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diy solar

Micro Turbines charge controllers

DBK

New Member
Joined
Mar 31, 2022
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Can you use a solar charge controller like a. Victron with a Micro Turbine?

I have a Victron change controller

Turbine, Rectifier then Victron to battery bank...would that work?
 
Yes. I have done that with a water-powered microturbine. However, you have to pay attention to what happens when the charge controller stops taking current.

When the charge controller stops taking current, two things happen:
1) The turbine starts freewheeling. Some turbines can handle this but even then it is not good for the bearings.
2) The voltage spikes. Depending on how high it spikes, it could damage the controller.

You will typically need to find a way to divert the turbine output to a dump controller. This can be done with a voltage controlled relay that put a low-ohm high wattage resistor across the turbine output when the voltage goes above it's normal operating voltage.

In my case, my turbine was only outputting ~120W so I just put a string of 4 high current zenor diodes in parallel with the turbine output. The battery bank was 24 volt so I selected the zenor diodes to have a total breakdown voltage of 36Volts. One of the diodes was a 12V zenor and I had a 12V case fan parallel to it so when the zenor diodes were dumping the excess energy the fan would blow across them. Unfortunately, this solution does not scale up very well.
 
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