Classic 150 Installed

[keyturbocars]

Hi Eric,

Here's the place where I bought the powered anodes from... they have some good info on smelly water here...

http://www.waterheaterrescue.com/pages/WHRpages/English/Troubleshooting/stinky-water-in-hot-water-heaters.html

These are the powered anodes that I use:

http://www.waterheaterrescue.com/pages/WHRpages/English/OrderPages/XCart/Power-Anode.html

Edward

[Westbranch]

Edward, good link ...  thanks
Eric

[keyturbocars]

You're welcome, Eric.  Hope the information helps you too.  No fun taking a hot shower and feeling sick from the rotten egg (hydrogen sulfide) smell!  It reminded me of visiting Yellowstone and smelling the hydrogen sulfide coming from some of the hot springs and geysers. 

Edward

[keyturbocars]

Winds are starting to calm down now to the teens, and energy production is tapering off.  This is probably the best day that I've had for wind power.  A little over 30KWh produced in the past 22 hours or so.

Here's a snap shot from earlier in the day during a wind gust (kwh shown on Classic in picture was after it reset to zero earlier this morning):



I saw over 4000W during one gusty time this morning, but naturally I didn't have the camera handy.  

One other piece of Classic trivia... at one time when the winds were blowing strong and my Classic's turbo fan was running for a while, I went in and checked the internal temps.  My Classic reported the FET temp as 45.2C and the PCB temp as 49.2C. 

Edward

[keyturbocars]

Hello,

I've been busy lately, but I wanted to report that my Classic 150 controlled wind turbine system continues to work great.  It's been relatively calm the past 2 weeks, but today we've got some good wind blowing through.  They are predicting gusts up to 30mph today and supposed to stay windy tonight. 

My Classic 150 works so well that I don't have to pay much attention to it these days.  The wind blows, the wind turbine spins, and the Classic just does it's job without complaining. 

That's the way it should be!

Edward

[Volvo Farmer]

I have had the same experience. After getting all the programming figured out, I'm not afraid to let my turbine fly now. I have seen and confirmed that the clipper works and the Classic seems to hold the turbine back from running away in any winds I have seen so far. I'm going to shut the turbine down and turn off the Classic while we're on vacation because the solar will keep up fine, and it's one less thing to worry about.

[keyturbocars]

Volvofarmer,

That's good to hear that you are having an equally positive experience with your Classic controlled wind turbine.

I think it's smart to shut things down while you are out of town.  I would do the same if I was going to be gone for more than a day or so.  Funny thing is that usually when we leave town is when the crazy weather events happen here.  One year, we went to visit my wife's family for a week or so.  A neighbor e-mailed and said there was a big wind storm and some of our roofing was torn off.  Another time, we were visiting my family for a few days and a neighbor called to say that there was a flash flood that came off the mountains (foothills) and washed out my driveway.  Looked like a bulldozer came down the foothills and dumped a bunch of debris on our property (as well as washed away many dumptruck loads of gravel off our driveway).   So, I figure it's safest to shut down the turbine when we leave town for a while!  I don't want to find out that we had 100+mph winds again like we had one year that snapped off numerous power poles like they were toothpicks.  Not talking about trees falling on powerlines and knocking over power poles.  These utility poles were snapped clean off.  I don't suspect my wind turbine tower would fare too well in winds like that.

Edward

[keyturbocars]

Hi Guys,  It's me, Edward.  I'm still alive!  I've just been very busy the past few months, and the wind has been fairly unbusy around here, so I haven't had much to post.  However, last night as I was working into the wee hours of the morning (went to bed at 4 AM - too much work, not enough time), we had a wind storm roll through. It was unexpected.  It's been so calm around here the past couple months, that I've sort of forgotten what wind was!    Well, last night I was definitely reminded about the wind.  My weather station recorded peak winds of 46 mph. 

While I was working on the computer, the wind began to pick up all of a sudden, and I kept checking my Classic 150.  I could tell that the gusts were strong by the sounds coming from outside, but I didn't realize it was that strong.  Well, imagine my surprise when I saw OVER 5,000 WATTS flash on the screen of my Classic 150!  No joke!  It happened so fast, that I didn't catch the exact number, but it was definitely OVER 5,000 W.  What's amazing about this is that my HY-2000 wind turbine is rated as a 2,000 watt turbine!  I decided that I should grab my camera to try to document this.   As you can imagine, it's hard to snap a picture of the constantly changing LCD readout while the wind is gusting and frequently changing.  I never caught 5,000+ again, but I did see a lot of numbers in the 4,000 - 5,000 W range. 

Here's one snapshot at 4299W...



Here's one at 4672W...



