battery charging

Re: battery charging

Whoa.
You can add charge sources to increase the maximum rate of charge up to a point.
You have eight GC2's at about 220 Amp hours @ 6 Volts each. What is the system Voltage? If it is 12 (like so many of those horrible AIMS inverters) then you have 880 Amp hours. In theory this could take the full 65 Amps output of the charger (7% peak rate). You could use 88 Amps 'ideally' and as much as 176 maximum (but not sustained).

If the same batteries are configured on a 24 Volt system the 65 Amps becomes almost 15% charge rate and things get dicey because it would be closer to full current more of the time.

So when you add charge sources you have to combine their maximum current and see how that compares to the battery capacity. You do not want a sustained current over 15% for most batteries as the heat created will shorten their lifespan. (AGM's can take higher current than flooded cells.)

Re: battery charging

Your main problem is low sunlight. Even if you put up a massive array and limit the combined current to not exceed battery maximum the panels won't produce without light. Up here where the total daylight shrinks to 6 hours in Winter solar is a no-go on its own because as you have found trying to jam all the power you need for a day into a set of batteries over the course of one or two hours of good daylight just can not work.

So you have a 440 Amp hour 24 Volt battery bank. If you were to 'max out' the solar on that you'd have an 80 Amp controller and about 2500 Watts of array. All the while it is sunny about half of that would be doing nothing.

As such it is sensible to want to utilize wind. Here you can go the other way, if you can count on a steady breeze sufficient to produce any real power. Take into account average load current draw and add that to a 5% minimum charge rate. Say it comes to 2 Amps for the loads plus 22 Amps for charging @ 5% or 24 Amps @ 24 Volts: 576 Watts minimum. As such your 800 Watt turbine idea is good, providing the wind can power it at about 75% of its maximum capacity. That will require some careful wind measuring before you buy the turbine, otherwise you're just tossing money away.

Another thing that should be examined is why does it take your generator and 65 Amps charger 8 hours to replenish the batteries? At that high of a rate they should be brought back up very quickly indeed, unless: A). they are being discharged too deeply; . there are loads eating up a significant portion of the charge current; C). there is something drastically wrong in the wiring.

I would start by rechecking the daily load demand and see how it compares to battery capacity (which would be up to 4.8 kW hours AC). Then check all the batteries to see if they are getting fully charged or if there may be a problem with wiring/individual cell.

My system can recharge 232 Amp hours that have been depleted 50% in about two hours at 25 Amps peak current. Something is amiss if a 65 Amp charger can't raise 440 Amps hours in the same time. Perhaps the inverter-charger is not set right or is defective. Being an AIMS that would not surprise me.