KID Clipper

[dgd]

DGD
You are correct the KID does work with the WBjr. You are also correct that the possibilities are huge with this thing. I to can see the Clipper circuit driving a Solid state 3 phase relay to PWM the 3 phases of a turbine. And at 30 amps on a 48 volt battery that's a 1500 watt turbine. Now we are cooking with Electric...

My thinking was stuck at 24volts. At 48v with the KID then we are looking at decent turbines... So the current 1500 watt ac clipper could be possibly used here. I would still think a smaller/cheaper under 1kw ac clipper might have potential as under 1kw turbines are very popular.
Dgd

[zoneblue]

From the first moment i laid eyes on a classic i thought to myself that the ideal charge controller would have twin output stages. One for the battery, and one for  the surplus. Decent filtering on both. That way you can use the surplus, which would act more like a current source, than a voltage regulator, for whatever you want.  I suppose the other way to acheive that is an external regulator device, which i can see myself building sooner or later.

Also did i hear mention of a mark 3 classic? Wanna say some more about it?

[onanparts]

By the way, I heard that Mario and Andrews drag and drop code uploader is now functional. That is a major breakthrough. I think we will be sending out Beta units as early as next week.

I attached a picture of the KID system that I built in the living room so I could learn to use the KID and help write the manual. How many of you on the forum are taking advantage of the beta program? Did I mention that you get a lifetime warranty with the purchase of a beta KID? You can probably twist our arm for a free WhizBang Jr also. The KID is going to be a big deal in the industry!

I'm on Bo's beta list. Free WBJr. ? Twist....Twist....Twist....

[Robin]

We don't see any issue with cooking with electric. Solar panels have gotten so cheap, it can make sense. Who wants to be lugging propane bottles around anyway. By the way, if you think cooking with solar is bad, you will really think I am crazy. Someone mentioned the small little system I have here in Hawaii for testing the KID. They saw what looked like water in the back ground. I will attach a picture here of the view from the house. I included this so you can see the hot tub. Some time when I get enough time and energy, there will be four wind turbines mounted about 5 feet off the ground. We have some awful trade winds here that blow up to 60mph. 20 to 30mph is very common. What am I going to do with these turbines..... heat the hot tub of course! I have four Chinook 200 watt turbines sitting in the garage and a Classic or two laying around. If I procrastinate long enough the system may turn into four 1000 watt MidNite turbines each with its own KID and Clipper? Heck, that sounds like enough power to think about trying to heat the pool too?
Procrastinating for me is not a problem while here in Hawaii.

[Westbranch]

Robin, I would think the only that should be laying around, in Hawaii, is you...  especially during  Christmas break...  HNY too

Is there a reason to use a clipper if the turbines are dedicated to pool heating, rather than just the hot tub?  I would think that heat sink should absorb all you would produce.

[Robin]

The Clipper is required because my wife doesn't want to listen to a bunch of noisy wind turbines 60 feet outside the bedroom window. I can dial the speed down.

[dgd]

Ok, so it appears my KID will be arriving soon. 
Any news on KID clipper progress?  Is it still 2Q14 ?
Dgd

[onanparts]

Ok, so it appears my KID will be arriving soon. 
Any news on KID clipper progress?  Is it still 2Q14 ?
Dgd

Awwwww! You're not supposed to say anything!!!!! Now your Beta KID warranty is only good until boB's next haircut. 

[Robin]

We have been discussing the KID Clipper a lot lately. I am almost finished with my part of the design. Take a look at the picture here. This is pretty much what it will look like. I do not have any idea of cost yet. One thing that will be happening for people other than our beta guys is that to do wind with the KID, you will need to buy the Wind version of the KID. It will come standard with the Clipper. There are too many wasted hours and dollars on the Classic from people that do not buy a Clipper. Our regular Clippers ain't cheap for sure, but that is what it takes. When people do not use the Clipper, the Classic usually blows up, so this time we are going to get a little smarter. The KID is an inexpensive product and blowing up a bunch from people that refuse to spend the money to buy the KID Clipper won't make for a good business plan. Therefore it will not be possible to upload new wind code into a Solar KID. Beta testers will be different. The KID Clipper will also be sold very cheap to KID beta testers. It is still a few months away though.
Comments are welcome on the layout of the Clipper. The breakers are for shorting the turbines three phase output. IT only takes two breakers to short out three phases. This Clipper will also work with a DC turbine.

[dgd]

Thanks Robin.
Thats a neat looking layout, just one resistor?
So a wind KID has to be supplied with the KID Clipper and from what you say about breakers then it appears the Clipper will contain the 3 phase rectifier as well as the breakers on the 3 phase AC side to turn on/off the turbine (by shorting the phases together on the  input side of the rectifier). Although the resistor(s) will be on the DC side of the rectifier?
Any thoughts on resistor values and does battery voltage/turbine model  need to specified so that correct resistance value is provided?
Or is one value used for all with some smart PWMing by the Clipper/Kid to keep turbine appropriately loaded?
Q214, cant wait... Can I get into the wind KID/Clipper beta test list please?
dgd

[Robin]

You can get into the KID beta program by contacting bo@midnitesolar.com. Make sure you tell him you are from the MidNite Forum. We have not established a price for the Clipper yet, but for the beta program, I suspect it will be about the same as for the KID. I can't remember what that is, but Bo will know.
As far as resistance. We will start with .8 ohms. There is no way to know what the exact right resistor will be until things are more firmed up. We are still messing with the stator design on our wind turbine too. It is possible that other brands of turbines may require a different resistor. We just don't know yet? The resistor will be a 600 watt just like we use in the large Clipper, but we use 6 in that Clipper. The Clipper and KID will make sure we are never dissipating more than 600 watts in the resistor. We suspect that we can control a 1000 watt turbine with this clipper. If we ever had to divert full power from a 1000 watt turbine due to batteries being fully charged, the KID would Clip and bring the turbine speed down thus reducing dissipation by lowering the turbine voltage. Lots of unknowns. We need to break a bunch of stuff in engineering so we can determine what can actually be done.
Here is the present KID Clipper schematic. This may change as things progress, but this is the most basic it will ever be. The goal is to make a product that works, but at the least cost.

