Jay mentions a topic that I've had a question about. Has anybody AC-coupled an induction generator (wind or hydro) with a conventional battery based inverter?
Yes I have.
On the surface it seems that it would work fine as long as there were appropriate means included in the design to avoid over-charging the battery.
Yes the inverter takes care of that. I used a Trace PS inverter at each house and fed them all from one hydro. It was necessary to juggle the gen size setting in each house to meet the turbine flow setting at that time. It worked much better than I expected to be honest. The efficiency of direct use is excellent and the ability to suck power out of the battery at peak times made the small turbine much more effective for a large group of users.
Maybe one of you off-grid hydro Wrenches has done this. Thanks for any insights...
It's very important to have a voltage regulator on the hydro. There is also plenty of dump power to be allocated.
I got my controller from "Nigel Smith" <[email protected]>. -- Hugh Piggott Scoraig Wind Electric Scotland http://www.scoraigwind.co.uk _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: [email protected] Options & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
