College EE kid in TX, made and sold a PCB for wind MPPT, tested it in real life before posting, posted here and at gotwind, not very long ago. I teased him about a cloud over his part of TX on weather channel radar, and spending the rest of his life working at McDonalds, and how I was too old to know what he was talking about.
I think of him as "SW-44"-something. May have been ham radio related. How I think of him is "S&W .44 Mag". Good luck with that! I am not so good with names.
His circuit may be exactly what you seek.
Sorry to S&W-44. It'll happen when you get past 45? G-[ Parent ]
Personally, I like the Colt .44
My purpose for posting is to say that user is S4W2099 and his Diaries with the ongoing saga are over here:
http://www.fieldlines.com/user/s4w2099/diary
Tom
"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned."--Mark Twain[ Parent ]
I'll stick with my 7.5" Super Blackhawk in .44, and it is in blue because I am old school. Sometimes my blueing wears a bit thin. G- [ Parent ]
Personally, I like the .45 Long colt ;)
Anyhew . . . thanks for the link, sw4's posts are interesting, even if they are over my head mostly :)
To Tom, and everyone else. Previously I had been under the impression that winds here top out at around 60 mph, but recently learned that winds here during storm events can exceed 80mph(even if the weather channel says otherwise). This is probably how a lot of the wind turbines in this area end up dead door nail. Not just the cheesy Mallards, etc. Winds here are not always very high, but when they do blow I would have to say that 20-25mph would be fairly common. Monsoon season is altogether a different story . . . and winter here can be rough too.
Again, let me reiterate; I am very electronics newb. Also, it probably looks as though I am bouncing around here from one idea to the next(which I probably am), but I am looking for a decent output 'bulletproof' design. What I consider decent output is ~500w at ~25mph, and something that will give me ~10 amps in winds of ~15mph(less than 15mph would be good too). How the buck controller figures in here, is that I have read that you can use them to help stall the machine, which I am thinking coupled with a small-ish machine, and furling could help avoid a catastrophic failure. Also, I am under the impression that a buck converter could help keep an alternators efficiency higher than just dropping the output directly into a regular charge controller(we use Xantrex C60's here) Maybe a boost controller could be used to stall an alternator ? I honestly do not know, but I do see the appeal of running a delta configured coil set, with a boost controller to extract low speed winds.
My very basic concerns are that I do not want to build something(especially from scratch), spending hard earned cash, only to see a storm event rip it to shreds. As Flux has said in one of my previous posts, perhaps I am over thinking things, and worrying too much ? I always like to err on the side of caution though . . .it is just in my nature. Extracting every last bit of power that I can is of course a plus.
Either way, and whatever I do; I am learning much from the comments this post is receiving (and many, many more from searches), and I do appreciate every-single-comment from you all. [ Parent ]
DE stuff is just too bulky and heavy.
Smaller output 24/7 is better than larger output 1/25? G-[ Parent ]
I am working now on true MPPT in buck mode and it is looking great so far. I am waiting for some solar panels to make a high voltage array and actually test it hard. I ordered 4 of those cheap Chinese harbor freight like panels to connect in series. That would allow long thin wire runs with very little losses.
Some PICs here: http://www.fieldlines.com/comments/2008/9/1/15516/83721/19#19
Right now I have made tests with bench top power supply and single 12V panel into discharged batteries. There are increases but not that much with that input voltage because when the batteries are approaching a decent charge state the MPP at that temperature can be below battery voltage or very near, making the gain minimal or even loose some. It was a very hot day when I tested with the solar panel.
New panels get here on monday, so sometime next week I will make a post about it. One thing I did noticed is that the buck converter approach was much more expensive than boost converter because of the driving that needs to be done. But regardless of the topology being used the concept of finding the max power point is the same with the "Perturb and Observe" algorithm. That is the formal name for it and it does have the speed problem that flux was talking about. There are other methods of doing this that can be used for fast changing conditions, but I still know very little about them. I will be researching that soon.[ Parent ]
