Homebrewed Electricity > Controls
Charge controllers
mconley:
So I am going to be building a wind generator, adding a few solar panels and maybe adding in micro hydro as a start to a battery system with a a small battery bank. Is there a a charge controller that will let me connect the all incoming voltage from the various places to a singe battery bank?
Flux:
If you have mixed charging sources the simplest way is to use a diversion or dump controller.
All charging sources connect to the battery and as the battery becomes charged, excess power is dumped to a resistor to maintain the ideal battery charging voltage.
Many of the common controllers can be configured this way, you need to choose on on the basis of how much current you expect to dump. For a small start up system you may well look at Ghurd's charge controller, you should find references to it if you search the board or he may see this post and comment.
Morningstar, Xantrex , Stecca and others produce diversion controllers and for bigger set-ups The more advanced controllers can ususlly be configured for dump but that may not be the best use of an expensive top end controller with mppt.
Flux
ghurd:
Yes, what Flux said.
Couple links;
Original ghurd controller post-
http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php/topic,129060.html
and
http://www.ghurd.info/
Can make it small or large, or expand it later.
http://i701.photobucket.com/albums/ww20/ghurd1/Stray%20Pics/IMG_0310.jpg
and
http://i701.photobucket.com/albums/ww20/ghurd1/Stray%20Pics/WWresBox.jpg
The expensive controllers still need a dump load. The dump load cost gets many people by surprise.
Time to go to work,
G-
mconley:
Ok, sort of lost me here.
Mechanical I know, Electricity I am comfortable with, electronics only in specific instances. So lets assume I know not the first thing about the electronics of a dump load and a charge controller.
I understand in general what the controller is doing and what the dump load is doing. I guess my question is, why? 12v + to the batteries to charge, does not a charge controller simply open the circuit when the batteries reaches full charge and close when needed? What is the purpose of the dump load?
mconley:
Ok, sort of starting to get it through some reading. So, for reasons I do not understand wind and hydro can't just be "disconnected" from the batteries.
How do I know what load I can anticipate needing to dump?
Also, can you recommend a charge controller (Not interested in building one, not my gig) that will divert the over charge power to say some heating coils I could use to heat water or air?
Oh, and why do I have to put in captcha and spam questions for every post? Is it because I am new or is that forever?
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