Advice on a wind mppt from a victron perspective

DIY
, , ,
1

Hi all. I’m looking for advice on a single or multi turbine wind MPPT from the perspective of victron users. Specifically, the perspective of people that buy really good solar kit, not aliexpress kit if you know what I mean…

Needs to have a port for a dump load.

I run a number of off-grid telecom sites with battery and solar, cerbo+mppt+shunts+lifepo4 batteries and I really love victron for this. However, I’m in need of some after-hours power generation. Not a ton, but enough to extend my batteries. I’ve built up to about 2 weeks of battery at sites and push up against that on very long periods of overcast days. in dec 2024 I saw 17 days of overcast with 0 clear skies during the day.

So I’m looking to add about 50W average of wind power to support this and extend my batteries. most of my sites are on hilltops and some have weather stations so I know I have 14-20mph winds consistently enough to get the 50W. This is enough to stretch out my battery life to double or more.

I stopped deploying wind about 10 years ago because solar is just so much better and lower maintenance, but this case of a 2-3 week overcast is really hard to fix with solar because I don’t have the real-estate to add more solar. I’m already at between 2-3KW in rated solar at each site and that’s good for 340 days a year completely trouble free and during overcast it’s still producing about my need during the day. ie, I know some will want to talk me out of adding wind but I’ve sort of pushed solar and batteries as far as I can. I think that i can fill this gap with a turbine (or two) without adding a generator which is more costly and more maintenance etc

Thanks for the read.

2

The main problem with Wind and MPPT’s as you point out is the lack of a dump load. IF you can add some specific intelligence for controlling a dump load external to the mppt, then you should be ok, but to use the MPPT as a dc/dc converter unless your wind gen peak current is below the MPPT max input current. Dump load relay and stall contactor should be on the AC side of the rectifier feeding the MPPT.

3

Hi have a read of this (below) some useful info and links there.

Dave.