Hello everyone, this is my first post on this forum after reading quite a bit, and Iḿ pretty sure there is a lot of knowledge here to help me out.
So here is my situation:
I am about to start construction on my off grid eco-hostel in the Jungle of Colombia. I have access to a stream on my neigbors property that has a steady flow of water year around with a lot of head, and I am planning to harness this with a pelton hydroturbine.
- I have calculated that our daily needs will be around 40-50kw, so am going for a 3kw(72kw per day) turbine to provide us with more than sufficient power.
- The turbine has an output of 115 or 230 volts, and due to minimal loss in the powerline I would prefer to go for 230(since the turbine itself will probably be on the propery of my neighbor, possibly hundreds of meters from my property, haven found most suitable location yet)
- Since the construction of the turbine, penstock and other infrastructure will take some time I am planning to buy all the electronics like charge controller, batteries and inverter ahead of time and just connect them to one or two large solarpanels to produce some electricity to charge batteries for powertools and lights so we can have some power before the hydroturbine is up and running to use in construction.
- For this reason I have done some research and came to the conclusion that a midnite classic is probably my best choice, since it is suitable for both solar and hydro(because it can divert load in case of fully charged batteries.)
two questions that I have so far:
- I know there are 3 versions, and see that the 250 is not an option since it cannot handle 3kw of power. My knowledge is somewhat basic, but is it so that I can only use the classic 150 and have to put the output of my turbine to 115volts?
- Since the power of the turbine is 24-7 I don't plan on buying a lot of batteries, I only want them for the moments that our peak usage is above 3kw, which I expect to be during limited and short periods (power tools, some times welding with a 3500watt welder, or a toaster that turns on for a couple of minutes, that kind of stuff) Do you guys have any tips on how much battery capacity I should consider? (I can live with just using the solar panels for downtime of the turbine, and am getting a small backup generator too)
Thanks for any help!
Daan
Is the output of your turbine AC or DC ?
I think you will need to size your batteries to handle surge of your inverter at the very least.
Larry
The output from the turbine is not converted, so it is AC.
Yeah I understand that it would be good to adjust battery capacity to surge demand, any suggestions on the amount of battery capacity for this though? I am pretty new to this.
By the way I, after some research I have decided against welding off of my inverter. I have read some stories about the prolonged heavy load being pretty horrific for an off grid setup. Fortunately I have a neighbor near my property who has a connection to the grid and a powerful welder, so I can just take my welding jobs over to him.
To design for your surge first you have to know what you want to run, then figure out the surge, then look at inverters capable of doing that and look at it's specs. You would have to have enough battery to supply surge and also run your loads for as long as you needed as well as capability to charge batteries back up.
Larry
Hi Larry,
Yeah I understand that, but at this moment I would say it is almost impossible for me to say what I am going to run, so I have decided to do it like this, sort of some ballpark figures and then if they fall short I will just have to expand the setup. I am expecting surges to be rather short though, and not for hours of prolonged periods.
No advice on the usage of the classic 150 for my type of setup? That is my biggest question at the moment to be honest. Battery capacity and inverters can always be added to meet demand.
No I don't have any experience with hydro set ups using a Classic - or the proper way to design that sort of system.
Larry