grid tie control system

This is my non UL approved grid tie wind turbine control system. I have added more components since the picture. It has 3 turbines hooked into it with 5 inverters. 2 Sun g's and 3 SWEA grid tie inverters. All with GFCI protection and a 30 amp 220 volt A/C line going back to the main electrical panel. All D/C fusing, electric brake and coooing fan with a digital turnigy meter mounted on the fron for real time amps, watts and volts. I also have a TED 1001 Energy Detecive in my second fl. office for power production from the wind into our home. This is how I do the non UL thing. It works fantastic.

The inverters work in harmony. The first two start at 11.8v (Sun G) which I can get at 7-8MPH winds. The Swea kicks in at 20v helping out the other two 10-30v invetrers. The Sun G disconnects at 30v and the SWEA handles the load from there until 60v at which the dump load is activated. Can produce 1800 watts at 30MPH winds. Stick it to the man!!!

 

Here is a picture of the system closed with an A/C disconnect and an overall kW meter. This is how it looks when mounted on the wall. The system can be modified for battery charging or battery/grid capability. I am not into batteries anymore so I will keep it grid tied although I have ten I am not using. On the control box in the upper left corner is the Turnigy meter witch has a digital display for wind watts. I could have saved so much money if I knew now what I did not know then. It works great, it is clean and fire protected. The dump loads are mounted on the outside of the box on the right hand side which you can not see in the picture.

 

How do you connect 3 different turbines into 3 (or more) GTI units? Seems wrong to just parallel-connect the turbines. They each should have their own GTI(s) I think.

 

I have 3 seperate rectifiers, 3 spereate diodes and then join all onto one positve and negitive bar. in a nut shell. Then the grid tie inverters take the load from those bars giving me combined volts and amps

 

what are your SWEA chips tuned at ?

I have 4 SWEA inverters handling my Windy 750. It should only require the 3 but I have been using the 4th as a back up. Along with SWEA we are still tying to find the best combination of chip setting to handle the 750,,,,,, and you have 3 turbines feeding your
AND one of yours is a 1kw..

murray

 

I have explained above what I have hooked up. My SWEA are set from 20-55V the two Sun G are 11.8-30 volt. Best energy production is at about 28 volts when all of them are working together as the turrbines are pumpming volatge and amps through all of them
My kw meter inside my control box peaked out at 1800 watts about 4 weeks ago it was beeping like it was over loaded. I have a wind blue PMa in the mix so the volateg leverls get wacky due to the other two turbines are rated at 24v and the wind blue likes to get up here in volatge in high winds.

 

Hi Larry
I understand when you said the SWEA working rage but what I was asking if you knew the tuning of the chips in each of them ?

Murray

 

Hi Murry,
Sorry I do not. I just asked to have them 20-55v. This is why I thik they are a pain. I have the cable and program but lost my patients as I could not get it all to work with my computer.Have you considered the Sun G?

 

hi Larry , no I haven't tried the Sun G, BUT would like to learn more about them. How about sending me a link , ok.

can't help but laugh at your comments on the tuning of the SWEA. They have a great guy in Holland that does all my tuning. He sends me chips to test so we can try to set something up that matches the Windy 750.

On the SWEA when they work between the 20 - 55 the chips can be set to start up in a lower wind OR the tuning can be changed to create more watts but will also create more load and will need a stronger wind to start up.
AND don't let what I am saying fool you. I AM ELECTRONICALLY CHALLENGED :lol:

But I can do a good job in repeating what I hear sometimes..



I will do a short write up on Josh's article on rating grid tie inverters.

later
murray

 

Hey Murry,
Glad I could get a laugh out of you.lol. The Sun G"s are on ebay. Put in grid tie inverterYeah, I know all about the getting them tuned part. I did a vid on them so you can see and hear what I went through when I first bought them. I must say they do work very well and as you said you have to find the sweet spot for what ever turbine you are using. I received GREAT support from Maury (not shure how to spell his name) over at SWEA.

I finally got my good vid camera out so I will do vid this weekend on my system so check my youtube site or my website.
Always apprecited your 2-3-4-5-6-7...cents. Thas is why I am here, to help and be helped. A fresh set of eyes is always better.
Larry

 

Have been checking around and this seems like the right place to put my info.
This is a picture of how I have my system hooked up now. It is battery tied at 24 volts. If the system reaches 28 volts the switch triggers the heavy duty relay and sends power to 600 watts of dump load resistor. Even while that is going on it is still sending some power to the grid. Since my gusts only last a few seconds and are far between most days the system never gets to 24 volts very often. And only to 28 volts during really big gusts 20-30 mph increase in a few seconds. This for now seems to be the right setup for my situation.

 

Nice job Tom. Please put a link to the vid it has a great explination as well.
It seems we are all starting to make goood head way with with these GTI's but they are way more then just pluuging them in.

 

Is there hysteresis or does the relay chatter at 28V?
Would a pair of small AH batterys be adequate?
How many amps to you usually see going through the relay?

