solar/wind on Xantrex C35 and no charge from wind at night.

3 Posts
Feb 3, 2009 01:47 pm
solar/wind on Xantrex C35 and no charge from wind at night.

Sunforce 60 watts of solar, Air-X 400watt turbine both feeding a Xantrex C35 charge controller in PV charger mode (not worried about diversion "dump' load because I get minimum wind and should not overcharge.
Bogart Trimetric meter TM20/20
Question...on a windy and overcast day my PV charge as shown on Bogart is about .3 amps (nice trickle charge) and with wind gusts I get about 3 amps charge. BUT... at night with same speed wind gusts I do not measure a positive charge just my -.006 normal system drain. EVEN on a the same overcast day with wind gusts if I disconnect the PV panel at my combiner (Square D back fed breakers) the Bogart will not register any voltage from the turbine. is the Xantrex "overnight PV protection" not sensing my turbine thus inhibiting my turbine? (My turbine has its regulation turned off so that it cannot see back voltage from PV) Turbine generator indicator stays on and I verified output and I get voltage (6volts) typically to the combiner panel. Is my turbine healty? my average wind speed is about 11mph to 18mph

What is going on?
« Last Edit: Feb 3, 2009 02:07 pm by Daniel Johnson »
 
3 Posts
Feb 3, 2009 03:57 pm
Re: solar/wind on Xantrex C35 and no charge from wind at night.

Thanks Eric for information, for others on this forum...our quess is that the C35 controller does not deal well with both PV and turbine energy "combined" into a single feed, I have seperatly routed my turbine energy bypassing the C35 controller directly to the battery bank and have enabled the Air-X internal regulator.. we will see if this works tonight if it is windy Smiley
 
351 Posts
Feb 3, 2009 04:42 pm
Re: solar/wind on Xantrex C35 and no charge from wind at night.

You are right about the C-35 controller not dealing with the combined generation. No controller will in PV mode. 

Quote from the C-series user manual. Page 4.  
“Important: The C-Series controller cannot operate in more
than one function at the same time. If several functions are required in a system, a dedicated controller must be used for each function.”

If you refer to your Turbine manual (For the Air X 403 manual, it is figure 4 on page 16.), it will show you how to wire the panels thru the c35 and hook up the air X.
Hopefully your present configuration conforms to figure 4.    
Ken
 
220 Posts
Feb 3, 2009 04:51 pm
Re: solar/wind on Xantrex C35 and no charge from wind at night.


 hi daniel,

  yep, sounds like a good bet to me. i would still go thru the trimetric shunt though. do let us know the results!

cheers, dave


ps: i'm curious..have you found a modification to disable the internal regulation of that bird? or were you talking about the voltage set point adjustment on the body of the turbine?
 
65 Posts
Feb 3, 2009 06:03 pm
Re: solar/wind on Xantrex C35 and no charge from wind at night.

Out of curiosity, since the AirX has a built in charge controller in it, why run it through the C35 solar charge controller at all?  Why not just run it straight to the battery bank (with a breaker and stop switch of course in line Smiley.

If you do this type of setup you just need to be sure that one charger (either the C35 or the potentiometer on the AirX setting its charge controller voltage) is set to stop charging before another.  Typically folks set the AirX wind turbine's voltage "full" point to be higher than their solar charge controller's. This way the chargers aren't bopping back in forth thinking "ok, it's charged, wait it's not, oh wait it is, etc.".

AltE
"Making Renewable Do-able" (tm)
http://www.altEstore.com/
« Last Edit: Feb 5, 2009 09:43 am by Sascha Deri »
 
3 Posts
Feb 4, 2009 06:39 pm
Re: solar/wind on Xantrex C35 and no charge from wind at night.

Thanks everyone for your advice.

Ken, yes my rig is now configured as in "Air X 403 manual, it is figure 4 on page 16"

David, no modification was done on that bird, just the voltage set point adjustment.

Sascha, Thx for the heads up on charge "full point" for multiple sources.

WOW, my batteries charged up fine last night, full, but not equalized but better now with turbine amps getting to bank.
I did not get a chance to actually measure anything overnight but batteries this morning have more charge than they had when the sun went down last night.

Thx everyone
 

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