Classic 150 Installed

[kitestrings]

Edward, 

Sounds like your getting some positive results.

In your set-up, where I believe your clipping/diverting on the 3-ph AC side to a water heater - in addition to your other system protection efforts described - do you capture somehow the energy going into heating water heater?  I'm thinking (perhaps incorrectly) that this energy is 'upstream' of the Classsic so therefore would not be included in you log data.

kind regards,

~kitestrings

[keyturbocars]

Hello kitestrings,

My AUX1 AC Clipper actually diverts power to a 3 phase resistor box (air heater) that came with my HY-2000 wind turbine system.  I have this heater box mounted in the garage, so the power heats the air and is wasted.  In reality, I don't think it will waste much heat at all, because so far my Clipper has only operated on rare occasions under high wind gusts.  We haven't had a lot of wind lately, so I will have to wait and see what happens long term.  If I end up wasting too much power, then I will have to consider other options.  Safety is my primary concern, and I wanted to make sure my Clipper diversion load would never have the possibility of turning off (like a water heater diversion with thermostat can).  With my current AC Clipper arrangement, apart from the resistor wires burning out, I should have unlimited dump capacity during an extended wind storm with dangerously high winds.

My AUX2 diversion is where I use the DC SSR to divert the power from my battery bank to the water heater.  This happens when the battery bank is fully charged.  Since I am on grid and use my battery bank for emergency backup, most of my wind power is diverted to heat hot water.  This works well with 9 of us in the house and a lot of hot water useage.

All my power generation should be logged by the Classic.  We have not had a lot of wind lately.  We've had a few episodes of decent wind, but not the extended high wind events that we can get this time of year.  Spring is usually our best time for high winds, so I suspect the best is yet to come for the windy season.

Edward

[keyturbocars]

My HY-2000 wind turbine control system continues to work well, and the Classic 150 continues to do it's job faithfully.  It was breezy this evening (and continues to be windy), and I took a short video clip.  This is in 15-20mph winds, so it's not really blowing hard.  Sun is going down, so it's a bit dark too. 

http://www.key-ideas.com/HY-2000-Video.mpg

Edward

[keyturbocars]

I thought I'd post a little more "show and tell" on my Classic 150 controlled HY-2000 wind turbine.  Since I once had a runaway turbine (a cheap Chinese junk 2kW turbine), I am now very cautious.  The HY-2000 turbine has been great, and the Classic 150 continues to do a great job.  Just for peace of mind, I wanted to set up some different manual fail safes to be able to try to slow and shut down my turbine in case of an emergency.  I ended up coming up with a 3 level shut down system.  



DC Brake - This 100A breaker manually dumps power from the DC output of my rectifier to a 4kW resistor/heater load.

AC Brake - This breaker is just simply being used as a switch to send 48V battery bank voltage through a telecom voltage converter (48V to 12V).  I then send the 12V up to the control input on the 3 phase SSR that I use to divert power to a 3 phase heater box.  My Classic 150 controls this same 3 phase SSR through AUX1 as my Clipper.  I wired this switch as a way to manually dump all 3 phase output of my turbine to the 3 phase heater box dump load.  

AC Stop - This is the typical 3 phase short circuit stop.  

So, the way I would shut down in an emergency is to first shut down the Classic.  Then load down the turbine with the DC brake (4kW resistor bank) & AC brake (3 phase heater box).  This would heavily load down the turbine and slow it down.  Then I would try to actuate the breaker that short circuits the 3 phases of the turbine to try to stop the turbine.  I have tested this in moderate winds, and everything seems to work as planned.  Of course, the true test would be in very high winds.  I am expecting that the 4kW load added on top of the 3 phase heater box dump load would be enough to slow the turbine during high winds to the point that I can stop the turbine.  

I hope I never encounter the need for an emergency shut down, but just in case I am trying to be prepared.

Edward

PS.  boB, When I tried to do some of these manual failsafes in the past, I cooked the AUX1 relay.  You may remember that (or may not because you are so busy).  In any case, back then, I tapped into my 48V battery bank to get 12V to manually send to the 3 phase SSR control input.  I thought I could just tap into one of my 12V strings on the 48V battery bank and get the 12V that way.  This is where I think I went wrong.  I think that's why the AUX1 relay was inadvertently fried.  I don't fully understand it, but I think what happened was that there was a voltage potential difference across the ground of the Classic and the ground of the 12V string that I tried to use on my 48V battery bank.  That is what must have sent the high current through the relay and cooked it.  Not sure, but it's just a theory.  In any case, I ended up buying a small 48V to 12V voltage converter, and I used that to get my 12V for manually actuating the 3 phase SSR, and all is working well now. 

[Westbranch]

Hi Edward, great job... and a lot of trial and error.

If it's possible that when you get some spare time, you could post a schematic for those of us lesser mortals that are a bit lost by the complexity ( apparent ) of your now fully (hopefully) functioning system?

thanks
Eric

[keyturbocars]

Hi Eric, 

I might try to do that some time.  This time of year I'm much more distracted and busy, so much of my spare time is spent outside working around our small farm.   

Edward

[keyturbocars]

While I've been waiting for my Classic 150 to be repaired, I decided to make some small changes to my wind turbine control system.  I will be setting up my water heater diversion so that it will draw around 100A.  Up until now, I have had a single Crydom D1D100 solid state relay for my AUX2 controlled diversion.  I've been running 70A to my water heater.  Now that I'll be bumping the diversion up to 100A (which is the rated limit of the Crydom D1D100), I wanted to make sure that I have a better factor of safety.  So, I drilled & tapped my heat sink and installed a second D1D100 and wired it in parallel to the first.  This way, both SSR's should share the 100A load evenly.  This will put each SSR at around 50A, which will put the loads very safely within the limits of these SSR's.  Plus I'll have more surface area to dissipate the heat into the large heat sink.  I'm just trying to increse the factor of safety and to make my system more reliable. 



