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Forum Index : Solar : Simplified Solar Hot Water
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| davef Guru  Joined: 14/05/2006 Location: New ZealandPosts: 499 |
Hi Tony, Took me a minute or so, but then I realised that the LM358 with hysteresis is a window detector. Was the LM555 designed to operate properly with a variable voltage supply (0V to Vsupply) or does it just happen to work properly in this mode? I might have to dig deep in the junk pile to find a LM555 to try. |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Plover, There are various options offered in regards to shipping. The most expensive is DHL, but they can deliver in about three days, China to Australia, and they work 24/7. I have had deliveries arrive here at 7pm on a Sunday evening. The cost is very roughly about what you are suggesting, three dollars for the boards and thirty to thirty five dollars shipping to the suburbs. The cheapest option is usually ordinary surface mail (China post) it comes by sea in a container and can take four to six weeks. Cost is only about ten dollars less though. Still, if it was the other way around, thirty dollars for the boards, and three dollars postage, its still not a great deal of money these days. Dave, Yes, an LM358 with hysteresis would work perfectly well, the problem though is setting up the two voltage levels. Its a very difficult thing to work out suitable resistance values to place two voltage thresholds exactly where you want them using hysteresis and standard resistor values. Finding two resistors that have an exact ratio between them is fairly easy using standard resistor values. Finding three resistor values that have exact ratios between all three is far more difficult. It is a lot easier to use two voltage comparators and set up each comparator separately with only two resistors, then use the two logic outputs to set and reset a flip flop. I took that idea one step further by arranging my circuit to switch in either direction when the current reaches one milliamp through the voltage setting resistors. The two range setting resistors then become dead easy to work out, one K ohm for each volt. And by connecting resistors in series, its easy to make up odd resistor values to experiment with. For experimental purposes, you could even use a couple of potentiometers with scales calibrated in voltage. The scales could be marked in voltage using an ohm meter initially, although fixed resistors would be preferable for final installation. Something like a 100K pot in series with a 180K resistor would give an adjustment range of roughly 180v to 280v for the high voltage trip point. A 100K pot and 100K resistor 100v to 200v for the low voltage trip point. If its cycling fast enough (at least several Hz) a light bulb connected across the heating element might give a very rough indication of power. Edited 2020-03-17 07:27 by Warpspeed Cheers, Tony. |
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| davef Guru Joined: 14/05/2006 Location: New ZealandPosts: 499 |
Hi Tony, Taking the circuit on Simple PV Diversion Unit I now see the difference ... the single op-amp is not configured as a window detector. Yes, setting up a window detector using a single op-amp is a convoluted process. My op-amp configuration just switches ON the MOSFET when the upper set point is exceeded and turns it OFF when the voltage on the cap sags down to a lower set limit. What added feature does a window detector offer in the circuit in this thread? Thanks, Dave Edited 2020-03-17 11:24 by davef |
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plover Guru Joined: 18/04/2013 Location: AustraliaPosts: 302 |
Warpspeed Just an update, I gave up on JCL, the reason I tried them was I could upload your zip file directly. I decided I would go to Shenzhen2u.com where I have been before. The problem is that I need to make gerber filename changes, so I have looked at that and prepared the change list. Before doing so I decided to see what happens if I just up load your file, I partly expect to get a message in a day or two that they have rejected processing. Placing order however took less than 15 minutes, with careful checking of the shipping cost. As I am prepared to wait I am trying the E-packet delivery cheaper than China post by 30 cents, I am not sure but I think it may be airfreight. I did notice an offer for SF-xxx I assume this means Sea Freight even cheaper. Anyway 10 boards $29 Australian, delivered. This little trick using 1 mA really is a gem, I can forget my spreadsheet for calculating values. (Only need this for record nowadays, I forget too easy)  |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
