Aurora 3.6 Inverter

[John Szegda]

Does anyone know if three 900 Watt wind generators can be wired to one 3.6 Aurora Inverter?

John

[Rob Beckers]

Hi John,

While you can probably wire them to the inverter in some way, you won't like the results. The inverter can only do MPPT for a single turbine; With multiple they would each be doing their own thing and none will get loaded properly by the inverter.

-RoB-

[John Szegda]

HI Rob,

I was looking at the economics. I am flying one generator and want to incorporate two more I have in stock.

[Rob Beckers]

Hi John,

I understand the economic reasons. The problem is in making those turbines do the exact same thing at the same time (they would need to see the same wind speed at all times). Well, it would be a worthy experiment to wire them to a single inverter, and program it to output 3x what it was doing for a single turbine. They need to be the same turbines though, at the same height, hopefully in close proximity. Who knows, it may work better than I think... :weird:

If you try, forget about hooking them together on the AC side. They would have to be in phase with respect to each other, and that won't happen. Get each turbine its own rectifier, and hook the DC sides together in parallel. Please let us know how it works out!

Good luck!

-RoB-

[John Szegda]

Hi Rob,

I probably would try your method if I had a second hand Aurora, but My luck I would fry it. I have an Outback GVFX3600/48 in place and have had problems selling back to the grid. I listened to a salesman not an engineer when I bought it. We are in the process off obtaining permits to install a 5KW turbine with an Aurora 6000 inverter. So I think I'll wait.

John

[Cor van Houtum]

Hello John and Rob,

I have tryed this with 5x 500 wats generator put in series
because of the low voltages that small turbine's give I wanted to rectify each turbine and put the rectified result in series.

on the end of the seies i connected a 3600

this does not work

the one generator will disturb the next etc.
and the end result is 5x bad.
The 3600 wil not go in defect
these units only wil defect when in state of overvoltage

I will test the situation for you putting 2x 2kw generator in parallel
i was walking around with this also for a while.

I let you know
because i think it can work better as when just one 2kw is connected
I do nou assume that the results will double but I think it will have more force
to keep the voltage more steady with low winds

I'll keep you informed

[John Szegda]

Hi Cor,

Nice meeting you. I would also be interested. In the Wind Turbine business the lower KW units are less costly. If this works, it may allow more people to increase their systems capacity with less equipment and reduce the KW cost.

John

[Rob Beckers]

Cor, sorry I missed you yesterday! I waited a little while when you went off hunting for a computer that could do video chat, but gave up (it's a busy place here, with a 6 month old boy). Give me a call today if you have a moment.

Now that you mention it, I remember your mention of trying multiple turbines on the same inverter. Didn't remember the results though. Interesting! Without a whole lot of supporting evidence, I have a feeling that paralleling turbines (or rather, their DC output) may work slightly better than series. In series the current is forced through all turbines, in parallel that's not the case, it will be the turbine that spins fastest that gets the largest load. This may 'naturally' even things up a bit more between turbines, because the less loaded ones will tend to spin faster and catch up, maybe resulting in better load sharing between turbines (with the one that sees most wind actually doing most of the work). In the end the whole series/parallel connection of multiple turbines is a dubious proposition; the inverter can only do proper MPPT if all those turbines see the exact same wind at exactly the same time. The most likely result is that none of the turbines will see the proper load.

-RoB-