Making my own power cable bundle.

[Tolver Armstrong]

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[Dave Turpin]

You will get induced voltages in the case where one turbine is producing power and others are not. But, since you are using charge controllers, there will be no ill effects. Just make sure to check all power dead before servicing the system. (induced voltages are sneaky and can give you a little shock when you think power is secured)

[Tolver Armstrong]

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[Dave Turpin]

If it really was a concern, the best methods for eliminating induced voltages are:

1) Having the positive and negative wire run coaxially (this is how electrical interference is eliminated in audio-visual equipment)

2) Spacing the cables out (induced voltage is proportional to the CUBE of distance)

3) Braiding (Lenz's law, which determines the polarity of an induced voltage has a dot-product operator in it, which means any time cables are perpendicular to another, they cannot affect each other)

But to be completely honest, if you are talking about 24 volt power, the induced voltages should not be an issue. Space them a couple inches apart in your lava rock pit if you want. I would be more worried about the huge percentage power loss you are going to experience with low-V, high-A power with long power cables.

[Tolver Armstrong]

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[Tolver Armstrong]

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[Dave Turpin]

Well, transformers only work with A/C. It sounds like you are rectifying the output of the alternators at the turbines.

Higher voltage = lower amperage = less resistive losses. Higher voltage also means more current through your heart if you ground yourself on a hot wire.

But, you are really overthinking this induced voltage thing. Yes, they will be present, and yes, there are ways to mitigate them. But you're charging batteries, not running an EKG.

[Tolver Armstrong]

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[Dale Sheler]

I rented a trencher and put down three 2" conduits and three 1" conduits for any future expansion, you just string a nylon pull rope in the conduit as you put it together. Then every time you pull something through the conduit you also pull a rope through with it so you always have a pull rope.
PVC conduit is cheap and makes it easy to change things if you ever need to, I used 2awg aluminum, it's a lot cheaper than copper and it's what the power company runs to your house.

[Tolver Armstrong]

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[Rob Beckers]

... I am allready using the best I can get for my system, so why use cheap alum wire? I am using higher quality copper, it has more efficent transmission rates, I am led to believe ...

The electrons don't care if they're moving through copper or aluminum. All they care about is the resistance of the wire, and you control that through wire size (AWG). As it happens you can size up aluminum wire so it has as little or less resistance as copper, and still save a bundle. For longer wire runs (not sure where the difference kicks in, around a few hundred feet or so) aluminum makes perfect sense.

When using aluminum wire you have to take care to use aluminum rated terminals, lots of sanding, and lots of anti-corrosion compound. With a little care during installation it will last just as long and be just as reliable as copper though.

-RoB-

[Tolver Armstrong]

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