Expanding system

garynappi

It's been a few days, and I'm pretty happy with the exterior lighting and water feature pump setup I have, except that due to tree obscured sunlight and often cloudy / rainy days my 100w panel is not keeping my battery topped off. 

So, I have a second 20A PWM controller that I hope can be pressed into service as a (12vdc NOT AC) wind turbine controller in parallel with the one for the PV but only ONE controller to turn on and off the loads. 

I've read a number of articles and even one by the controller maker (in the instructions) that say the controllers can be used in parallel with a single battery bank but everything I read was to use two PV's not a PV and wind generator.

 Are there any no-no's or gotcha's with this type of setup? If this is a reasonable setup I can add my second and third water features and a water bubbler (for fish) to the system and likely more exterior lighting. Or will I have to use a wind controller along with the solar CC?

mcgivor

With wind it's my understanding that a diversion controller needs to be utilized to prevent overcharging, a dump load is typically used to divert any excess power the wind source may produced when not needed.

Estragon

My understanding is a solar charge controller shouldn't be used for wind unless specifically designed to do so.  AFAIK, wind controllers typically have a properly sized "dump load" (eg water heater) which is needed to load the turbine when batteries are full to prevent overspeeding, and/or other wind-specific features depending on the turbine used.

As far as having two sources charging a single bank, that's fairly common.

mike95490

Wind Turbines need a DUMP load, or a braking controller.  They can share a solar battery bank, but you can't use a solar controller for wind.  You will need a Diversion controller and a high wattage dump load 2x the size of the turbine (500w turbine = 1Kw dump load)

garynappi

Thanks all, I wrote a seller and he was gracious enough to reply and confirm what you all indicated.