Speaking of repairs...

Ryan, does your RMA system show any updates on my Classic 150 repair?  I know that my Classic 150 arrived at the Post Office in Arlington on Tuesday.  Rick went and picked it up on Wednesday, but I don't know what has happened since then.  Thanks.

Edward

[Halfcrazy]

Edward it is all fixed and waiting for boB to tweak the code to prevent this from happening again. I will talk to boB and if he needs more than the weekend maybe we will get it headed your way and you can upload code when you get it.

[keyturbocars]

Sounds great, Ryan.  If we can maintain my current Classic memory, then that would be great.  I talked with Mario earlier in the week, and he said that this would be possible if my Classic software was updated via USB.  He was going to do it that way to preserve what I have saved in memory. 

Thanks,

Edward

[keyturbocars]

Having some great winds today, and my Classic 150 is working like a champ.  Last night it was breezy, but nothing particularly good.  Some time after midnight, the winds picked up nicely.  This morning when I woke up, the wind was averaging in the low 20's, but gusting into the mid 30's.  When I went down to check my Classic, I saw power peak at 4000+W for a moment in the short time I was watching.  The turbo fan was running on my Classic, so I know the winds were blowing strong.  I've only ever heard the turbo fan run one other time.  My 80 gallon water heater was already at around 120F this morning.  Classic showed 12.6 kwh produced over the past several hours.  Supposed to be windy the rest of the day and into tonight.  Lots of great wind power. 

I love the fact that I can go to bed and sleep well not worrying about my wind turbine now that I switched over the the Classic.  In the past, with the old controller, I used to wake up at night when the wind was roaring concerned about the wind turbine.  Not any more.  I know that my turbine is in good hands! 

Edward

[kitestrings]

Edward,

Congrats'  Glad to here it is working well.

What do you use for elements in your tank?  Am I recalling correctly that they are DC elements running off your batteries, or are they thru an inverter?  We have the former, but my plan is to increase the capacity of this dump load.

Our Teledyne's show'd up last night.  Thanks again to you and Bob for the sound check.

~kitestrings

[keyturbocars]

kitestrings,

Yes, I am using DC heating elements in my 80 gallon hot water heater.  These 24/48V elements are the ones that I am using.

http://www.altestore.com/store/Charge-Controllers/Dump-Loads-Dump-Load-Controllers/Diversion-LoadsDump-Loads/Water-Heating-Element-for-24V-or-48V-DC/p2327/

I have 2 of these set up to give me a total of 100A diversion load.  Each of these screw in elements has 2 heating elements.  Essentially, there are 4 heating elements all together.  I have the lower elements wired in parallel to give 75A and the top elements are wired in series to give me 25A.  They do not recommend wiring the elements as I have on the one giving me 75A diversion.  I am an experimenter and since I could not easily add a 3rd element set to this tank, I decided to just try some different wiring arrangements to increase my diversion load. 

I'm not going to recommend this for anyone else, since the manufacturer says not to wire them to divert so much power, but the fact is that it is working... has been working... and I see no reason why it can not continue to work well for me.  Time will tell.  I figure that as long as that 75A diverting element set doesn't overheat, then it should be OK.   I have the lower element wired up for the higher 75A load.  It sits in the cooler water towards the bottom of the tank.  The upper element that is in the hotter zone is the lower 25A diversion.  Right now, my upper tank area reads 130F and the lower tank areas reads 100F with an IR temp gun.  I've got 4AWG wire running to then elements and I made sure that I have a very good connections at the elements.  Working great.

Edward

PS.  I have a thermostat set to 150F on this water heater and I've also got the Honeywell anti-scald mixing valve on the water heater outlet (thanks to you for the suggestion).

[kitestrings]

Edward,

Clever.  We're using the same elements (in a much smaller tank).  I wondered how you got to this high a loading.  Now I see what you're doing.  Makes sense and if it hasn't burned out, I don't see where there is much risk otherwise.

Happy winds,

~kitestrings

[keyturbocars]

I agree, kitestrings.  I don't think there is much risk as long as the wire size is sufficient to handle the current and the connections to the elements themselves are done properly.  75A is a lot of current going to those small threaded rods, but I used some 4 AWG lugs with #10 holes and I had to be very careful how I connected them in order to not have the + and - lugs touching.  My suspicion is that they would not recommend such high power diversion because it would be hard to make a good, low resistance connection with those tiny threaded studs on the elements.  I tried to be very careful and it's working just fine.

Here's my 80 gallon heater with my new Honeywell mixing valve.  I also run with powered anodes in each of my water heaters, because our well water contains bacteria that reacts with a typical magnesium/aluminum anode rod and creates hydrogen sulfide gas (rotten egg smell).  After I removed the standard anode rods and installed the powered anodes, the rotten egg smell went away.



Edward

[Westbranch]

I also run with powered anodes in each of my water heaters, because our well water contains bacteria that reacts with a typical magnesium/aluminum anode rod and creates hydrogen sulfide gas (rotten egg smell).  After I removed the standard anode rods and installed the powered anodes, the rotten egg smell went away.

Edward

Edward please tell me more about those powered anodes... 
We too have fero-bacters in our water. Phew!!! But we inadvertently got rid of the smell by installing an Iron filter system that has an air injector to cause the iron to precipitate out in the filter medium before going to the softener.. We also have to 'shock' our well with bleach once a year or so to knock down the goodies..

Eric