Wind mill connection

[GeeMac]

After being converted to DC, should a windmill's power be connected directly to the battery bank or should it pass through a charger on the way to the batteries?

[wooferhound]

You will need a Charge controller between your solar panels and the batteries. Without a controller you will overcharge the batteries and shorten their life considerably.

http://www.morningstarcorp.com/products/index.shtml

 

[finnsawyer]

Directly to the battery.  But then you need to put in some means to protect the battery from overcharging by adding circuitry to dump excess current to a "dump" load.  At this point you could say you have put something between the rectified dc and the battery, but it would not be a charger in the usual sense.  Beyond that you could add such things as an mppt controller or an inverter for grid tie.

If you did want to put in a regular charger you would have to recognize that when it cut the current down near zero the mill would over speed causing the rectified dc voltage to become large.  This would also cause a large reverse voltage on the diodes, so both the diodes and the charger must be capable of handling the large voltages.  You're probably better off to keep the mill under load at all wind speeds above cut-in.  That is, dump the excess current.

[GeeMac]

Thanks for the reply wooferhound.  I have solar panels and a charger. I also have a windmill. Being somewhat new to homemade power, I had to ask a simple question about windmills. I'll rephrase the question.

Should I take the power from my WINDMILL and bypass the charger in order to add the power directly to the battery bank from the windmill, or should the windmill power also pass through the charger before being sent to the battery?

I apologize for the 'dumb' question, but I don't have that basic knowledge yet.

[ADMIN]

Howdy folks -- As everyone has said here already in this thread, always connect the turbine directly to the battery. The controller will then take power directly from the battery to the dump loads, no matter what kind of controller it is (grid tie excepted). From simplest and cheapest controller to most expensive....

--manual controller. Turn on more lights, stereos, TVs, and appliances when battery fills. Or shut down the turbine.

--voltage controlled switch with hysteresis. Buy separately, or use the Aux relays in a PV controller or Inverter to drive a mercury contactor that turns on the heating element dump loads. Hysteresis should be about 1 volt in a 12v system, 2 volts for 24v systems, and 4 v for a 48v system.

--commercial diversion controller (xantrex c series, morningstar, etc.). Instead of just turning the dump load heaters full on or full off, it diverts power to them proportional to what is coming in.

Here's the block diagrams:



commercial diversion controller




using Aux relay from PV controller or inverter

Cheers -- ADMIN

[GeeMac]

Geez - I'm glad I asked. Thanks

[ghurd]

How much wind power are you expecting to make in the near future?

If it's only like 100~150W, even 250W with a couple more parts, might have a look at my controller.  At least the sketch.  Windmill to rectifiers to battery is not shown, but the rest is shown there in a fairly simple sketch.

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2007/8/24/172521/889

G-