Classic progress!

[Volvo farmer]

I built one of those home-made voltage controllers like Halfcrazy is using. I'm using a 24V contactor and using the Classic's Aux relay to drive a little 12V relay that switches the contactor in and out. The main reason to have one of these is to keep the voltage under the 150V maximum to keep the smoke inside the controller.  If the voltage gets close to 150, the contactor gets thrown and shorts the turbine for a short period of time.




I left my old dump load and C60 hooked up for now. Eventually I should be able to use the Classic to control the dump load as well, but one step at a time.




Kind of embarrassing, but I didn't have the proper conduit to get the wires into the classic, so it's sorta temporarily hooked up at the moment.     I'm having a hard time finding a suitable graph for my turbine, but I will say that the turbine flies at a much higher RPM than it does when the voltage is clamped to the batteries.  I see lots of potential for more power here. I wonder if the additional rpms will cause maintenance issues with the turbine in the long run though.

[kitestrings]

Vf,

Hadn't seen your photos, I must'a missed this day.

Does your relay have to be reset manually, or does it open back up as soon as the voltage drops?

I suspect if nowhere elese there will be more maintenance on the blades, pertivcularly the leading edge, at the higher rpm's.  Still I think the trade off is worth it (MPPT).

~kitestrings

[Volvo farmer]

It opens when the voltage drops. The voltage is pretty adjustable through the Aux1 menu.

I've run across some difficulties configuring this turbine to work to my satisfaction though the Classic on a 24V system.  If I'm willing to let the turbine run unloaded, I guess there would be no problem, but it seems like the Classic will drop the load on the turbine in high wind situations in such a way that I cannot compensate for it with a traditional PWM dump load.  The boys in the back room at Midnite are cooking up a nifty clipper that should solve this problem. So I  guess, based on my experience so far, if you have a 24V system, you might want to wait for the Midnite Clipper to come to market before using one of these on an axial flux.

There might be several workarounds to my problem, which I have not fully investigated yet. Unfortunately, I can only devote a few hours a week to fooling around with wind turbines 

[kitestrings]

Vf,

Our's is 48V, but otherwise we're looking at alot of the same issues that you're confronting.

I'm hoping their Clipper will be available before we're ready for it - late summer or early fall in our case.  If not, we'll approcah it similarly, though I'm partial to loading outside of the stator if it can be done reliably.  I'm leaning toward water heating on the 3-ph AC, or resistive heating (air or ETS) which would at least at times be useful.

Unfortunately, I can only devote a few hours a week to fooling around with wind turbines 

Life's cruel like that - having to work to pay the bills and all.  Regards,

~kitestrings