newbie with most cost effective way to control question

[pellets4fuel]

Hey! My name is David, and earlier this year I got the privilege to take a one on one class with Dan B and build a 12foot machine.  I got to do it at a place where he was working on a couple of other units 21ft I think, so I got to help stand a tilt up tower, and see the balance of a very sophisticated system. 
I have 120ft tower built for my unit based off the homebrew book, and what I saw helping tilt one up.  Anyway, where I am at is what is a good way to hook the thing up, and what are some cost effective components to use?  I looked at using a Clipper, and a Classic at the advice of Chris O.  I may spend that money at some point, but until I know what my output is going to be on my site I would like to spend less.  I have a couple of TS 45s here and they can be used in diversion mode, but if I am reading the manual right they are undersized.  To be safe your suppose to only go 2/3 of the max rating, so about 30v.  Dan said my turbine is about a 1200w unit wound for 48v.  I know that is only 25amps, but what if a guy gets some high winds.  I am thinking you could blow up that TS45 (may be wrong).
I actually have two of them, but I don't think you can parallel them to increase input, only to do more than one control feature.  I want to dump into water heaters.  But I also would like something in place that if your winds are too high like in a storm somehow the turbine will auto brake in case I'm not there to throw a switch.  And I want all this for a cheap as possible to start   Looking for ideas.  I have to forewarn you though I am electrically challenged You start talking "oh it's simple do this, and then put a SSR here, and let this control that, and then daisy chain 3 water heater elements together" your going to loose me I need someone with some patience willing to take me by the hand, and perhaps draw me a picture or two to help me out.  I have spent two days (almost full) on the computer watching youtube diy, reading forum posts, trying to learn, and what I come up with is either too simple of video's that don't go into enough knowledge to learn anything just people showing off what they have, or too technical that I don't get it.  Don't have an engineering degree, just a mechanical aptitude.
thanks in advance!
David

[SparWeb]

Hi
I don't know why this has gone without any answer for so long.  Hope it's better late than never.

The TS45 is a good unit, and it might be "just enough" for your 12-ft turbine.  Depends on the batteries that you'll be tying it to, and to the total resistance of the water heaters you get hooked up. 

Once you select a 48V turbine then you have (by default) chosen a range of operation in voltage for other parts of the system.  The batteries, of course, hooked up for 48V will actually be charged at up to 60 volts (less if gel/sealed cells).  The diversion controller, such as your TS45, will be diverting from the batteries, because it's really just monitoring the battery voltage, not so much watching what the turbine is doing.  So the TS45 will also see voltages up to 60V, and regulate an amount of current necessary to keep the voltage to its set-point. 

Considering what I just said, I can make a quick estimate of the size of the water heater load.
Since it's a resistance load, then it has to have a resistance such that enough current can actually flow.
Starting with a 1200W turbine (bear in mind: a rough estimate) then

1200 W / 60V = 20 Amps  (if the batteries are full at 60V)
1200 W / 50V = 24 Amps  (if the batteries are not full but other conditions cause the TS45 to divert anyway)

Is 24 Amps within the allowable range of the TS-45?  Yes.

Could there be more than 1200 Watts to be diverted?  Yes.  Storms and gusts can come along.
Since there is a 40% margin in the capability of the TS-45, you are probably OK.

Now what to do with the diversion load...  Since we've already specified that it operates around 60V and must divert at least 20 Amps, then Ohm's law says:

60V / 20A = 3.0 Ohms

But to deal with the other situation I also listed:
50V / 24A = 2.1 Ohms

I think a 2-Ohm resistance in the water heating diversion load would be the starting point.  Refine the estimate as you select things like batteries (and learn what their maximum bulk and float voltages are).

[clockmanFRA]

I agree with SparWeb.

I have 3off Hugh Piggotts design of 12 footers. DC charging to a 48v battery system. They have been up 8 years, 6 years, and 3 years.

I have seen 45 amps at 61volts for just a brief second in hurricane conditions, before the turbine furled away.

I have 4off TS45's set for diversion load, each diversion load is 2kw at about 1.8 ohm to 2 ohm.

I have found the TS45 extremely robust and does the job. If one TS45 is maxed out, then another comes in and starts dumping and so on. For some reason one TS45 will always do the majority of the work.

The only down side with the TS45 controller set in dump/diversion mode, is that it only stores data on what is dumped, and not what is produced, so you will need a separate power/watt meter to see what your Turbine is producing.

