Turbine direct to heating element box of tricks.

[wigmyster]

Hello All

It seems to me there is a opening for a boffin like forum member to produce said box of tricks or perhaps Navitron to develop.

The idea being like others have mentioned before in other threads:-

A interface controller that allows a turbine to be connected directly to a heating element without batteries etc letting the turbine get up to usefull speed prior to kicking in.
It would be usefull to also incorporate a temperature sensor so that when the required water temp was met the controller switched to another dump and or charge controller.

Maybe different versions to suit different size turbines & voltages.

Just an idea. I think they would sell


 

[Ed_N]

I have worked in the past with Direct heating controllers and believe, they can be a bit temperamental. It all depends on the voltage to work on and Amps.

Cheapes option is to go with a simple PWM to adjust the load. International Rectifier has a few App notes on this. The bad news is that if the voltage is quite high and some good Amps, you may end up with a nice radio station  with all the EMI.

I can put a small draft of how a cheap and cheerful circuit would look but all depens on the amount of power you require and the voltage/amps ratio.

Also, be prepared to brake a few IGBTs on the making 

[Ivan]

There is currently a unit under development specifically for Navitron, which we're planning to market, once we've completed testing etc.

[andygo999]

Hi Ivan
How's testing going on this unit? How long till you start to sell them? Am interested in hooking up our thermal store to a wind turbine.
thanks
Andy

[michiel]

Just come across this old thread.
Any developement or new thread on this topic?

[billi]

hi

there are "of the shelf" solutions for direct heating  , to make sure the turbine starts heating even in low wind conditions

Billi

[michiel]

Thanks Billi,

I'm thinking more of direct heating, from my PV panels.
Would that be easier?

[billi]

Ah ...

Its  you  ....  i am thinking about your set up since a while  and still have not came up with an idea how you could use your power more yourself  (in an affordable way....  like the SMA Sunny Backup idea  )

Is there no better Feed in tariff  for wind or PV  available ?

As for your PV  i am not electrician enough to tell , if you can connect high voltage DC to an immersion

Again you can run the Sunny boys into a "SunnyIsland" inverter or the Sunny backup idea , and perhaps your windturbine as well (?) , but that requires a battery bank

It looks , that there is nothing "easy" available to "monitor/control"  your 2 meters for in and output

Billi

[wigmyster]

Hi All
I don't think Billi would mind me saying but the the "off the shelf" unit he mentioned a few posts above is around £1500 so not really a option on a budget. May as well buy the cells or grid tie for that.
Ivan have you made any headway on your own design?
Thanks

[Stonganess Chap]

Must be easy enough to build some sort of gubbins to detect the pulses of the phases? As a certain no of pulses per minute are reached a relay diverts all power to the main heating load. If the load is too great for the wind speed the rotation (number of detected pulses) drops and the relay opens letting the turbine spin up again.

Or a more basic solution for the home brew turbine fraternity would be some form of centrifugal switch once again triggering a main relay. Hmmm. I can feel a bodging frenzy brewing.   

[Ivan]

Unfortunately not. A friend made a really nice unit that should have worked well, but the FETs blew because of the back EMF, but he lost interest in the project. I did ask one of the electronics gurus here if he'd like to develop the product for us, but he doesn't have the time. I did speak to someone last week that might be very interested in doing this, so hopefully it's back on the cards....

[Baz]

I think people these days have become a little too obsessed with fets and pulse width control.
You want to mimic a 48v battery pack which I get the impression having no personal experience, is the ideal load. So consider a 50v zenner diode which when it conducts feeds current into a good old 2N3055 transistor on a big heatsink with a 100 W load on its collector. There's a few extra components obviously but the gist is that there is no load until it hits the 50v then a slight increase turns on the transistor in proportion - it is in effect a voltage variable resistor which is the ideal load.
A 3kw water heater makes a nice 100 W load.
You need say 3 or 4 of these circuits each adjusted so the turn on voltages cascade. Response is instant so if the thermostat cuts one out the next circuit takes up the strain. Then once it is going well at about 300w a bigger dump load or inverter to 240v can cut in.