Brian McGowan
9th December 2014, 23:52
I am going to throw this out there. I am looking for opinions.
I have a small wind turbine basically made out of a GM alternator with a permanent magnet core instead of the electromagnet core. It is a 12 volt arrangement although it definitely generates a higher voltage. I have the cable coming in from the turbine tied to a diode which costs me another .7 volts so as to keep the possibility of current flowing back through the cable in the event or a short or if I am working on it. I now have a set of nickel iron batteries which like to be charged at a higher voltage than standard FLAs at about 16.5 volts or more. That plus the diode drop means I have to get to 17.2 volts to start drawing current to charge the batteries when they are close to full.
One option I have considered is to take the rectifier out of the alternator and tie my cable directly to the coils and put the rectifier on my equipment board and get rid of the diode I spoke of above. This would save me that .7 volts while still keeping the possibility of current flow if there is a short eliminated.
The other option I am considering, although I am loathe to spend any more money on this, is to get a 24 volt version of this generator and maybe still put the rectifier on my equipment board. The 24 volt version will only do half of the 65 amps that the 12 volt version will do but I have never gotten more than about 28 amps out of the thing anyway.
Ready? Discuss. All opinions welcome.
Thanks
Brian
I have a small wind turbine basically made out of a GM alternator with a permanent magnet core instead of the electromagnet core. It is a 12 volt arrangement although it definitely generates a higher voltage. I have the cable coming in from the turbine tied to a diode which costs me another .7 volts so as to keep the possibility of current flowing back through the cable in the event or a short or if I am working on it. I now have a set of nickel iron batteries which like to be charged at a higher voltage than standard FLAs at about 16.5 volts or more. That plus the diode drop means I have to get to 17.2 volts to start drawing current to charge the batteries when they are close to full.
One option I have considered is to take the rectifier out of the alternator and tie my cable directly to the coils and put the rectifier on my equipment board and get rid of the diode I spoke of above. This would save me that .7 volts while still keeping the possibility of current flow if there is a short eliminated.
The other option I am considering, although I am loathe to spend any more money on this, is to get a 24 volt version of this generator and maybe still put the rectifier on my equipment board. The 24 volt version will only do half of the 65 amps that the 12 volt version will do but I have never gotten more than about 28 amps out of the thing anyway.
Ready? Discuss. All opinions welcome.
Thanks
Brian