Question about "New standard level" Charge controllers

[coldspot]

Well,
My life has reached the point that I can, (and need badly or HAVE to)
put up a small "Zubbly type" wind turbine along with some solar panels.
I've gotten myself into a mess, being that I now own a small sage brush patch
in the south west part of Utah. The end of the world or out in the real wild west.
60 miles or so round trip just to get a soda!
I have a few hundred watts of solar panels and a couple of 2HP induction conversions along with the OLD Amtek 30V TDM.
I just bought a pare of 6 volts golf batteries and need to not ruin them,
I've just been using a couple of old 12 volt car batteries and have been using the old I'm smart enough to not over charge them as controller.
I've got only a couple hundred Amazon gift dollars to buy a real controller.
I NEED advice, there are so many controllers listed with very little real info.
I have only one tower built so far and will only be able to put up one wind turbine at a time, (6' to 8' blade Dia.) along with the 30V TDM and solar panels.
I can build a dump load and have a few ready maybe.

So any advice ?

[bigrockcandymountain]

Get a morningstar tristar (ts-45) pwm controller set up as a diversion controller.  Hook the solar panels up direct to the batteries through a stud diode so they don't back charge.  Approx $200

Hook the dc side of the wind turbine rectifier directly to the batteries.  Then the same controller does wind and solar.

Get a big resistor, air or water heater type, your choice.  It will have to be very low resiatance to work at 12v.  Approx $50

Congratulations on your piece of sage brush wild west.  I have a similar chunk of real estate, but in Canada, so more winter. 

[clockmanFRA]

Yep, I agree the Morningstar Tristar PWM ts45 is very good as a diversion controller.

I have 4 of them runing my Wind Turbines the past 14 years, that are clamped/directly connected to a 48v battery bank. Any excess voltage the Tristars just Dump to my 8KW of air heater resistors.

Tristars are bullet proof, if you understand what i mean.

I always recommend them and I am in France.

A very good well made quality product from the USA.

[SparWeb]

I have a TS-60 and it's been perfect for my needs.

The recommendation from BRCM gets you a simple setup with only one controller.  There are other ways to do it, but with wind and solar combined you would be looking at multiple controllers.  So the first one is the simplest and cheapest.

Are your batteries in a building?  Your house?  Is the heat generated by excess (when the batteries are full) possibly useful elsewhere for you?

[Scruff]