micro hydro load controller

Hello,

I'm volunteering at a place out in the country who are living off the
grid. They already have a couple of windmills, which have been installed
professionally. They are also working on a micro hydro system. This has
been designed and partly built by a professional engineer during his spare
time, but he has been unable to do any more work on it for some time (at
least a year) due to other commitments. The turbine and alternator are
finished, but none of the rest of the electrics, including the charge
controller for the batteries (it's going to be a DC system with an
inverter).

They have just got hold of a battery backup system of the kind which is
used to supply emergency power to alarm systems, emergency lighting etc.
(I think it used to run the emergency lighting for a nursing home). This
is designed to charge some 12V batteries from the 240V mains, and there is
also a separate inverter which supplies mains power from the batteries.

I was talking to one of the people there, and he was talking about using
the battery backup system as a charge controller for the water turbine. I
was advising him to be cautious, for the following reasons:

- you need to have some way of shunting power to a dump load when the
batteries are fully charged and no current is being drawn, otherwise the
alternator may burn out.

- The charger is as far as can tell (I may be wrong here though)
a standard linear regulator, which I am not sure is suitable for this kind
of application where the input voltage may be variable. I would have
thought that a switch mode regulator would be more suitable, as these can
deal with a wider range of input voltages. I think this is not so much an
issue as with wind power, since the speed of the turbine and hence the
output voltage is probably fairly constant, so should be tunable to
whatever voltage is required.

Do either of these things matter as much as I thought, or am I being too
cautious?

Any advice appreciated, particularly from anyone who has any practical
experience with micro hydro or windpower electrics.

--
remove 'n-u-l-l' to email me.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: micro hydro load controller
    ... They have just got hold of a battery backup system of the kind which is ... is designed to charge some 12V batteries from the 240V mains, ... of application where the input voltage may be variable. ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)
  • Re: micro hydro load controller
    ... used to supply emergency power to alarm systems, ... is designed to charge some 12V batteries from the 240V mains, ... of application where the input voltage may be variable. ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)
  • Re: i want some fish n chips...
    ... their lead-acid batteries in between six and fifteen minutes. ... General Motors announced a version of its "Magne Charge" ... Production EVs with lead-acid batteries are capable of up to 130 km (80 ... And as electricity generation moves over to non-fossil fuel sources, ...
    (uk.people.support.depression)
  • Re: Help with selecting an Inverter
    ... one of their dual time/temperature projection clocks are great. ... We have found them sometimes at Costco and Target has a fairly good number of different models, but read carefully the labels to make sure the clock does what you want. ... When we're dry camping, we do not worry about the full charge, but when we have shore power, either in park or at home. ... If you have 4 GC batteries then you have 440 ah of capacity. ...
    (rec.outdoors.rv-travel)
  • Re: Help with selecting an Inverter
    ... The projection clock projects a red laser light onto the ceiling ... our inverter is a modified sine wave unit. ... achieve an 85% charge within one hour, then it powers down to take care ... If you have 4 GC batteries then you have 440 ah of capacity. ...
    (rec.outdoors.rv-travel)