Remember  2kW of dumping means that the Load, here I use Air heaters up at the house, gets hot, I mean HOT, so hot that the heaters should not be attached or near anything combustible.

As you can see I use 2 different types of load. Nichrome 4mm dia wire type, and the big 1 ohm resistor type.

 In the last photo the Heater unit 4kW on the right, is a bit to close to that chair.......

Trust this helps.

[pellets4fuel]

Hey guys,
Thanks for the replies.  I just seen them here today.  When I get back at this project that is the way I will approach it then.  I have the two TS-45 here, so might as well.  I had talked to tech support at Morningstar also, and read the install manual some more, so I really feel I have a pretty good understanding of most of it.
SparWeb-as far as batteries go I am going to start with a new 48volt bank of Rolls S550.  I can get them new from a guy locally for 300each.  So 428amp hours.
As far as the rest of the system, still learning a putting that together.  I purchased a good used inverter from an installer last fall.  Little worried though, as I read a post on a different forum not so long ago where a guy was planning a system for emergency off grid.  He was going to put "X" amount of solar panels in (maybe 1500w) and use a 5000w inverter to pull out of his batteries.  Replies came back that he was going to use way to big of inverter for what he was going to produce.  What he was going to produce wouldn't support the inverter size.  I bring this up because this inverter I bought is a 5k.  I guess I want to hopefully somewhat understand why they told him that? 
Clockman-thanks for the advice and pics of your heaters.  Probably going to go with heating water though.  Same principle applies though.  Hugh has some good info on his site also on using the TS45.  Found it after I posted this a couple months back.
David

[SparWeb]

Good start then.

When weighing opinions you've read, like the one you mention about solar and inverter size, you should consider how relevant the advice is you your own priorities.
In a battery-based system, ask yourself these questions:

Size the solar and wind to keep the batteries at float every day, accounting for a bit of cloud, a day or two without wind, and make up for the amount of power you expect to use in a day (plus a little margin for error).
Size the batteries to hold the amount of energy you'll use every day (plus that margin), then double it, then add a little more margin.
Size the inverter to deliver the peak power that you can possibly use (did I mention that you should add a margin there too?).

Other questions, such as the size of the inverter relative to the size of the solar array, are second in importance.  Especially in a battery-based system.

If you want an example.  Look at my own signature line.  Compare my solar to my battery size.  They'd be way out of whack if I used my batteries heavily. Since I don't, and I just need this stuff for back up and lights in a few remote buildings, I'm OK.

[pellets4fuel]

So I had put this project on hold here for sometime due to some other things coming into play.  I am getting back at it with hopes of finally getting it up and running as a learning system to build on. 
So I thought I would just try to revive this older thread, and hopefully get some more input to glean from on top of what I already got.
As this has been on hold most has stayed the same.  I don't think I ever mentioned that this was going to be a combined system of solar and the wind generator.

The panels I have consist of 8 185w panels with a VMP of 36.9, VOC of 44.75, IMP of 5.014, and ISC of 5.54.  It was suggested to me to do 4 sets of two panels into a combiner box, and onto one input breaker of the MPPT in the MM5000 I have.  So this works out to around 74volts 5ish amps per string combined for 74volts 20ish amps total.  I don't seem to find a temp coefficient % on the panel label, but did find on Midnight Solar's web page a chart they use for temp considerations.  I'm taking a pretty worse case scenario and saying in WI we could see a full sun day at -40F in winter.  Our 100 year record low is -50F, and that is far north from where we are at in the state.  The chart shows using a multiplier of 1.25 on the VOC number.  So in my case the VOC would be almost 90*1.25=112.5v

So I did mention in the one post that I bought a working used 5k inverter from someone.  It's the Advanced Energy MM5000.  The manual shows 120 input max.  Beacon power bought Advanced energy out, and when Beacon made the M5 (very similar to the MM5000) they lowered max to 110.  The inverter being multi-mode has the MPPT built in so should I even be thinking about hooking it up, or go with a different MPPT and just use the inverter portion of the MM5000?  Directions for either model don't go into that type of application. Was going to use the MM5000 as stand alone, solar charging/inverting, no grid connection.