It's hard to see because the LCD was changing so fast, but that's 4672W, 115.6V, 84.8A as best as I can see.  SHAZAM!  85A at 55V! 

As much as I like power, I decided to adjust my homemade AUX1 controlled Clipper to a lower voltage range of 114V - 116V.  Previously, I had it set to 118V - 120V, which let the turbine crank out over 5,000 W.  I wanted to try to apply the Clipper brakes sooner to keep peak power under control.  When the power was peaking around 5,000 W, the little yellow light was blinking at the left of the display on my Classic 150.  I'm assuming this means that I was reaching the amp limit of my Classic.  In any case, I set the braking limit of my Clipper to a lower voltage to try to limit peak power output.  Everything worked great and the Classic 150 continues to work great to keep things under control.  The Classic is an impressive controller!  The HY-2000 is an impressive turbine too! 

Based on the voltages that I am seeing, I think that the Classic 150 is a perfect match for the HY-2000 wind turbine.  During those peak 5kW surges, I could hear the wind turbine blades twisting and doing their automatic braking to limit turbine RPM.  They get very loud as the blades "furl" by twisting and stalling in the wind.  So, in reality, I don't think that this turbine would put out much more than around 5kW because the blades would begin limiting RPM.  I don't like it when the blades do this to limit the RPM, because it is so loud, and I suspect that it's also hard on the bearings.  I'd rather use my Clipper to limit RPM and prevent the RPM's from getting high enough to hit the aerodynamic braking of the blades.  At least this aerodynamic blade braking is a good safety backup feature to keep RPM's under control.   

Now I'll crawl back in my hole and get back to work!

Edward   

[boB]

Fantastic, Edward !!    The Classic probably current limited when you saw it jump
to 5000+ watts...    Maybe...

Hope you had a great Christmas and have a merry new year to boot !

Glad you stopped by.  I was beginning to worry about you !!!

boB

[keyturbocars]

Hi boB,

Had a nice Christmas visting my wife's family for a while, but the trip got cut short when Montezuma's Revenge (stomach flu) starting running it's course.  We headed home as soon as possilble, because I didn't want to wait until all the kids came down with it.  I didn't think it would be wise driving for 7 hours with a van full of sick kids puking all over the place!  I also didn't want to destroy my mother-in-law's house with a pukefest from my family of 9 and only one bathroom!    Thankfully, it never got really bad.  Now that we are home, if it does get bad, then at least we'll only destory our own house.     

Hope you and your family had a nice Christmas too.

Happy New Year!

Edward

[niel]

that's amazing to see that much power going through 1 controller. you did good boB.

[Halfcrazy]

Well we have had a good wind event and I have been working hard at tuning 2 Classics on one turbine. This is the neighbors 16ft Other power machine. From my calculations it is safe to 8kw. I feel Edwards pain trying to get good pictures. We did see 6,500 to 7,000 watts a couple times. Here is a shot of it doing about 5200 watts or 100 amps into the 48 volt battery.


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[keyturbocars]

Neil, you are right.  boB did a great job on this controller!

The dual Classics working in tandem is cool, Ryan. 

It is hard to get a good picture.  Flash ON and it washes out the LCD display.  Flash OFF and then there's not enough light so the picture is fuzzy.  On my Canon digital camera, I found that it works best to set it in Macro mode for better close up focus, and then put the flash ON and try to angle the camera so that the flash doesn't reflect directly back off the LCD screen face.  Even if all that is right, then the constantly changing numbers on the LCD in wind mode makes it hard to catch it at just the right time.  It would probably be easier to get a good picture of the display when using for a solar application, because the power would not be fluctuating so quickly.  Then again, it's a lot more exciting to watch the power fluctuations with a wind turbine! 

Edward

[phonetic]

I have a 8kVA 100 volt transformer center tapped, couple of 120amp stud diodes, 50,000 micofrarad cap..driven by my 6kVA Genset into my classic 150..Im curious what numbers will I get if I feed into my classic 150 

Frank
VK3ZFS

[boB]

I have a 8kVA 100 volt transformer center tapped, couple of 120amp stud diodes, 50,000 micofrarad cap..driven by my 6kVA Genset into my classic 150..Im curious what numbers will I get if I feed into my classic 150 

Frank
VK3ZFS

Depends on your battery voltage.   Higher the battery, higher the power available for a given output current of course because it will limit.
I you are going to do this, may I suggest adding another diode between your 50,000 uF cap and the Classic input.  The Classic has input caps too, around 4000 uF but if, when it wakes up and matches your input voltage, the ripple current can send some current back into your big capacitors.

What I think the world needs is a decent battery charger with AC input... Maybe with PFC too.

boB