600 Watt Sunforce wind turbine

2 Posts
Apr 6, 2013 11:06 am
600 Watt Sunforce wind turbine

Hello,
I am new to this forum, but have been living off-grid for many years.  A short time ago, I added a Sunforce wind turbine to suplement our solar PV system, and hopefully gain some power without the sun.
However, the system provided by Sunforce, mostly their controller, was not compatible with my rather large solar system.  I have since purchased a C40 contoller, a 3 phase rectifier, and the associated components including a 1500 watt load resistor.
Everything installed just fine without any problems, but not I do not have any ac output from the wind turbine.  Before this conversion, I could always measure plenty of open circuit voltage from the turbine.  Now, it doesn't seem like it wants to rotate, even in a very strong wind, and acts like to brake is enerjgized (wihich it is not).
Guess I'm looking for suggestions of what could be wrong???  Hopefully something bad hasn't happened to my wind turbine.
Thanks for any and all comments,
Dave Cellini
Holland, VT
 
462 Posts
Apr 9, 2013 12:09 pm
Re: 600 Watt Sunforce wind turbine

David, you say you added a rectifier to get AC out of your turbine. The C40 requires a DC input. This could be the problem. Also I believe that controller is used either as a charge controller OR a diversion controller, make sure you set it correctly......
 
2 Posts
Apr 11, 2013 12:48 pm
Re: 600 Watt Sunforce wind turbine

Thanks for your response.   I did have the rectifier connected so it was producing dc to the controller and the C40 was configured right.
By troubleshooting the problem, I discovered what was happening to prevent the wind turbine from generating power.  I thought the 3 phase rectifier has somehow been shorted because the wind generator was acting just like when you short two of the ac leads together when open circuited.  However, here is the 'discovery':  the wind generator would only work if I lifted the ( - ) lead to the battery.  In other words, only the ( + ) lead from the rectifier is connected to the battery bank and the ground finds its way back in the circuit thru the batteries and other wiring to the controller and load resistor.
At first I didn't beleive it could work that way, with only one lead off the dc side of the rectifier, but it has been operating flawlessly for several days now.
I just thought I'd share my discovery because I'm sure nobody would ever think to try hooking it up with only one wire !!
Thanks for listening,
Dave Cellini
Holland, VT
 

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