charge controller

Yonas
Yonas Registered Users Posts: 1 ✭
in General Solar Power Topics #1

Hi all

I’m working on a project to charge a battery from AC and DC inputs, can I find a charge controller that can accommodate both AC and DC inputs which can use Commercial power and Solar power to charge a 48V battery?

Yonas

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  • BB.
    BB. Super Moderators, Administrators Posts: 33,613 admin
    #2
    A little more information would be helpful... In general, the source of the electricity does matter. Solar panels, the current can be just turned on and off without any problem (standard solar charge controller).

    Most home scale wind turbines (horizontal axis wind turbines) need a constant load on them. If the load "goes away" (turned off), the turbine can/will over speed in high winds and self destruct. Similar issue with water turbines. So, what is normally done is to use a shunt/diversion controller that turns on when the battery is full and dumps the excess power to a resistor/heater bank.

    You can install multiple charge controllers on one battery bank (one ac, one solar, etc.). As long as they are correctly wired and configured, they will work together fine.

    There are also minimum/maximum recommended charge controllers for battery bank (typically 5% to 13% for solar, you can go upwards of 20% with AC controller--But be careful, it is possible to overheat a battery bank with >13% rate of charge).

    If you need AC power--There are Inverter+Charger units that are pretty nice. And they may have one AC input (mains power) or even two AC inputs (mains and genset) and they can be programmed to work with solar power/DC charging.

    -Bill
    Near San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset
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