries and feeds the dump load with any power the turbine produces once the batteries are fully charged. This is necessary because the turbine must always have a load on its output to keep it from flying apart - literally. Take a look at the bottom of this data sheet for the PWM version of the TriStar to get an idea of the basics: http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/wind-sun/TSdatasheet.pdf

One question: do you actually have enough wind available to make it worth the effort to put the AirX up? Chances are it isn't going to supply much power because the wind will be too light most of the time.

waynefromnscanada

Re: Hybrid solar and wind system

Just a heads up on small scale wind in general, as Cariboocoot mentioned "Chances are it isn't going to supply much power because the wind will be too light most of the time."
Beyond that, I have experience with both small wind and solar and can give this report:
Very few and far between were the days when I received any useable power at all from the wind turbine. On the other hand, very few and far between were the days when I didn't receive at least some useful energy from solar.
The turbine was indeed a beautiful thing to watch, and I loved to lay back in the tall grass, stare up into the clear blue sky and "watch the wheels go round", but the only time I got any useful power from the turbine was in the Fall when tropical storms would come up the East coast. Unfortunately, it was also during those times when the turbine screamed like a deranged Banchee and I fully expected the USA to initiate a midnight military response to my turbine blades flying over the border on their way to the White House.
After the second year I took it down and concentrated on solar.

otito

Re: Hybrid solar and wind system

Thanks everyone for your help and links. Thanks for the link to Ts-45. I was wondering if I can use the pole of the wind turbine or the battery enclosure as a resistive load. Any practical tip on that will be helpful. Yeah, it is pretty windy here in the east coast ( though no actual measurement was taken using a wind gauge). I did the calculation for the current entering the battery and it turns out to be too large.((36.81/12x8.15=25A max) based on calculation from solar boost + (20A max based on information from the wind turbine data sheet)). I did the calculation based on the connections from the wind turbine data sheet. The battery datasheet does mention about the maximum current input. Please see link below.

Battery->http://www.rolls-battery.com/pdf/S12-240AGM.pdf
Booster->http://www.blueskyenergyinc.com/uploads/pdf/BSE_SB1524iX_datasheet.pdf
Wind turbine->http://www.windenergy.com/sites/all/files/3-CMLT-1333%20REV%20C%20MANUAL%20-%20OWNERS%20-%20AIR%20BREEZE.pdf

ggunn

Re: Hybrid solar and wind system

otito wrote: »

... it is pretty windy here in the east coast ( though no actual measurement was taken using a wind gauge).

Red flag.

Unless you have done a wind study of a year or more with accurate instrumentation at the location and elevation you are considering, you are taking on significant risk in installing any sort of wind turbine. Just because the wind blows your hat off does not mean that it is adequate to drive a turbine and generate enough electricity to even pay for itself, much less make any money for you. If you don't do your homework, you won't pass the test.

Cariboocoot

Re: Hybrid solar and wind system

"I was wondering if I can use the pole of the wind turbine or the battery enclosure as a resistive load."

That has me worried. Exactly how do you think you would do this? Energize an exposed metal surface? Not good. Besides which the resistance value of the pole would be negligible; enough so to make it a dead short which would not be good.
Battery enclosure? First question: why are the batteries surrounded by metal? That is also not good.

"Pretty windy", as Wayne can tell you, is not what you want for a turbine. Too often that which feels like a lot of wind to us mere humans is only a zephyr to a turbine. And then it goes to the opposite extreme and the turbine flies to bits. Neither is acceptable. For wind to be successful it wants steady air movement.

You have one 215 Amp hour 12 Volt battery? In that case around 20 Amps peak current would work fine for recharging in most cases. An AGM can usually take considerably more current than the 10% capacity middle-of-the-road figure. Of course it will also depend on how deeply you discharge it and how much sun you get and what sort of reserve capacity you need. In terms of solar panels only you'd want roughly 300 Watts.

The AirX has in the past been known for somewhat exaggerated output expectations, just so you know. As a rule it is not a good idea to rely on sun + wind for recharging, but rather to have enough PV to recharge on a good day and view any current from wind as a bonus available when the sun isn't. These two weather conditions usually coincide; low sun, more wind.

otito

Re: Hybrid solar and wind system

Hey Cariboocoot, thanks for the advice. Yes I have two 12V batteries. I just realized that I can use the two batteries in series as a 24V system and thereby saving more energy in the energy conversion of the mppt for the solar panel from 36.81 to 24V rather than 36.81 to 12V. I was wondering how to make the changes on the Air breeze, to be used for 24V instead of 12V, since it's maximum voltage rating is 17V. This change can be made on Air 402 models. Was wondering if someone ever made the changes on the Air breeze.