This is exactly what I was thinking the other day looking at the circuit. I notice you say for testing purposes. What I looked up seemed to indicate the trimpots won't handle the power which you have set at 1W resistors. Is this the reason you seem to suggest they would not be useable as a permanent inclusion? If there are trimmers that could handle the load it would make these even more user friendly. Was also playing with this very thing this morning with one of my own setups with an arduino driving a Mosfet. It's a bit dull so I'm using a 500W halogen to try and find the sweet spot of the fixed timing. Didn't get far before it started raining but fining up now so I'll go have another crack. It was what I did just bench testing the pulsing idea the other week. Someone also mentioned to me that this could be good for driving a space heater like the old bar radiators or even an old electric jug. Anything resistance isn't going to matter. |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Your basic voltage comparator with hysteresis would work perfectly well for this. Only disadvantage is the complexity of working out suitable resistor values to do it. That would be totally beyond many people here on the Forum. Two separate comparators adds a bit of circuitry, but hugely simplifies the whole resistor calculation problem. So the basic reason for the window comparator is to make the circuit much simpler for others to get working. Plover, The original concept behind this was to make something really dead simple that people could get going with absolutely minimal knowledge or test equipment, and not run into problems. Its pretty basic, but quite a bit of thought went into it. Dave, Its not power dissipation that is the problem, but voltage rating of the resistors. Now the people that make those really tiny metal film resistors say you can put 500v across them no sweat. I am a dedicated disciple of Murphy and a certified pessimist. Something a wee bit physically larger is much less likely to break down with a bit of dust, moisture, or crud that may tend to build up over the years in this (probably located outdoors) type of project. Two smaller resistors in series would achieve the same result, especially if they were spaced off the board a bit, or perhaps sleeved in plastic. Edited 2020-03-17 13:33 by Warpspeed Cheers, Tony. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Spent some Time today playing with the pulsing on and off of the panels through a 1000uF cap . Confused as to what I learned and saw. It was cloudy and I had 4x250W panels in series. Playing with the light which I ended up with a 275W heat lamp, the best output was straight connection or pulsing the thing really fast like 20/1000ths of a sec both ways. With the element I wasn't sure what I was looking for. To keep the panel voltage up or the amps up. The seemed to be in opposition but I think when I was packing up I saw a measuring mistake where I had the multi meter. All seemed to be working slowing the pulsing right down showed corresponding action at the output so maybe just one of those days where things lined up as they were or the cap was too small. Ill try again with more caps later in the week. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Tony, Boards arrived 5 Minutes ago. They look brilliant and can't wait to try the built one out. Thanks so much again for that, very much appreciated! I got a CPU heatsink and a fan to mount the mosfets on and the fan will run off another of those little power converters which I'll tap into the supply from the solar. Just again, in case I missed anything, is there any better amount of capacitance to run? I have 1000uf caps and can do anything from 1 to 10. I have 4 x 250W panels set up now I was going to initially test on then go up to 8 from there. Is there a power limit the board will take, IE say 4 Kw of panels on a 3.5 Kw element or...? what about voltage, under 300? I can stop checking the letter box 5 times a day now. Even though I had the camera setup, every time I went out the back for a while I had to go check again in case I missed him. Dog loved all the walks down there though. In the end I heard postie coming so they were handed to me and never even hit the letterbox. :0) Thanks Mate! |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Great stuff there Dave, now the fun begins  The fewer caps, the faster it will cycle, and there is no practical limit to how fast that board can cycle. Cycling speed will not change the amount of power transmitted. If its going pretty fast, a light bulb connected across the element should give a fair indication of relative power with minimal blinking. I think you will find its all very non critical to set up. Its typical to find that you can only reach about 80% of the panel rating under perfect conditions anyway. And a 2.5Kw element is not going to explode with 2.6Kw. As long as those mosfets do not become too hot to hold your finger on continuously, they should be fine. Edited 2020-03-19 15:01 by Warpspeed Cheers, Tony. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
