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How to build a hybrid solar/wind energy harvester?

Green4 charge controller: wiring diagrams part 2

Wiring diagram: wind turbine to dump load In contrast to solar panels, a wind turbine can’t be disconnected in case it generates too much power. We need to brake it by attaching a load to it. However, wind power can’t always flow through the charge controller: high volts and/or amps might damage the internal circuitry […]

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Green4 charge controller: wiring diagrams part 1

Introduction Instead of endlessly listing requirements and specifications, we prefer to demonstrate the architecture of our Green4 charge controller by means of wiring diagrams and other illustrations. The Green4 is designed to be a versatile device that enables you to evaluate different charge controller architectures. Call it a charge controller emulator. There are several reasons […]

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Coming Soon

Finally, we are almost there. Our first product – a joint development result of cooperation between IACS and RTOS.BE – is about to be commercialized. The Energy2Switch is a DC switch board with 2 channels rated up to 50V and 40A. Continuous power is limited at 1500W per channel, which boils down to 40A @ […]

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Dual channel power switching: testing different PWM configurations

Switching power between battery and dump load is an important functionality of a charge controller. Switching fast by means of PWM allows for efficient battery charging: the battery (bank) is charged with an appropriate algorithm (bulk, absorption, float, pulse) while unnecessary energy is diverted to a dump load. Since relays are not well-suited for fast PWM switching, […]

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Battery charging with the Wind-turbine simulator

In order to charge batteries with the wind turbine simulator, the setup already becomes quite elaborate. First, there is the brushed DC motor which drives the axial flux turbine. It has a 24V, 350W and maximum 19A rating. The DC motor drives the generator with a chain gear to step down the high RPM of […]

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Charging a deep-cycle battery via low-side mosfet switching: the hard way

Introduction The core of our charge controller (PMD2) is essentially two switchable mosfet channels: one channel to load a battery (bank) and another channel to divert abundant energy to a dump load. Both channels can be switched on/off by software controlled PWM, and by configuring different PWM duty cycle ratios, we should be able: to […]

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