Lux ac battery controller

philologus

I live in an area (north east coast) where the wind blows a lot so I've been considering adding a small  (1KW) wind turbine to my arsenal of 16 x 300w panels on a 22 degree pitched roof facing east and west with 9.6 Lux battery back up.

This is the one I'm currently looking at:

https://www.tesup.co.uk/product-page/masterx-wind-turbine-for-home-uk

Could this be wired straight into my existing Lux system inverter or would I need to buy the charge controller with it?

Would a competent leccy be able to wire this in  for me?

QrizB

philologus said:

Could this be wired straight into my existing Lux system inverter or would I need to buy the charge controller with it?

Would a competent leccy be able to wire this in  for me?

As a general rule, solar inverters aren't suitable for wind turbines (and vice-versa) so I think you'll need the separate controller.

Wind turbine controllers need to provide certain features that aren't required for solar panels, like a dump load for when the wind blows but your batteries are already full.

philologus

Thank you for that info QrizB.

My hope was that I would be able to use the (roughly 1KW) wind-generated energy to keep the batteries topped up especially during the September to May period. I use about 400w to keep things working overnight so I thought it would charge the battery (9.6) to start the day.

I'm as new to this as I was to Solar a few years ago so I thought I'd tap into the expertise that's on here as I'm sure there will be those who have a solar and wind combination.

When my batteries are full I'm set up to export any excess to the grid but I think the idea of a 'dump' would still be needed in case of errors and breakdowns.

ianatkin

I noticed a small change in the web interface today - for a few seconds when you first log in it shows the BMS charge/discharge current limit under the battery voltage.

Alnat1

Yeah, been doing that on mine for a few days now

chainreaction

philologus said:

Thank you for that info QrizB.

My hope was that I would be able to use the (roughly 1KW) wind-generated energy to keep the batteries topped up especially during the September to May period. I use about 400w to keep things working overnight so I thought it would charge the battery (9.6) to start the day.

I'm as new to this as I was to Solar a few years ago so I thought I'd tap into the expertise that's on here as I'm sure there will be those who have a solar and wind combination.

When my batteries are full I'm set up to export any excess to the grid but I think the idea of a 'dump' would still be needed in case of errors and breakdowns.

if you have the EPS enabled on the lux and it is set up to support your house, you have a dump load of circa 400W already as a minimum. Id go back to Tesup and ask them about directly connecting the turbine to the lux inverter and their thoughts
TESUP have this on their website which may help ??
https://www.tesup.co.uk/post/inverter-solar-and-wind


the luxpowertek website says for the 3600 ACS inverter below, dont know what an external ATS is though !! 

Q2: How do I connect the generator with Lux units?

A: You can connect the generator output to inverter Grid terminal. If you have both grid and genset input, you need an external ATS

QrizB

chainreaction said:

philologus said:

Thank you for that info QrizB.

My hope was that I would be able to use the (roughly 1KW) wind-generated energy to keep the batteries topped up especially during the September to May period. I use about 400w to keep things working overnight so I thought it would charge the battery (9.6) to start the day.

I'm as new to this as I was to Solar a few years ago so I thought I'd tap into the expertise that's on here as I'm sure there will be those who have a solar and wind combination.

When my batteries are full I'm set up to export any excess to the grid but I think the idea of a 'dump' would still be needed in case of errors and breakdowns.

if you have the EPS enabled on the lux and it is set up to support your house, you have a dump load of circa 400W already as a minimum.

That's not in any way correct.

the luxpowertek website says for the 3600 ACS inverter below, dont know what an external ATS is though !!

Automatic Transfer Switch, used for switching your supply from mains to a standby generator.

chainreaction

QrizB said:

if you have the EPS enabled on the lux and it is set up to support your house, you have a dump load of circa 400W already as a minimum.

That's not in any way correct.

ok I thought a dump load for a grid tied wind turbine system was needed to prevent over speeding (over voltage) of the turbine if the grid system is lost. The EPS of the luxpowertek will immediately kick in on loss of grid, thus the house load of >400w available immediately for load matching purposes for the wind turbine, however if the wind turbine was generating > than the house load and any battery charging, then you would need an additional resistor to use on loss of grid. 

However

from your other comment it would seem the 3600 ACS controller cannot accept a wind turbine aswell as grid as you would want the turbine connected to the system at all times (other than v high wind speeds).  

chainreaction

This hopefully is a simple one, does the lux inverter just use the export CT to decide to divert power to the batteries. Or does it also use the solar CT in some way, I'm thinking about potential additional generation capacity directly into the mains AC, which could be more than the house is using and solar could be 0 ? 

Solarchaser

It has a solar CT and a grid CT.

However if you were adding more solar, wind etc, just have the positive wire for this also going through the solar CT and it reads it as extra generation.
This I'd what I did with my second solar array