Yes like murry said. But if you are using the 14v model you wont need a diode. After the battery reaches full voltage and gets to 14v then the grid tie will pull the rest. If you have a 10.8 or 11v then you will need the diode or it will pull the battery bank down to that voltage. That low will be about the cut off point for your power inverter. You also ask how you can rate it to half the rated watts. well the only way really is with solar. 250w solar panel on a 500w grid tie. with wind its a little harder but you could have 2 500w for 1 500w turbine. if you use a battery bank there is no way to regulate it. it will just suck as much as it can till it cant no more.
I understand the clamping and my set-up with a charge controller and dump load all seem to work fine i seldom see the dump load work due to low winds,I've seen some hook there grid ties to the charge controler and it only feeds the grid when it is dumping,seems like a waste for me since i seldom dump,(That sounds weird)and when it does it's not for a very long time, Wiring to the turbin seems like a waste also since it might not charge for a day or two and in spurts around here.The model i bought is so vague of a description it doesen't even have a brand name but looks like most all of them with blue skies,green grass, wind turbins,Grid tie converter bla bla bla i went off technical description and input voltage is 10.5-28volts says for solar,wind and batteries.What i'm wondering is if i connect straight to batteries and plug it into a outlet will it just pull it down to 10.5 and shut down? Thanks
You bet, it will take from your batteries imediately down to the 10.8 and then shut down. Now your batteries will be dangerously low. As soon as the first wind blows and gives any power to your batteries that inverter will take it immediately ! In such a low wind area maybe an investment in a few solar panels would be a good choice !
Hey guy's I would like to continue from Chris's last statment of not using a battery bank. I am going to back up just a little bit. Using a 14-28v solar/wind GTI with a 12v battery bank, Chris is correct this can be done without a diode using a wind or solar resource. this also depends on how powerfull your turbine is. Let's keep a 500w turbine in mind. The battery volatge at 14v will regulate the turbine/solar and keep it in a range of 14-20ish volts and the GTI will be happy, produce grid power and not go to an over volt or poff situation. This also works well in a wind situaion if the grid should go down the battery will keep it under load. Getting rid of the power with out making it complicated may require a 24v dump load set to the lowest setting so if the voltage does get away from the batteries and the grid is down there is some kind of power control at that point. Thus also letting the dump load controller not interfere with the GTI when the grid is on, for the volatge range of 14-24v. Now let's talk about using 2 500w GTI invetrers with batteries using a 750w turbine. This can be achived with battery clamping. Speaking of wind only. There is really no reason to clamp solar as they are a controlled energy source unlike wind. Using two 500w GTI 10-30v with a 24v battery bank can be used with no fancy wiring methods or crazy relays involved. The 24v battery bank will get power only at 24v from the turbine but will never see the inverters. So from 10.8-24v the GTI's are working, at 24.1v ish the batteries and the GTI's will be sharing the load. This is done by using a heavy duty bolcking diode 600v 40 amp or a little above your turbine amp output. Power only flowing into the battery bank. The 24 battery bank with high winds may not be able to keep the inverters to their to rated input volatge in very high winds. The answer for this problem is use a Sun G wind rated with a dump load control D/C input GTI, not a solar/wind rated GTI. You may be able to get away with this method using a regular solar/wind GTI, it is about the only chance you have to keep them from frying-using the battery clamping method with them. Do not run your wind turbine directly into a reg solar- power jack type GTI. I may say solar/wind but they are just made for a controlled volatge and amp setting with in reason. All of the systems for GTI should be sperated. Battery charging is one system and grid tie is another. The more you mix them the more confusing and costly it gets. Hope this helps.
I have a sun600g hooked up to my solar panels and it seems that when it is pushing out about 190 to 200 watts the fan will come on. So far it didn't smoke up yet. ha ha .
Leamy, from your post on feb. 21 with regards to using a diode to keep the gti from drawing current from the battery bank, but allowing it to flow to the battery bank when the voltage gets above 24.1ish. Would you also connect the dump end of the gti to the same 24 volt battery bank? And what keeps the wind turbine under a load when the power goes down? Does the dump still work on the gti and then the battery bank becomes the load? If this is true, then I could still connect my Outback to the 24v battery bank and use a 10-30 sun wind gti to capture the low end volts before the batteries would see it. Would this make sense?
Hello, To answer your question: You can connect a dump load controller up to the battery bank which will cover keeping the turbine under a load when the power goes out as well as keep the batteries protected. You could also do a dump load coil on the inverter as a redundant system but the CC would be dumping at let's say 28v so you should be covered. I did not uot use a dump coil on my system as the redundant protection but you can try that as well. Since the GTI can disonnect itself in higher voltages i never had any problems with it seeing 35v when it was tied to a battery bank their for i never use the dump load connection, the battries always handled everything as well as a CC. Does this help?
Does the wind turbine still see the load from the battery bank even though there is a blocking diode in place? If I understand you correctly, you would run the pos. wire from the rectifier down to the gti and then from there down to the battery bank which would have the blocking diode in between. Is this right?
Not until the voltage gets to 24v then the turbine see the battery voltage combined with the inverter. So it's all the GTI inverter until the battery volatge point. Yes, you could do it that way. An eaiser way is to put in a buss bar for the main pos and neg. Then parallel off those buss bars with the GTI and the battery bank as well as a volt meter too. Install the diode beteween the pos off the buss bar and the pos to the battery bank. If you use an amp meter, set the shunt between the rectifier and the main buss bar. I have put a wiring diagrms on the forum for this under "wiring methods". This will allow for low wind watts 10-24v, as the wind increases to make higher volatge the battery will assist the inverter at your battery bank volatge of an example of 24v. If the wind is to high then you CC will take over from there protecting the batteries and the 10-30v GTI will disconnect f the volts get over 30vdc. At that point you can decide if you want to install dump coil as well if you feel you CC can not catch the full gust in time. It is a balance game to try to get the most out of your turbine regarding batteries and inverters. The batteries will always be there no matter what so as long as you have a good CC you should have great sucesss in doing it this way. The CC is running off the batteries so grid failure or not the CC will always be in charge. I was doing this for about a year with no problems then i just got sick of batteries. LOL What kind of turbine are you using? Good luck!
Thanks Leamy. I am flying the WN750. This system should really improve efficiency in low winds. I will then be able to run a 10-30v gti for the low winds and still keep my gtfx2524 connected to the battery bank for the higher winds. One more question, what size gti would you recommend? Would a 300w be large enough? Keep in mind that I will be running the Outback 2524 at the batteries for when the wind gets the turbine above 24v.
For the inverter the smaller it is the less it holds the turbine down so it stays locked into that inverter"s voltage range. So if you want the best of both worlds run a 300w GTI this way you get your low wind watts, the turbine runs at 12-14v rather then at just 10-11v and you will also reach your outback 24v voltage in about 15-18 MPH winds. In higher quicker gust you may find that the little inverter may not catch up to the wind speed to convert watts, that is normal. Your bank/outback will take over and assit the little inverter until it latches on pulling the turbine back down to it's voltage range. I think you will like that set up.
Thanks Leamy, I really appreciate all your help. I will go with the 300w gti. I will post performance after the new gti is installed.
Just an update. I recently installed the 300w GTI the way Leamy had suggested. Today the winds are varying between 10 and 18 mph. I am watching the GTI and Outback as the winds increase. As the GTI reaches 260 watts the Outback starts to take over keeping the GTI from getting over 265 watts! This setup is greatly improving my total output per day. I am seeing watts produced in very light winds where before the winds needed to be over 10mph. Thanks again for everyones help.