Wind Generator Charge Controller

[200MPH]

I've just converted our house battery to Lithium and hence have needed to change programing on charging sources. We have a Superwind 350 fitted plus one of their controllers and the two attendant dump load resistors.
The controller sets the battery voltage to a certain level by dumping excess wind power to the load resistors. Problem was that it was set to 14.4V, which is unecessarily high for a Li battery.

I've just got the instructions from Superwind on how to adjust the controller and it's a simple trim pot that you adjust with a small screwdriver. Oh, and you also remove the thermistor and replace it with a fixed 2kOhm resistor, seeing as Li battery charge voltage is not temperature sensitive like Lead batteries.

So good news if you have a Superwind 350 and wish to covert your house battery to Lithium!

[Argyle38]

Originally Posted by GILow

I believe the Morningstar Tristar can do this, at least from my reading of the manual. But as noted I could not see how it could be made to play nicely with other controllers. So I let the solar handle the multistage stuff and just let the wind generator contribute to the bulk and absorption phase.

Yes, that seems like what most people are doing. Is your bulk and absorption the same voltage? What voltage does your wind charge controller cut out and divert to the dummy load?

My bulk is 14.4 and my absorption/float are 13.4-13.6. I'm wondering if it makes more sense to set the controller to 14.4, to get to 100% SOC on a breezy day, or 13.6 and not get to 100% but also never worrying about having the bank get over voltaged.

[GILow]

I went with the lower voltage, but I have the luxury of 760 watts of solar combined with a low power consumption boat so I could afford to be conservative. I also trust the German solar controller to do a better job of the charge profile than anything I could cobble together so I elected to get the wind gen out of the equation as soon as the controller was limiting solar output and fiddling with voltages. Can't remember the voltages off the top of my head but 13.4 rings a bell. I might have told the wind gen to butt out at 13.2.

[Bleemus]

Currently Iam using Trojan FLA. They state a 14.8v bulk charge rate. My Superwind controller is set at 14.7v bulk and my solar (560 watts feeding a Victron controller) is set to 14.8v bulk taking the batteries to 100%.
13.5v float for both.

[Argyle38]

Originally Posted by Bleemus

Currently Iam using Trojan FLA. They state a 14.8v bulk charge rate. My Superwind controller is set at 14.7v bulk and my solar (560 watts feeding a Victron controller) is set to 14.8v bulk taking the batteries to 100%.
13.5v float for both.

Does your Superwind controller have multi-stage charging capability, or is that just your solar controller?

[Bleemus]

Originally Posted by Argyle38

Does your Superwind controller have multi-stage charging capability, or is that just your solar controller?

As far as I can tell it is not multi-stage. Its either on or off so I have it set to shut down after the bulk of charging has been done and let the Victron do the finer job of voltage management near full charge. Their app allows me to set to exactly what Trojan suggests. Cant say if this is best solution as I am no expert on all things electrical.

That being said this will likely change as we may move to the carbon foam batteries if the tests from the new India plant prove satisfactory.

[GILow]

Any device that doesn't support multistage charging has to be taken out of the circuit early enough to avoid upsetting the algorithm of the device(s) that does. Otherwise you no longer have multistage charging.

[Argyle38]

Originally Posted by GILow

Any device that doesn't support multistage charging has to be taken out of the circuit early enough to avoid upsetting the algorithm of the device(s) that does. Otherwise you no longer have multistage charging.

Good point.