As far as batteries.  At the caution of more than one person saying newbies trash there first set of batteries, Im decided to go with GC2 series batteries bought a local big box store,  (Menards or Costco) for a starting set rather than the RS batteries.  Something I am confused on though is the rather vague manual for the MM5000 makes next to no mention of battery selection other than saying out of the box it is configured to manage a 48volt bank of sealed maint free lead acid batteries, and the GC2 batteries are not maint free, and I don't know if this is going to make a difference.  Is it in the fact that it would be a different amount of stages to the charging cycle?

Then onto the whole diversion thing which I started this thread with.  So If my mind is grasping this right, being set up this way I will probably have next to no times that I will be diverting anything.  It' only going to be those rare occasions of high wind, wind that would take the turbine above absorption voltage of what 59 or 60vdc maybe?  I would have to make sure that the TS45s would not divert anything below that or the Mppt in the inverter will never finish doing it's job.   Also if both are charging at the same time I am assuming the Mppt on the solar would just recognize it's target values sooner than later and cycle, and the wind would just keep charging (if it could) until the dumps kicked in.  I also am assuming this would be much like an equalization stage for the batteries if the voltage was that high.  Can you over equalize a battery?

I'm still a little confused about weather it would be better to use one of the TS 45 controllers in diversion or two.  Morning star suggested using two in a staged method with no more than a .2 differential in steps.  That value was at 12 volts, so x4 for 48=.8v ?

Sorry this got so long.  I wasn't trying to write a novel.  Just wanted it to have all the info.

David

[Sparksalot]

If you might want to see any Beacon M5 literature I can help.

I was looking at one to buy but didn't and during my quest scoured all the info I could find into a folder.

[SparWeb]

Hi there Pellets
Welcome back!

Sorry I didn't get to this right away.  I think on first reading it was to much to answer and I didn't have enough time.  I'll try to do it justice, now.

Batteries: charging flooded lead needs different set-points than charging sealed lead, but not different stages.  Just tweak the voltage levels so the cells don't try to out-gas from the sealed cells.  The flooded batteries can equalize up to 13.5 to 14.0 in some cases, while sealed cells don't.
Just to be sure, are you able to add water to the cells?  If so, then they're definitely flooded cells and that will be a part of regular maintenance for you.

String open-circuit voltage:  You quote a VOC=44.75, so with two in series the string VOC= 89.5VDC.
With the temperature multiplier of 1.25 then your Open-Circuit voltage from the panels could be 111.9 Volts (Confirming your calc's)

So I share your concern about the MM500's voltage rating. Is really it 120 or 110?  IMO, go by the spec's in the documents that were provided with the unit, not what you downloaded later.  I can't find data on the equipment because the company has gone out of business and whatever IP was bought doesn't seem to be supported any more.  You're just taking your chances using it, though there's no direct reason to suspect it, either.

As for diversion, I don't see the TS units compatible in the system you're building.  Batteries regulated by the grid-tied inverter don't need a diversion.  The grid is your diversion.  You get paid for using it to sell your excess production so why waste it as heat?

[pellets4fuel]

Hey SparWeb,
It's good to be back at it.  It's been too long with the stuff all limbo.
As far as the batteries go, a cheap bank of golf cart bats is what I should start with as to not loose too much money in wrecking my first set like many have cautioned me I will probably do   So FLA. 
Using the web I have found much info on the MM5000.  I have the install manual, and on a couple different solar sites I have even come up with someone who has programming that I could go in and change the voltage set points to allow it to do FLA.  I don't think I am going to do it though.  I may just by a new CC for my solar, using the MM5000 as a 48v inverter only. 
I won't be grid tie with it, so the grid can't act as my dump.  My "learning" system will be off grid set up in my shop to power lights, outlets, etc.  The TS 45 in diversion mode would work good then in keeping the batteries where they should be once the solar shut off, and the wind continued to/decided to blow.  I have read within the last couple days though of a WindTac controller built by one of the members here (if you search it on the web it will come up).  It is intriguing and smart the more I think about it.  Why use dump loads and continue to keep your generator running causing wear on blades, bearings, etc.  The way he has it built it only lets it run when really needed like if the sun isn't shining, but the wind is blowing.  It even has "clamping" in place based off voltage for high wind events.  I may go this route, if I can wrap my brain around how to build one. 
Thanks as always for your input.  Thanks Sparksalot for the offer of info.  Sounds like I did the same thing you did only I actually bought one

[Sparksalot]

P4F, I have that some software that would run for the MM5000...might even of been me elsewhere offering up for share.