turbine and solar

[greenkarson]

I Just bought 150 watts of solar to go along with my 100watt hydro turbine.  SO here come the questions again.
I have a c40 charge controller in dump mode for my turbine.  And was wondering can i just wire my panels straight to my batteries along with my turbine and just let the dump mode take care of everything?  The panels came with there own charge controllers but was hoping not to need them.

question number 2
my panels are about 50 feet from my battery's So I'm  worried about wire loss.  Like everybody else on the planet money is a big factor here.  So i did a shamefull thing.  I had a roll of 14/3 wire so i ran that but i used two of the wires for positive and the third wire and the ground for the negative.  Anybody have any idea what my loses are with that setup? oh ya forgot to mention its a 12v setup.

thanks for any info

[TomW]

2 #14 would "look" like one #11. Using all 4 in one sheath paralleled one for each line would yield an equivalent #8.

Use the #11 in a voltage drop chart for solar installs. There are lots of them online just google up voltage drop calculator and give it the numbers. Remember the total loss in cable is 2X the run. In and Out.

Tom

[birdhouse]

karson-
yes, a c-40 can handle any 12v load and dump the excess, so long as your within the 40A limit AND your dump can burn off 40A.  now, that is MAX and i'd build my dump for 35A @ 12v to give some breathing room.  a c-40 doesn't care if the power is coming from a wind turbine, hydro, solar, battery charger, or even a combination of all the above so long as the total input is less than 40A and the dump is a true 40A at dumping voltage (14.??)

your 250w of input isn't pushing your controller hard at all, so should be a non-issue so long as your dump is larger than your load. 

i got 3.9% voltage drop on a calc. from the interweb with two paralleled #14's per hot and two per ground (neg).  this was assuming 75C wire in pvc conduit.  this is faily good!  better than you probably thought!  though def would not pass code.  the bare ground in that bunch would be the clincher for me. 

now as tom suggests, do you have 50 more foot of that 14/3???  if so, run all four wires in one run as + and the four wires in the other run as - and i'm sure you'd be under a 2% voltage drop (something considered "done well")  even so, this would still not pass inspection, but atleast you'd have the proper amount of copper to lose almost nothing in transmission, AND the bare wire in the group would be traveling right next to wires transmitting the same polarity, so shorting would be way less of an issue.  when i do this sort of non-code work, i like to solder the ends of the parallel runs  to create a better/more equal connection wherever this conglamorate of wires is being terminated.

adam

[SparWeb]

In the Xantrex C40+60 installation manuals, it says that the maximum Diversion current is 80% of of the nameplate rating.  This means that a C40 can only divert 32A to the dump resistor.  You're not in trouble by this limitation, with 150W panels and 100W turbine.  I'm just correcting something that I don't want misunderstood.  I bought one years ago and I was quite disappointed.  It's for that reason that I later bought a Tristar TS60.  It will divert a true 60 Amps, not 50A, like the C60 controller.

Where the wire is concerned, ummm, I think your previous responders have missed a bigger sin - the use of the (fourth) ground wire as a current-carrying conductor.  Normally I wouldn't be picky about changing the use of a wire, but don't kid yourself: the plastic jacket around 14/3 house wire is less abrasion resistant and MUCH less electrically isolated than the insulation around the other conductors.  You can also get water inside the outer sheath once it's been scuffed.  I assume this wire has been buried but even if it's mostly inside a wall there's still the rest of it outside, and a risk of damage to the sheath.  Also, the bare ground wire in the 14/3 is probably 16 gauge, IIRC.

If you take Tom or Karson's advice and run another line of 14/3, you can omit using the bare wires as a current-carrying conductor, and instead use is for its intended purpose:  to bond the panels to the same ground as the charge controller.  The small trouble of doing this will be repaid a few years from now, when you are troubleshooting some weird error that you can't even anticipate today.

