Xantrex C40 Wiring.

[TheSuperFantasma]

Hello To all,

I just received my battery charger controller, a Xantrex C40.   My wind generator has been flying for a while (Testing purposes) but now it has gotten to the point that I need to get it all set up.   Do you all by chance know how to do the wiring from the alternator to the Xantrex C4O controller and out to the 60 watt halogen lamp I will be using at night and onto the dump load?   I will be using a DC water pump as the dump load.

Any help on this will be greatly appreciated.

[DanB]

I dont think either your light - or the DC water pump is a workable dump load for the C40.  It will pulse DC to the dump load at a pretty high frequency - not suitable for lights, or motors.   YOu really need a heater as a dump here.  

[TheSuperFantasma]

Hello Dan,

What I meant to say is that I will only be using this generator to have a light going on at night, but it is my understanding that the extra energy generated by the turbine has to be dumped on to something else after the (1) battery gets fully charged up.  Someone had suggested to use a dc pump.

This wind generator uses a modified small car alternator like the ones you see in the ebay auctions.  This particular one is supposed to start producing 12 volts at 150 rpm.   I have not measured the real output on it as I do not have a multimeter.  

I'm really not expecting serious output on this machine.

Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your input.

[DanB]

Hi -

Yes, you have it right - the C40 will dump excess power to a load when the battery voltage gets too high.  But due to the nature of the way it switches the DC to the load on and off at such high frequency, it won't be suitable to run a pump.  You should probably use a heater.

[SamoaPower]

Dan,

Actually, PWM control of DC motors is a pretty common technique.

It would mean that when the PWM duty cycle is less than 100%, the pump motor would run at a slower speed, but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't still do some useful work.

[DanB]

Hi Samoa - interesting, yes - when I think of it that way maybe you're right, maybe it would work.

I had a C40 on a heater once (a 12VDC heater with a 12VDC fan designed as a dump load) and the fan motor would just vibrated and made lots of noise.

I guess I should try it - I just got a C40, easy enough to find out what would happen I guess.

[Flux]

If the pump is positive displacement then it may work fairly well, at low speed it will still pump something. If it is a centrifugal pump then unless you are dumping near the full rating of the pump you will get very little output. At the lower speeds it will pump nothing unless the head is very low.

I assume the C40 has commutating diodes to allow a certain amount of inductive load but I just don't know. You would also need to be sure that the pump can dump all the incoming power when batteries are full.

Basically the idea is ok, but depends on the actual details whether it will work in your case.

Flux

[TheSuperFantasma]

Thanks very much for your inputs.  Does this diagram look okay to you all?  I'm really frustrated with all of this because I do not have a clue about electronic stuff.  Please help me to get this going.  I'm even willing to pay for the advice to start producing some energy out of my wind generator.

[RP]

That seems to be Word document and also possibly corrupted.  Can you upload a jpg version of the image?

[TheSuperFantasma]

Russp,

Yes, you are right!  It was a word document.  I have changed the file extension name on it and hopefully it will work this time.

Thank you.