Voltage regulator adjustment on generator

[toothy]

Vic,

I am under 6 feet of 4/0 from both inverters.

I have no AC loads on the gen or the SW inverters. All house loads are being supplied by the Outbacks.

I am using the SW's as glorified battery chargers with out any bypass from the gen.

I did buy them used so who knows, but my buddy runs the Fox Island resort out in the bay where they have been since new and he never had any known issues. They were charging the same exact bank.

Speaking about fluorescent flicker did you know you can adjust gen rpm with a fluorescent light bulb?
http://www.sailnet.com/forums/gear-maintenance/38029-diesel-rpm.html

I didn't try that method I bought a pretty good meter.

Thanks for your ideas
Wade

[toothy]

Well, I can't seem to get them to charge together and hard. Master still dropping to next to nothing early in bulk.

I think I'm going to try an EQ starting at 48-50V and see what that does. Unless somebody thinks it a bad idea?

If that doesn't make it charge hard it may be Craigslist time and live with the Outback flicker until the crew around here gets the be all end all going.

Wade

[Halfcrazy]

So the SWs are purely battery chargers right?

So how I would do it is wire them each up to a Leg of the genny:

SW1 to L1
SW2 to L2

and NO stacking cable. Now they have no idea each other is there and should charge up to there limit or the capability of the genny. If one is backing off I can only assume a few things:

1- it thinks the battery is full (Check the voltage at the studs on the XW when its charging hard maybe there is a voltage drop issue)
2- some how its being back fed and not liking it
3- There is an issue witht he actual SW (Is it always the same one that backs off?)

[toothy]

Thanks Ryan,

Yes chargers only.

I had them wired SW1 to L1 and SW2 to L2 and didn't like the L1 to L2 imbalance but the SW's acted the same as now. I installed a transformer to balance the lines and it seems to work great.

I removed the stacking cable and the results are the same.

I'll do some more checking and report back.

Thanks
Wade

[toothy]

It works!!

I had a spare blue Midnite temp sensor plugged into the master Xantrex and that was throwing things off.

Probably too much information for that old white box to handle.

I had my input "A" set to 35A and it was only putting out around 30, so I hope when I raise the input limit to 39A I'll be able to get a bit more out of it.

This should take care of my Outback flicker and up my charge rate.

Thanks for all your ideas and help.

Wade

[Halfcrazy]

Yes the TRACE SWs use a different ohmage.

[Vic]

Hi Wade,

First,  from an old post on the previously-great wind-sun forum here is what boB mentioned about the older Trace/Xantrex SW Inverter/Charger BTSes:

"Re: Resistance Values of RTS/BTSs ?

The old Trace/Xantrex BTS's were 100K at 25 degrees C and are NTC. i.e. resistance goes down with temperature.

OB is also NTC and is 10K Ohms nominal at 25 C.

boB"

The NTC small Thermistor should not be more than about $0.75 (or so) from DigiKey or Mouser.

Have not looked.  Then one just needs some cable that CAN be somehow connected to a four-pin Phone connector.   Will have to look to see which of the four pins that the Thermistor uses - would guess that it is the center two.

Will try to look around at several Solar Resellers to see if any have old-stock T/X BTSes.

EDIT:  Poked around a bit,  looking for old-stock T/X BTSes,  and found none.

DIgiKey does show a disc-type Thermistor for about $0.79 at quantity one.  The main question is what current is flowing through this thermistor,  or,  really,  what SHOULD be the power rating of this part:

http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?pv867=17&pv976=45&FV=fff4001e%2Cfff80044%2C1140209%2Cd880006&k=thermistor&mnonly=0&newproducts=0&ColumnSort=0&page=1&quantity=0&ptm=0&fid=0&pageSize=25

I have no financial interest in DigiKey or Mouser Electronics,  or TDK for that matter ...

All FWIW ...  forgot to mention this in the PM exchange.   Good Luck!   Vic

[toothy]

Thanks Vic

I have the 100k thermistors on a watch list on fleabay or amazon, but haven't gotten around to buying them yet. The sun has been shining and the wind blowing so the boss says she wants flooring more than BTS's, sometime I just don't get their priorities!

I'm pretty sure your correct about it being the center 2 wires, I believe boB said that somewhere.

Thanks for the thought
Wade

[Vic]

OK Wade,

Temperature compensation is important.  But,  with Inverter-Chargers it may not be as important as it would be from the CC.  And you should be coming out of the Winter doldrums,  so hope that you will need less generator run time,  and much more PV charging ...  seems to me.

Good Luck,   Vic