[dgd]

A nice straightforward design 
My thoughts...
Can connect a 3 phase AC turbine or a DC turbine?
The run/stop switch system would need to be different for DC turbine although some pcb jumpers to select AC/DC could rewire for DC.
Those large(ish) caps are probably not necessary for AC 3ph turbine as DC ripple after rectifier is near negligible. But useful for DC turbine. These tend to be expensive too.
0.8ohm will probably dead stop a 24v or 48v turbine. 1.6 and 3.2 ohm options here? although if something like a higher speed hy-1000 gets connected then 6 to 8 ohms. Starts to get complicated here.
I hope there is enough room for a few MOVs and maybe associated leds..
No high voltage input detection/protection?  resettable fuses for OCP? 
dgd

[Robin]

1. The design should work for AC and DC turbines with no changes. For DC, just use any two of the three input terminals. We will no doubt label two of them for DC+ and DC- to save on phone calls, but it doesn't matter which two to use or polarity. Take a good look at the stop switches on the schematic. You will see that between the two breakers, it will short out all three windings on a 3ph turbine and also short out the output of a DC turbine. No jumpers required.
2. The caps are not required so much for an AC turbine, but mandatory for a DC turbine. Since the KID is crammed for space, the input caps are a little light. The caps here on the Clipper will allow the KID caps to run cooler. The caps aren't cheap, but remember we aren't buying them in small quantities.
3. We will make sure we have other resistor values for other turbines. I think we already have 2 ohm in that size. We will get 4 and 8 or so also.
I suspect when it is all said and done, we may have 3, 5,6,7,9, and 10 ohms as well. Once we are ordering these resistors, it isn't a big deal to add some other values.
4. I have not incorporated any MOV's yet. The ones we use in the SPD's are too big and the ones we use in the Classic are too small.
More work and thought needs to go into this. I do agree that we should put some in if possible. Shoot, now I need a ground! I should put one in anyway. LED's will take a bunch of parts. I don't know if we will want to add that expense. If LED's are required, we always have the SPD's. I would like to make a smaller SPD someday too. That may be the solution. It would have LED's and would mount like our regular ones, but at a lot less money. Possibly $75 or $80 rather than $119.
5. No high voltage protection other than clipping. This Clipper also does not have the fail safe circuit like our big Clipper. There is a 30 amp fuse built into the Clipper position on the KID. That is not intended to circumvent the NEC required disconnect though. We know that a lot of doit yourselfers are not going to put any sort of OCP anywhere in the system, so we put the three fuses in the KID. They are not code compliant fuses, but a lot better than nothing. They will help to keep burning things up on bad installations. We do not advocate counting on these fuses as they will not meet the demands of the NEC.
All the extra stuff that we are not putting into this Clipper have been left out in order to meet cost expectations. If there is budget left over, then you may see more stuff in there. We just don't know what it costs yet. One of the main concerns is the cost of the heat sink. I originally designed in a nice extrusion, but Ryan pointed me in a sheet metal direction that is much less costly. We do not know if it will be adequate yet, but that is what the first prototype will have.
By the way, Mario is running into problems uploading code. It seems that Windows 7 only allows so much time to upload new code. Mario has been struggling with reducing code space while adding new features and bug fixes. Not an easy task. Andrew is now going to start work on a new boot loader that will speed things up. It would be a shame to limit features based on Windows limitations.
Keep the questions and comments coming. This is the time to let Mario and all the rest of engineering know what you want.
By the way, we already have KID code updates on the website. Mario will be changing the code almost daily for a while. Upgrading the code is really easy on the KID as compared to the Classic. We took this down yesterday when we discovered the time out issue, but it should be ok to put it back up now.
I uploaded a few new pictures of the Clipper. These show the new sheet metal heat sink in case anyone is interested in this stuff. Most consumers never get to see the development that goes on for products. If this is of interest, we will continue to post the progress. We can call this a large design review as it progresses.

[boB]

Those large(ish) caps are probably not necessary for AC 3ph turbine as DC ripple after rectifier is near negligible. But useful for DC turbine. These tend to be expensive too.

Think about what a DC turbine is.  It's an AC turbine with the  rectifier already in the turbine nacelle.

The caps are necessary for an AC or a DC turbine if it is being clipped on the DC side.

The caps are not there for filtering but as  snubbers.  If it were only an AC clipper,
clipping on the AC side, then no capacitors would be necessary.  This clipper needs to
satisfy both AC and DC customers though so gotta keep the caps for now.

boB

[Robin]

Here are a couple more shots of the Clipper. I think I am ready to have parts made. Notice that this version has the added ground terminal on the edge of the board. You can access the ground from the conduit openings of directly through the cover where a couple of 1/4" knock outs are placed.