It would be nice to see a video of this behaving when you get the next big-wind day.

Good stuff.

 

No chatter from relay. In the really big gusts it stays on dump and soon as it starts to drop the rely disconnects and the two dumps keep up with the power production . The garden tractor batteries stay topped off.
I have no idea how many amps go thru the heavy duty relay. Here is the link explaining how I set it up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU3Jj05D7v8

 

You guys ever try stacking (parallel) two SunG Wind GTIs of the same rating? I'm wondering how well it works.

 

Mine are two 500 watt SunG GTIs but one is 10.8-30v and the other is 22-60v. I would not try stacking two 10.8-30 volt GTIs. Running the Windy Nation PMA on just one it always dragged it down fast. With the addition of the Effsun 300 watt now it hangs at what ever it gets too till the gust slows down. So to me unless you have enough wattage for the two of them your output will suffer.

 

In general it seems to hold my turbine down in low volatge and requires higher amps out of them. Two of the GTI's do not let the turbine voltage and amps increase as a happy marrige to get the best out of the turbine.
In a perfect world using a 10-30v Sun G wind rated one are like 28v and 17 amps to get 500 watts would be great but it does not work out like that. At least with mine
The components also get hot in low volt. Since i have been running two different GT inverters of different voltages i have had extremely great sucess. I now have my system automaicly switch at 18v from the 10-30v to the 22-60v and the watts are just way better. (1) out of three turbines are over sized on the back end inverter (600w it has a 22-60v 1000w inverter). Again using 10-30v 250w inverters in the front 1 per turbine system.

It seems varuios turbines react a little different to these inverters so lots of testing is needed to get them just right for wind. I have 3 spaced out 15 ft apart and htey all have their own charecteristics. Some combinations work better then others depending on the turbine from what i have been reading. I also wonder if better quality solar panels also react better to the solar GTI's or if it is just the same with in a few watts as a lower grade one. I know for turbines it seems car pmas's get right through the inverters, maybe paralling them is the answer for those types. Others stay loaded down to much and some can be very happy like mine with what i call shifting gears. I think the perfect match for the wind rated GTI's is a 24v turbine. The best succes i have had yet is the way i am currently doing it by far. There is no dought i will have increased my Kw production per month. So for my system (3) 24v wind max's at 24v, running a paralle inverter would not be the most productive. however maybe a 12v would do well with two 10-30v GT's. Anyway mine are all seperated and they are ll treated like their own system. Just like using a China GTI for solar.

Hell i though it was cool.

 

I know putting 2 identical GTIs in parallel does not work that well with solar panels, and in some cases does nothing. It only seems to help if one GTI gets topped out, the 2nd one then contributes. I suspect the same might happen when used with a turbine. I was hoping to tell a guy who is getting 1500w that a set of >22V SunG Wind units (4?) might work but apparently no one has tried that yet.

I'm also curious to know if you are having a good wind day, and getting "steady" watts into the grid, what watts could you sustain into a 24V battery bank instead? I'm somewhat thinking that more watts could be stored than one could capture using a "cheap" GTI that is always chasing the turbine. A set-up that can switch from GTI (with an outlet Kill-a-Watt) to Battery Charging (with a watt meter or amp and volt measurements) would be interesting. I have done this with solar using an MPPT charge controller, and storing to batteries was actually about 10% better than grid-tied. I suspect it would be even higher with a wind turbine. Once stored, the watts could then be more efficiently grid tied (perhaps!) for credit, or synchonized with heavy load use such as an air-conditioner or electric heater to slow the meter down.

Tom
http://www.youtube.com/user/Fearlessthinker

 

Good Points Guys.
But if just starting out I would still go with batteries and a dump controller till I knew how much max power average I was getting before ever going to GTIs. You need to be getting one third to one half the rated wattage to get the GTI to stop dragging the turbine down.
Also solar is alot different than wind. I can hook 120 watts of solar putting out 75 watts and it will lock on and not drag the voltage down.
These GTIs are looking for a balance of voltage and current. And they negotiate down not up with wind. They need to change them. Like a switch with 12 volts and 24 volts. This will set the voltage that it tries to hold the turbine at. With us we would set it for 24 volts. It would have light loading up to 24 volts and heavy loading after that.
Just me WISHING for a Christmas present again from the GTI GURUs again.

 

Hey Tom,
I think i might have found your wish. ithat is what i have acived with my switching system. It takes all the light load 10-30v 250w gti then lets it go to the 22-60v for the rest. I am almost done with it just one more compoent to put in. It all woks great but i have to find he correct ressistor. I am using a zener diode to control the volatge. My relays are 10-30v so at 42v from the turbines the relays are seeing their full 30v so i need to put in a resistor to stop the rest of the volatge. I want to hold back upto another 100v at that point. As soon as i talk to an eletronics expert this will finish my switching system. My turbines can run up into the 250w gti at 18v around 12-14MPH so it is perfect for what i am doing. Any suggestions on how to hold the rest of the volatge back?