Oh and, yeah, solar panels now:  welcome to the addiction, it just gets worse! 

karson-
yes, a c-40 can handle any 12v load and dump the excess, so long as your within the 40A limit AND your dump can burn off 40A.  now, that is MAX and i'd build my dump for 35A @ 12v to give some breathing room.  a c-40 doesn't care if the power is coming from a wind turbine, hydro, solar, battery charger, or even a combination of all the above so long as the total input is less than 40A and the dump is a true 40A at dumping voltage (14.??)

adam

[birdhouse]

spar-
i wasn't aware that the c-40/ c/60's had a derate-ing level.  is this a NEC thing, or what the controller can actually handle?  i've always been a morningstar fellow, so am less versed in the xantrex brand.  the morningstars appear to be able to dump rated amps... 

spar is right on the safety factor.  use the ground for the ground.  use the other three for transmission.  which  brings up the point...  do you have grounding rods??? 

i've got (7) 8' rods connected with solid #4 between my solar and wind turbine. 

safety first (especially if you're not following code)

adam

[klsmurf]

Hey All,  I've done similar with my 40' drop down my turbine. I used (2) 14-2 exterior rated cables and soldered the twisted ends as Birdhouse suggested. I simply trimmed the ground wire back as I was concerned with rubbing through the outer sheathing as Spar had mentioned. Has worked well for over a year.

As my avatar states, I am not an electrician, but I recall that the ground wire in a 12 or 14 gauge wire bundle is 14 gauge.

I have a TS45 I'm running in diversion mode and though the manual states it's capable of handling 45A it recommends only 30A for a safety factor.

Maybe a real "sparky" can chime in and correct me.

Kevin

[SparWeb]

Here's the neat thing about answering questions on the forum:

I have to check my facts.  I remember the "32 Amp" limitation in my (paper) user's manual, so surely I can get a PDF copy on the internet and show you, too...

So...  do a web search on "Xantrex C40", but nowadays you find nothing but the brochures.  No user's manuals out there.  This shouldn't be a surprise, since Schneider Electric bought out Xantrex a couple of years ago, and subsequently they've hit the "random shuffle" button on the website.  I can't find anything any more.

Expand the google search to include "Trace".  Yes, once upon a time, Xantrex was actually Trace Engineering.  They're the guys who invented this stuff!!!!

So eventually I found a TRACE C40 user's installation manual.  Wow, that's been sitting around on a website for at least 10 years!

Here's the link:  http://itacanet.org/eng/elec/solar/c40cc.pdf

So in their wisdom, Xantrex re-wrote this manual, sometime in the early 2000's when Trace was bought.  The manual produced was still readable, but the organization of the data and the sense of "intelligent judgement" in the Trace manual was lost.  I can't recall how the section reads in the Xantrex manual, but this TRACE manual lays out the facts and the margins of safety you should be trying to achieve.  The choices you have and decisions you must make are much more clear in this TRACE C40 manual.

I'm a strange person, I know - I read the manual.  I do this for a living, BTW.  Having thoroughly read the user's manual for my TRACE SW4024 Inverter, I can tell you that I really admire the technical writer in charge of those books.  His work was a model of clarity and frankness, with intelligence expected on the part of the user.  If you were to put a current Schneider Electric user's manual beside the old TRACE version (of the SAME machine) you would immediately pick up the difference.

[SparWeb]

Oh yeah,  and I forgot to add:  Compare the address of TRACE at the bottom of the page of that manual...  with the address of OUTBACK Power Systems.
Draw your own conclusions.

[ghurd]

Oh yeah,  and I forgot to add:  Compare the address of TRACE at the bottom of the page of that manual...  with the address of OUTBACK Power Systems.
Draw your own conclusions.

Maybe a guy who was involved in it will chime in...
until then, this is what I heard (memory is faulty):
Trace got bought/restructured/whatever into Xantrex.
The smart guys there had issues with the new management polocies.
Ya-da ya-da ya-da...
Eventually, Outback is born.

Pretty sure you will never see a product in the 100W Chinese "Xpower" class with Outback's name on it.
G-