Monday 23 September 2013

Day 3 - 23/09/2013

Today we began by crimping the ends of the photovoltaic cell leads with female crimps and then 2.5mm² TPS with male crimps so that they could easily be connected and disconnected as stripping the cables continuously would not be ideal as we'd eventually run out of cable length. Due to the solar charge controller being still in repair, we had to connect the solar panels straight on to the batteries. The only problem with this was that when the batteries were fully charged they would continue to be charged until disconnected and this could result badly so we had to monitor the amount of voltage the batteries had. We also connected an ammeter between the TPS and the batteries to measure how much amps the cells were producing. The process of charging the batteries with just the photovoltaics was a lengthy one so we headed off to an early lunch. Before leaving we gave feeding the class a test run with the batteries on about 25V but there just wasn't enough charge in the batteries. When we returned, the batteries were sitting just over 26.5V so we had a bit more waiting to do. When they finally reached full charge (28V) we turned on the Inverter, Battery Bank and G.T.I. and we successfully fed the classroom but only for about 2-3 minutes. Due to slack team members, Tutor Andrew Massie prescribed us another grueling task: A vertical wind turbine. The equipment for this from previous years are broken and it's just less time consuming for us to start from scratch. So far we are in the process of rewiring the stator as it is currently rated for 230V and we need to get it to 24VDC.

Revised project plan








Photovoltaics test run












Crimped photovoltaic leads.











Insulation taped female to male crimps for added safety (what Chenergy is all about).










Tutor Andrew Massie going for a stroll and our photovoltaics at work.












DC Voltmeter on 30V range. Measuring battery voltages.






DC Ammeter on 25A Range. Measuring input current.












Successfully feeding the classroom/grid.

Starting on the Wind Turbine












Gary sanding off the enamel from the copper.


 Darryl preparing the copper for rewiring/soldering.



Soldering the copper. 












Close up shot. 

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