have a question about placement of meter.

[divemaster1963]

I have been finishing up My Ghurd controller. I was wondering the best placement for my volt meter and best wiring. before the controller or after.

I have Photos of the unit and one of the volt meters.

Thanks for yalls input

I can not load Pictures. for some resone

[wooferhound]

for a volt meter I would monitor the battery terminals.

[dave ames]

hi divemaster,

had a look at some of your photos in hopes of finding that volt meter..lots of great pics, thanks for the look. however, i'm afraid i stumbled onto a picture of your battery bank? is this the one we wish to monitor and control?

that sort of configuration we see in your pic is better left to the more expierenced RE guys who might be able to spot trouble from a mile away or like a bit of excitement in their system.

if we want to stay with that art deco/cubism picasso look (love it!) you might set up a pair of busbars and run all the batteries(each one)to those and then treat the bus as your battery terminals.. that might at least give us a shot at some reliable control and monitoring.

we work with what we have, it's all good fun!

kind regards, dave

[divemaster1963]

Yea On limited funds that shop was built from Pallets. floors and walls. :-)

The banks are seperate. The one I am wanting to tie to the wind is the 6 Agms.

The box I have built is with the Ghurd controller in it.

I have 2 voltage Dials that I wanted to hook into my box withthe controller I was wanting to figure out the placement 1 before the controller to monitor incoming power to the controller and one after the controller monitoring the bank capacity.  

I think that I have figured out the wiring.

The new camera that I have did not come with instructions so I have to figure out the resizing of the pictures. I do this sometime this week.

Thanks for the info tho

john

Hey woofhound (woof woof)

[wooferhound]

Your incoming power will always read slightly above the battery voltage by a fixed amount because of the diodes & wiring resistance. Remember you are tied to the battery and the battery will hold the voltage down, no matter where in your system that you try to measure it.

[wooferhound]

>> placement 1 before the controller to monitor incoming power to the

>> controller and one after the controller monitoring the bank capacity

There is not a Before & After with ghurd's dump load controller

Everything connects to the battery, like this

[ghurd]

Like Woof said, there really is not an "after the controller".

The windmill charges the battery directly.

The controller dumps power from the battery, and if it is dumping, the dump load is almost the same voltage as the battery.

This may help,

http://i701.photobucket.com/albums/ww20/ghurd1/Stray%20Pics/ControllerPhotoShop2.jpg

G-

[dave ames]

he he..hey woof,..is that a perpetual motion machine hooked up in your diagram? mines almost ready..just waiting for one last lucky investor to make the last connection.

john, sounds like you are good to go. one stray thought on a possible use for that second volt meter might be, if your using an inverter. we can monitor the voltage at the inverter input (to watch the voltage drop) to give us a feel for how hard we are pushing our setup.

cheers, dave

[divemaster1963]

Hey thanks everyone.

I was going over everything today. I don't know why I just did not see it until I had a brain gas release that everything is tied to the batteries as woofee said.

Man I'm getting to old two have so many irons on the fire at once. I forget the basics.I am going to tie it in on the battery side to monitor the voltage input to make sure it not over charging the agms. 14.1 unless I want to reduce their life span.think I use the other one on the second mill I geting up soon.

hey thanks Ghurd. that did the trick the second one is working great.

john

[divemaster1963]

Hey admin. can I get a hand.cannot insert photos of controller parts.they are in my file photos. lend me a hand .

Thanks

john

controller parts 1-6 OK.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

You connect the meter as close to the batteries as possible so as to minimize errors reading battery voltage due to voltage drop in the wiring from high currents.

Ideally you'd drive small screws into the battery posts and hook the meter (with its own fuses) to those.  B-)  That gets rid of voltage drop in the connector/battery joint as well.  (Some people compromise by hooking the meter to the battery clamps - possibly with a separate screw, like you would hooking a meter to a current shunt.)