I have been doing the mental arithmetic with the board for a while trying to work out the best way to mount it all. I am taking my time to try and do it best I can as my skill in this area is poor and I'm determined not to stuff anything up. I want to -try- and make it as least laughable as possible. Wiring is one thing, neat wiring is quite another. I am going to use a solar inverter cabinet I have stripped out, ( stripped 2 actually but wasn't happy with the first) which has a massive heat sink I can mount the fets on and Connections for the wiring. Similar to a solar inverter I'll have the 2 MC4 Inputs for the solar and probably a regular power point for the output side so I can plug in lights, heaters or just put a regular female plug on the water heater. Seems hard to find mountable terminations just for cable. I did order one from flea bay and might be here in a month but the outlet I think would be better anyway. The only thing I'm unsure of, which I'd like your advise on Tony, is what gauge wire to use? I'm doing everything in 2.5 But it's a bugger to manipulate and make neat in the cabinet. I'm undecided if the pulsing makes any difference to the load? I think with the cap discharge the heavier the wire the better to carry the high amp short pulse. Then again, like my mate, I'd always wiring a 50W mains LED light like it's the main feeder to a Sub station. :0) I looked at 1.5 for this and it just didn't seem right especially if I connect up 2 Kw or more of panels to drive a 3.6 Kw heater element. I'm thinking I'll use 4x 470 Uf 500V caps. I'll solder them up and glue them to the side of the cabinet where it should be the coolest away from the fets. Heat sink probably weighs 2 Kg so I'm thinking should be Ok. Had headaches pretty bad last few days but Hopefully I'll be able to get it done and connected tomorrow and the fun really can begin. If anyone knows any links to tutorials on how to do the wiring and electrical connections for things like this so they are neat and professional looking, that is something that my non existent skills would benefit from. I did have a nice little 4 Hole neutral link bus bar thing with a cover but I used it in one of my solar sub boards. they seem hard to get as most suppliers only seem to have 7 hole units and they are a bit big for a lot of things. |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
There are two methods of rating wire sizes, voltage drop, and temperature rise. If running very long lengths, especially at low voltages, voltage drop can become a serious issue, so we may need to use much heavier gauge wire to keep the voltage drop within reason. Within a piece of equipment, the wiring is usually quite short, so we can get away with using thinner fine stranded wire which is more flexible, neater, and much easier to work with, provided its not going to get unacceptably hot. How hot it can safely get depends on the type of insulation and your sense of adventure. I believe for normal house wiring 2.5mm square is rated for 20 to 25 amps which is a pretty good compromise between temperature rise and voltage drop at 230v. The thinner 1.0mm sq or 1.5mm sq is usually rated for 10 amp lighting circuits and is also a pretty good compromise for voltage drop at 230v in lengths found within a home. For what we are doing, 2.5mm sq from the solar panels would probably be o/k for a 3.5Kw 230v system, as long as the wiring runs are quite short. The usual 4mm sq solar cable might be better, especially at voltages lower than 230v, and especially with longer cable runs. Within equipment where wire lengths might be only a foot or two, you can really push things. Something like good quality 16 gauge automotive wire 1.3mm diameter and 1.3mm sq can be rated at 22 amps! That is more than I would be happy with personally, but it does show how the situation can change. Cheers, Tony. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
I cut some good quality Fine stranded ( silver) wire out of the inverters and am using that to wire the board. It's 2.5 and the longest piece is about 30 Cm so I'll go with that. I'm aware of " Normal" runs and loads but just wondering about how the pulsed DC would affect things. Ac and Dc are of course different as are the voltages but having the power pulsed and from a cap made me wonder what comes into play here. |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
It is a bit "different" but not by enough to worry about. If you run everything in 2.5 then that will be more than sufficient for 3.6Kw. Cheers, Tony. |
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| plover Guru Joined: 18/04/2013 Location: AustraliaPosts: 302 |
Just an update on dropping Warpseed's zip file in the 'letterbox' at ShenZhen2U Looks like it has worked, ie I need not change file extensions. This seemed to be an obstacle. WIll be interesting to see when they arrive some time. The parcel has been in transit in China for a couple of days according to the tracker. Edited 2020-03-27 10:40 by plover |
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| hotwater Senior Member  Joined: 29/08/2017 Location: United StatesPosts: 120 |
Glad to see everyone experimenting. Many should watch a video on youtube about adiabatic charging of capacitors. It relates to water heating. |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Professor Yaakov is perfectly correct, but the whole problem needs to be taken into proper context. If you try to charge or discharge a capacitor in zero time, the current must be infinite, and you lose half your energy. This becomes a serious problem in extremely high energy systems that need to charge and discharge as rapidly as possible, for example radar, sonar, and pulsed laser power supplies. How do you put one megawatts worth of stored energy into a high voltage capacitor bank in one tenth of a second to fire off your radar/sonar/laser at full power ten times each second ? At 9:28 on the video, the Professor tells us that if you slow down the charging process (so that the current becomes less than