The Turkish Turnip flies

[biff]

Well done FFF,
           You will soon be hooked like me.
 Yet, the experience and learning that goes with it will stand you good stead when you invest in a larger and more powerfull Turbine, So it is all good.
                                                                 Biff

[fourfootfarm]

Disaster strikes. 

Frank has destroyed the pole the turbine was mounted on. Where the fibreglass pole wall mounted to a steel pole it has snapped. One of the guys had given way too.

Thankfully no damage to the turnip bar a small crack in the tail, easily repaired.  I'm going to dissemble the business end and see if there is anything rattling around inside.

At least now it's down on the ground I can extend the tail a little to cut back on the hunting behaviour.

I've taken the supplied controller apart and had a bit of a look. (Not using it)

There are three components. A cheap rectifier. A relay for shorting out the phases and a very simple circuit to fire the relay when and short out the turbine when the voltage threshold has been reached. I don't know how they can have the gall to sell such a thing at the price they do. You could achieve the same for about a tenner.

I'm using a Schottky rectifier at the moment I bodged from a few diodes I had lying around. Works well and despite my crappy soldering skills wastes less current than the supplied offering. I will invest in a proper one though.

The hum of PWM heating is starting to grow on me. But I'm trying to cobble together an automated AC dump load so that valuable heat goes somewhere useful rather than shed.

New shed is coming along, but didn't have enough ballast for the floor before the builders merchants closed for christmas so still not finished.

[biff]

You are getting great experience FFF.
                                    You are exceeding all our expectations getting it to work at all. If i remember correctly,,there is only one bearing on that baby, so you have to be prepared for some kind of failure soon. Just make sure that you are standing well away from it when it gets very windy.
                                                                 Biff

[fourfootfarm]

Some progress has been made in the mean time.

Have invested in some more dump load resistors so its sized to the controller rather than then generator. After blowing a FET and ruining my 'experiment' batteries I'm not keen on that happening again.

I've also cobbled together a cheap AC relay set up using a programmable voltage controlled relay from eblag. Its a neat bit of kit and currently I've got it set up to turn on a wee towel rail when the voltage is over threshold for more than 30 seconds, and turn off again when its back down to float. Remains to be seen how long it will last though.

This has a couple of benefits, it means extra power is getting turned into heat in the bath room rather than the shed and provides a bit of back up control in case the xantrex dies (which I am really hoping won't happen)

Shed is complete and will begin moving in soon I hope!

[fourfootfarm]

Van is currently sagging more than a little at the moment 

[fourfootfarm]

On going adventures in turnip land.

Turbine is back up and running smoothly. Though as its connected to the same controller as a couple of solar panels it does very little when there is bright sunshine.

Now the proud owner of a 1000ah battery bank @ 24v. I've not actually done a load test on them yet to see if I have anything actually approaching that, and I suspect not, but even half that capacity is a massive step up. The joys of buying used batteries!

Been having a thorough read through Oztules powerjack modification sprees. I see Clockman has been doing much the same and I'm looking forward to his upcoming publication.

I have also discovered that ferrite cores are extremely brittle.

Experiments are continuing a pace with the crazy paving panels.

I measured the short circuit current and open circuit voltages of a couple and they were pretty good. Each panel put out 20v in direct sunlight while pointed straight at the sun, and put out around 6amps.

The first lot I have given a couple of coats of clear acyrlic varnish to rewaterproof them which had no effect on the current output. This is while facing directly at the sun. The internal crazy paving shading issue will come into play when they're at an angle but to mitigate this I'm thinking about putting in a split east west facing array, this will cut down on peak midday production but might smooth out generation a bit.

[biff]

Hi FFF,
      Your little turbine brakes in the sunshine, but it will take off after dark.
                                                Biff

[fourfootfarm]

Very windy here. Got 15amps out of the turnip before I lost my nerve and stuck the brake on. Weather forecast is to calm down in a few hours.

Probably a record for one of these. A whole 400 watts.

[biff]

Very windy once again here today,
                      Both turbines up in the dump load volts. The 48v one is really dishing out the amps topday .
        Grinder and drills + lights running for a few hours. I did the drilling and cutting steel with the 48v installation and the voltage hardly dropped down from 56v,s
               Just a nice force 6 coming in from the sea, the perfect wind.
                                                                   Biff

[fourfootfarm]

Busy day rewiring yesterday. Ideally I'd like to achieve the RE equivalent of this sort of thing.



But that's never going to happen!

Still much tidier now and safer. Spanner welding is a fine art I'm sure but not one I'm keen to practice.

[fourfootfarm]

How things do move on...

A year later that turkish turbine is still going! Its still only putting out 50w or so in a stiff breeze but its nice to hear it going, and 50w is a fair few LED lights.

Currently mid rewiring the new shed v1.1 which has been extended slightly since last time.

Forklift batteries survived the winter and are still good, SG checked them all and all cells seem happy which is a miracle and they're happily soaking in the spring sunshine.

I'm now the proud owner of 9x 320w panels. Now I just have to decide how I'm actually going to wire them. I've run out of space on the house roof so have moved onto the barns which have a very sold wrinkly tin roof.

Here I have reached a bit of an impasse. If i rewire for 48v I will need a new inverter, but less charge controllers.

How ever charge controllers that can do 48v are much more expensive than the shed grade 24v stuff.

Part of me wants to cobble together 24v for now and make do and just eat the losses. Part of me wants to drop £500 I shouldn't spend on an outback/midnite/ts-60

Decisions decisions...

[camillitech]

Good news about the batteries FFF, once you get that extra PV up they'll really 'come back to life'. 'Decisions, decsions, decsions' story of my life and good luck with it  How far is it from your barn roof to batteries? Does the barn already have 230V? if it's a long way and the answer to the 230V is yes then I'd 'AC couple'. If not so far I'd just go 'straight to battery' with that amount of PV and 'eat the losses' either way you'll need a diversion like the one you just sold 

Good luck, Paul

[biff]

And that Xantrex controller could have done, 
         12,v  24v and                                               48v*  ahhhhh
                                    Biff

[fourfootfarm]

Good job I've got a bunch of spare TS45s then too. 

It's only 20ft from house to barn, so maybe double that for cable run once I've got it nice and neat.

No 230v on the barn yet but there will be once I've got these panels up and then can run wiring for 230v to it cant risk people plugging in daft things there and leaving them on.

Had an another devious possible demented notion.

Now that you can get genuine 10a MPPT controllers for £20 the idea of panel level microcontrollers appeals slightly. Would be cheap and extremely dodgy and possibly not even work. But you never know till you try!

[camillitech]

Good job I've got a bunch of spare TS45s then too.  

It's only 20ft from house to barn, so maybe double that for cable run once I've got it nice and neat.

No 230v on the barn yet but there will be once I've got these panels up and then can run wiring for 230v to it cant risk people plugging in daft things there and leaving them on.

Had an another devious possible demented notion.

Now that you can get genuine 10a MPPT controllers for £20 the idea of panel level microcontrollers appeals slightly. Would be cheap and extremely dodgy and possibly not even work. But you never know till you try!

Well, if it's only a 40' cable run I wouldn't feck about with anything, just go 'straight to battery' and use your TS45's as diversion to hot water, no contest.