I’m so happy to find this project! I’m hoping to make a windmill and, if conditions allow, a water mill that generate electricity, and I prefer to also make the electronics surrounding it.
I expect my windmill, however, to deliver more power than your MPPT-2420-RC can handle, namely peaking at about 1 kW.
My initial question is therefore: How difficult would it be to size the design up for the task? 1kW is really the best case scenario, so keeping the current spec at 20A and just increasing the battery voltage from 24 to 48 V should be good enough. I’m only interested in some fast pointers for now. I’m hoping it’s as simple as finding new components that can handle the voltage (and of course redo the layout, since they will be bigger).
If things go as planned, I’d be happy to contribute with my design for the benenit of Libresolar. Which I guess brings the question whether there will be a “Librewind”?
I’ve built one MPPT-2420-RC and planning some redesign. Also interested in 48V version.
My brief comments:
With current heat sink max output current is around 14A. This is without force cooling. So my be larger heatsink on bottom is good solution.
Current MOSFET and Caps are 100V rated and this gives max input voltage around 80V
The power supply of controller needs some redesign. There was some issue regarding switching between solar and battery input. Also DC-DC buck IC is only 65V rated
I have some doubts regarding output inductor. It gets really hot. Not sure whether can handle 20A.
There are some minor software issues.
I have no long-term tests, but controller works well up to now. Martin has done excellent work!
I think that current design can handle around 300-400W. Doubling the output voltage and with better thermal management can reach 1kW.
So we can start share ideas about device upgrade. Not sure what is needed for water/wind application
@ulf that’s great to hear that you are interested in developing a version that’s more suitable for wind. It has been on my agenda for quite a long time already, but I’ve been busy with some projects related to solar charging and didn’t get really far with the support for wind turbines. But with joint effort we might be able to do that.
I’m in regular contact with the people from Erni Kollektiv who started with some charge controller firmware adjustments for a wind turbine some time ago. They are currently measuring the performance of a generator on a test bench so that the characteristics could be programmed into a charge controller. But there is still quite a lot of work to be done. I will point them to this thread
@yasen I’m currently working on update of the MPPT 2420 which I will publish soon. Based on that we can maybe start to define requirements for a higher-power wind-enabled version. That would be cool.
Thanks for your answers! Indeed would be very cool if we could help each other out with this!
@yasen: I’m not sure I fully understand your point about voltage levels. 80 V should be plenty I guess. 65 V is on the edge assuming max 16 V per battery. Do you think we need more head room?
Did you come to a conclusion regarding using buck or boost?
I’ve also been thinking about splitting the design into “control” and “power”, which would allow using the same control circuitry and just switch power board depending on your need. Each variant would be simpler to design, and the more complex control part could be perfected in parallell. Any drawbacks I’m missing?
@ulf:First to clear some things - power part of MPPT 2420 is designed with components rated at 100V, so I think can handle 80V without problems. DC-DC buck regulator which supply control part is limited to 65V. Current design allows control part to be powered from HV side when there is no battery and this limits voltage on HV port. I was searching for another high voltage buck converter and will give a try on LM5163DDAR which is 100V rated. Another solution is to power control part only from LV port.
Regarding wind applications of MPPT 2420 I’m quite new to this topic and can’t help much at the present moment. @martinjaeger: I’m happy to hear that there will be an update of he MPPT 2420. I was thinking about some improvements and will share my ideas in my build topic.
i´m part of ErnI-Windrad-Kollektiv mentioned by Martin earlier. We are currently developing a 400 W small wind turbine (swt) which will be directed to the maker-scene. We are planning to issue all technical plans under an open-source-license. As swt- and charge-controller we are planning to use martins new MPPT-2420 controller. But we are not focusing on mppt but rather want to programm a power-curve into the controller that fits the aerodynamic-behaviour of the swt. We also developed a rough concept for the safety of the charge controller and the swt regarding over-rpm/over-voltage.
Till mid/end of november we are still focusing on the swt-hardware. So around beginning of dec. we will start focusing on the charge-controller we should definitely stay in touch and exchange ideas. #librewind
cheers
immanuel
@martinjaeger: maybe you could create an extra categorie “wind charge controller” in the forum to better point out the development of a librewind (-:
Hi,
i would like to build a version for a 48volt battery system with around 130volt PV input and around 60-80amp did someone thing about similar size ?
Or running multiple smaller version in parallel ?
If there is a interest would love to start a thread and do some schematics and pcb design.
I’ve ordered some PCBs some days ago. I’ll first put the 24V Version up working then I’ll replace INA186 and have a look what else has to be replaced and redesigned.
Sounds great that you are building a 48V capable version. Just had a quick look at the TI website. They have quite a few current sense amplfiers in a similar package as the INA186 with higher voltage rating (80V or even 120V), but none of them seems to be pin-to-pin compatible, which is a bit annoying…
@steppe are you also interested in a wind-capable version or do you plan to use it for solar applications?
@ulf we are currently in some early discussions together with people from Wind Empowerment to develop a higher current and higher voltage version of the charge controller. Possibly up to 48V / 60A on battery side (3-phase design) and 120V at solar/wind input side. But it’s still a long way to get there.
If anyone of you is also interested to participate, let me know and I will inform you when we have our next meeting.
@martinjaeger Did you already have a new current sense amplifier in mind that you consider to use in the new design? Perhaps I could use and test the new amplifier in my experiments.
I had a look at the INA240 - package could be soldered by hand, 80V common mode, PWM-rejection, …
What do you think?
