Will Williams's posts

I know this topic has been discussed here before, but I've few questions.

I have 1 panel installed, it's about 18watt and 14-15v, I want to add a second homemade panel, that depending on the way I wire the cells I can get 16v or 33v (and those voltages can drop a fair bit if gets warm and completely tank in cloud cover), is there a way to wire them both directly to batteries (I use a load dump) without any kind of loss to one of the panels? Would installing a blocking diode between the 2 cut out any reverse current going to the weaker panel? And does a larger blocking diode loose more power than a smaller one?

does anyone have a diagram for an electric brake system for a wind turbine? Not exactly sure how it's meant to work.

I'm starting to think it's batteries too.
Here's my setup:
4 x 3.5volt panels in a series producing about 16volts going through a 10amp controller to 2 x 12volt batteries in parallel.

Like I said the batteries never get above 12.5 volts even without a load. They are located in the shed and they did pretty cold this winter, it got down to -20f. Could the batteries have froze or completely discharged themselves?

Out of curiosity, would adding these 2 tiny 4.5volt panels directly to the batteries help at all? or would they create some sort of drain on the system?

Thanks for the help

My batteries never get above 12.5 volts yet my panels say they are kicking out 16volts, I can't for the life of me figure out why. So I tried adding some tiny panels in a series that produce 4.5 volts, that didn't work out too well, it cut the overall output in half

Is there any way I can add lower voltage panels to the system to try and bring up the battery voltage to a reasonable level?

Thanks!!!

I think I got it now thanks!

so if I'm to understand this right the c40 will go on the wiring *after* the battery, what would save the battery from being overcharged by the wind turbine?

Hi James,
My current solar setup is a group of 4 small panels producing 18watts (super small!!) with a simple 15amp charge controller from http://greenenergiesllc.com/zencart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=1  no reverse charge to the panel protection ie. Blocking diode (I don't think the controller has this function).

I just purchased the Xantrex C40 controller from this site and the wind turbine in production will output around a max 100watts. I have 2 oldish sealed lead acid UPS batteries, 75 amph each I think.

Sorry, I'm very new at this please let me know if you need any more info! It's a very simple setup, no fuses or anything yet, still learning.

Thanks

I'm building a small wind and solar hybrid system. My problem is safely merging the two power sources through some kind of junction box before it goes to the charge controller, anybody have any ideas how to do this?

Thanks
Will