newbie help

[rottingspinalcord]

yes well i have a small solar array that has each cell averaging about 1.5 volts and i have them all in parrallel and in series and make about 20 volts in full sunllight. i was wondering if i should use this to charge a car battery i have been using off and on for electrical experiments. i also have a wind turbine made out of a 9 volt train station payment machine (i have some strange connections) attached to a fanrotor. i havent fully tested this yet. i also have a electric scooter motor that is something like 2400 rpm and 36volt , i dont member the specs all too well righe now and i want make a turbine out of it. i was just wondering what the SIMPLEST way i could hook these all to charge a battery without having the turbines turn into fans.

[crashk6]

You need a charge controller, a trace/Xantrex c40 would be suitable as it provides for a dump load to prevent your genny from over speeding. Check e-bay. Genrally speaking you need one controller per genny... maybe not cost effective depending on your output wattage. The limited details of your post make it hard to say. But a c40 is never a bad investment as far as RE goes.

Regards,

crashk6

[rottingspinalcord]

can i use a charge controller to charge a battery bank? and can i use solar on the same one i mean u said use a diff one on each genny but i am really poor. and the mini wind turbine i have puts out 9 volts and i dont know how many amps because i killed my ampmeter on my multimeter when i attached it to my battery bank (3x 15volt scooter batteries) im makin the second turbine out of the scooters motor.

[crashk6]

Hey,I didn't see you had posted again... I've been somewhat busy.

I think I understand a bit better what scale of project you've got going now. I think I should get a little more basic.. first your batteries. 15 volts is not a standard battery rating for lead acid batteries, is this a multimeter reading your quoting? What type of battery are they? Sealed lead acid would be my guess and if so, that reading is high, but some scooter uses other more exotic batteries... which require some different charging methods and are not suitable for this type of thing. but I wont go into all that until we figure out what you've got. send the info printed on the batteries and we'll start with that. Although I think you'd be better off stepping up to a true deep cycle battery  for the later parts of your experimentation.

I can tell you what your describing is definitely a "learning" setup and won't do much in the way of producing loads of power, but will let you make your mistakes (we all had to make a few along the way) without totally taping you financially.

Next the 9 volt genny will not charge your batteries in this particular scenario but certainly don't toss it we can address getting it charging once we get the batteries pegged down.

The solar voltage is somewhat promising.. how many watts and/or amps does it put out? Do you know?

The scooter motor at 2400 rpm doesn't sound too promising as a genny, but tinker with it... put a meter on it and crank it by hand tell me what you get... that will tell if it will even be remotely usable to make power. But I would say.. to save on irritation.. find a different motor for putting into the wind.

Lastly stick that multimeter you fried on the self (for later repair) and go buy a fresh one, you may have cooked more than the amp meter.. the readings could be unreliable. BTW those things are only rated 10 amps max if you didn't know already... if you want to make amp readings on higher amperes, buy a shunt and read milli-amperes... yes I know I said buy but it really is worth it to have good test gear when your starting out. It will save you money in the long run by not frying anything else valuable.

Catch you later,

crashK6

[rottingspinalcord]

hey there crash, I know its been a while scince i posted but im still working on essentally the same things, my goal is to get my room to run off of nothing but RE within the next few months, i still dont have any sort od ampmeter but i plan on getting a new one, i had a multimeter that worked but it mysterisley dissapeared. that motor i have is actually in the process of becoming a bicycle powered genny, when i turned it it looked very promising. it is supposed to b 36 volts 12 amps max but i think i can petal past that. i got another 10 volt panel aswell as two 12 volt panels, when i have them all in series together i get about 50 volts out of it but i still have no idea the amperage, I also have a 300watt inverter that can handle up to 16 volts and less than 30 amps. currently i am using 2 of those 14.4 volt batteries in parallel to run it. im using a series of blocking diodes to charge them with the solars. oh yea the amp rating is 12A 5 hr. they have been sitting on the shelf for a while and only make a reading of 12.09volts today but i have only had one day to try to fully charge them. does anyone have any ideas on how to charge theese back to full compaity? and how can i keep from overcharging with the generator after i finish? can i take many small wind gennys and put them in series to increase voltage? i have many questions i know but i really enjoy playing around with stuff that makes electricity and saves my mom money on the electric bill, (someday the electric company will be paying US =]) soo if anyone could answer any of my questions please do so. oh yea if i was vague on anything just ask me ill try to give u the answer from what i know.