Do I need a Wind Turbine Controller?

hozer

Ok I have a 600 watt Solar system with a 920AH battery bank and a 45 amp Tristar Solar Controller. Now I just got a 250 watt 8.5 amp small wind turbine. I want to use as a trickle charger. Will I need a wind Turbine controller or can I just hook up the cables to the battery.

Now if I need a controller I have a extra 20 amp MPPT Solar Controller. Can I use it on my Wind Turbine or do I have to buy a 10 amp Wind Turbine controller?

Thanks in advance!

Dave Angelini

You need the dump load to be as reliable as the charge controller.
The dump load needs to handle max current if you care about the battery.

mike95490

9 amps of wind turd into a 900ah flooded lead acid battery won't hurt a thing.
 Now if a gale comes up, and that turns into 40 amps, and no way to shut down the turbine......

Dave Angelini

How is it we know this is a flooded battery Mike?

mike95490

Dave Angelini said:

How is it we know this is a flooded battery Mike?

Exactly why I said flooded, only condition that would be marginally OK, and I'd be corrected if it was not.

hozer

mike95490 said:

9 amps of wind turd into a 900ah flooded lead acid battery won't hurt a thing.
 Now if a gale comes up, and that turns into 40 amps, and no way to shut down the turbine......

I don't use flooded batteries. I use those VMAX 155AH AGM deep cycle batteries. They do not require any equalization to be done.
Just a heads up!

Dave Angelini

Advice is only as good as the amount of info given. You must know how important it is to regulate the absorb voltage very, very accurately with an AGM!

Mikes comment is the case where a flooded battery can take overvoltage in short doses.  Good Luck!

mike95490

AGM, you are going to need a reliable (expensive) controller & Dump Load.  At least it's a small Dump Load,  Just a few minutes of overcharge will vent the AGM's so that's to be avoided at all cost.  It may be that instead of an expensive wind project, just add a couple more PV panels.

jonr

> You must know how important it is to regulate the absorb voltage very, very accurately with an AGM!

Including accurate temperature measurement and adjustment.

hozer

Well guys this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put a inline 10 amp switch. Now I also have my Tristar 45 amp meter that will tell me how may Volts, Amps and watts are going in the battery bank. If I see that if the amps are too high in the battery bank I'll put in a cheapy 10 amp controller. Now if I do end up needing a Wind Turd controller what would you guys recommend for a 8.5 amp controller?

mike95490

hozer said:

.... Now if I do end up needing a Wind Turd controller what would you guys recommend for a 8.5 amp controller?

Trace / Xantrex C-12 or C-20 controller, rock solid PWM and Diversion load.   You will need to develop a diversion load, I like the idea of a bank of halogen sealed beam headlights, awfully reliable, unlikely to ignite a fire.  That's the general problem with dump loads, they burn out or start a fire when the cooling ports are blocked.   Then without a dump load, the turbine overspeeds, boils the battery till the blades fly off.  Not pretty,

KMac

> @mike95490 said:
> 9 amps of wind turd into a 900ah flooded lead acid battery won't hurt a thing.
>  Now if a gale comes up, and that turns into 40 amps, and no way to shut down the turbine......

So are you saying that if had a brake for high winds, and it was either coming down from the generator in DC or he had a simple rectifier, he could just feed direct to his batteries because of the size of the bank? I ask because I have a similar situation of a 24v turbine that clamps a short at about 28mph winds, and also shorts at 26.2v. My battery bank is flooded Trojans 315 amps at 20 hour (24v). If I could just rectify, and then clamp it at 15 amps (about 28 mph) and not have a voltage limit I would be happier. I lose charge shutting down the turbine I at only 26.2v. The question is would it fry my batteries? My solar charging would sense battery charge and shut down if it happened while sunny, so it wouldn't double up.

BB.

KMac,

The above was 9 amps into a 900 AH battery bank--Or ~1% rate of charge. For flooded cell batteries, that is pretty close to a "trickle or maintenance" charge. The batteries will not overheat if let on that rate "forever". However, if the batteries where never cycled, they probably would use a fair amount of water, and the gassing would be hard on the plates (erosion, positive grid/plate corrosion because of Oxygen Gas forming on the positive plates, etc.).

If you have AGM batteries, the 1% "uncontrolled" rate of charge would probably cause them to eventually vent and possibly overheat the catalyst (if present) for recombining oxygen and hydrogent back into water. AGM and GEL batteries have a very low rate of self discharge and would not do well with a 1% continuous charge (days/weeks/etc.).

At 2% and above, feeding constant current into lead acid batteries is going to eventually overheat them (same problem with very many hours on Equalization charge which is typically around 2.5% to 5.0% rate of charge).

For your 315 AH battery bank, you would need to limit current to ~3.15 amps or less if "unregulated".

Your battery bank should charge at ~29.0 to 29.6 volts (absorb) for 2-6 hours or so (longer if down towards 50% state of charge or less).

26.2 volts is really just a float charging voltage--And will never fully/quickly recharge a lead acid battery bank. At that voltage, your charging current (for fully charge batteries) would typically be 1% to 0.01% rate of charge (limited by the battery bank at 26.2 volts charging). Newer batteries (and AGM) are lower... Very old flooded cell deep cycle batteries (like fork lift type) can tend towards 2% rate of float current--And at that level, the batteries should be replaced. Again, too high of charging current into a full battery bank can cause them to run hot/overheat or worse.

-Bill

mike95490

KMac said:

> @mike95490 said:
> 9 amps of wind turd into a 900ah flooded lead acid battery won't hurt a thing.
>  Now if a gale comes up, and that turns into 40 amps, and no way to shut down the turbine......

So are you saying that if had a brake for high winds, and it was either coming down from the generator in DC or he had a simple rectifier, he could just feed direct to his batteries because of the size of the bank? I ask because I have a similar situation of a 24v turbine that clamps a short at about 28mph winds, and also shorts at 26.2v. My battery bank is flooded Trojans 315 amps at 20 hour (24v). If I could just rectify, and then clamp it at 15 amps (about 28 mph) and not have a voltage limit I would be happier. I lose charge shutting down the turbine I at only 26.2v. The question is would it fry my batteries? My solar charging would sense battery charge and shut down if it happened while sunny, so it wouldn't double up.

Noooo !
  9A into 900Ah battery is about 1% charge rate. pretty safe for flooded batteries,
15A into 315Ah is about 5% charge and will boil flooded batteries and destroy AGM batteries (once the cells are full)

KMac

Thanks much. Right now it will charge some on windy days when the batteries are below full, which is maybe okay. Might be better than I thought if I am just supplementing the solar anyway.

Then again, while it seems to be working, it would be better if I could get it to charge at my temperature adjusted target voltages, and dump extra watts into diversion. Then I could use a crowbar to brake at high winds.

My solar uses a Morningstar mppt-60 and maybe I could get a small one (pwm) to work in conjunction with it, dumping the extra wind power into diversion. Anyone doing that? Anyone recommend a crowbar device to short at 15 amps?

mike95490

crowbar devices are generally voltage activated.   You have to be careful using a crowbar to short a wind turbine, the shorting load has to ramp up slow enough to allow the blades to slow and then stop.  If you throw a crowbar on the leads, you instantly lock the rotor and the blade momentum breaks everything
The older Trace / Xantrex C-40 controllers are rugged and designed for Load Diversion control mode.  You now need a good load to dump into.