infinite) it all becomes much more efficient. Which is completely true. I used to design high power pulsed laser power supplies for the defense department at one time. The ideal charging method is charging from a constant current source, as we will be doing from our solar panels, which is a near perfect solution. We discharge through our heating element, which again slows down the process and makes it all more efficient. We might be in trouble though, if we charged through solar panels up to say 250 volts dc, but then wanted to discharge the whole lot in a few microseconds at thousands of amps. But doing it far more slowly, we see none of those types of problems. The only potential problem for us, is the ripple current rating of the capacitors. High currents are flowing in and out of the capacitor each cycle, and the very thin aluminium foil in the capacitor has resistance, which generates heat. As long as the electrolytic does not overheat it will be fine. If overheating is a problem, we could use higher quality low esr capacitors with a sufficiently high ripple current rating, which will be expensive. Or we can just parallel up a few more of the cheapies so that the current is shared and the heat per capacitor will be less. If the electrolytic is running just slightly warm it will be fine. If its running really hot, something will need to be done. Cheers, Tony. |
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| plover Guru Joined: 18/04/2013 Location: AustraliaPosts: 302 |
Update on my boards from ShenZhen2U I have looked at the tracking having chosen E-Packet shipping it looks like this may be China-Post as well I think it is coming airmail  |
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| Solar Mike Guru Joined: 08/02/2015 Location: New ZealandPosts: 1138 |
My PCB's from JLCPCB China were posted registered airmail 26 days ago, just arrived in the mail box this morning, the previous PCB order took 10 days by air post. So this virus is slowing things down a lot. Mike |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
On another thread, someone Mentioned a guy called " Opera" on YT who does Vids on solar heater controllers. He gives part explanations and clearly has an attitude towards those less electronically accomplished than Himself. He was made aware of this design and has clearly looked in here. Today I saw a retort in his comments. On another thread I made a comment as to my opinion of this person from past observation: Harsh perhaps but I believe fully supported and verified. This is the comment I saw from him today on this design... :0( Pretty pathetic IMHO. The fact he puts a personal spin on the things as in being " His" design tells me all I need to know. His design was in fact done for selfish personal gratification only, not with the idea of satisfaction of helping others, Even with my complete ignorance, I can tell his comments are demonstrably in error especially as the basis of his design is the same as this. I think the comment of this design not being simpler is hilarious. The modifications to the boards he presents are infinitely more complex than building this design from scratch. The comment about no one understanding this is a demonstrator of the principals is also laughable. If no one understands it, that's on him for not making it clear to his audience. Marketing 101. The way he endlessly goes on about running 60V and the boards only being good for 60V would have anyone interests in this design confused well and truly. in any case making the design handle more Voltage requires more modifications still.  I have to laugh and at the same time pity the guy though. Seems like he's even unhappier and carrying a bigger chip on his shoulder than I am so in a way, I do Sympathise. I asked what he thought the weaknesses in the design was as to the longevity. I'll bet I don't get an answer. Not just a little ironic the guy is using Chinese made boards he modifies and seems to think they are superior to something designed for the task and don't need to be hacked around to work. The biggest problem with his design is that it appears only one person can understand it. I sure as hell couldn't largely because he makes it like a jigsaw puzzle that the Plebs like me can't follow. Those that can follow it are experienced enough to come up with their own designs in the first place and don't need his hack job to begin with. To that end I think he's completely missed the mark and regardless of the technicalities, the design is as much a failure as the guys attitude. Once again Tony, THANK YOU for your work on this and all the help you give people with so many things. You know you are doing something right when you get professional jealousies like this! :0) |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Longevity should not be a problem, there are only two stressed parts. If the electrolytics are running cool no problem. If running hot, fit more. Or use a better quality electrolytic that has a suitably higher ripple current rating. If the mosfets are not getting so hot you cannot hold your moist finger on them continuously in comfort, they will be happy too. Other obvious things for an outdoor type project like this, keeping dust, rain, and vermin out of the system, and it should run trouble free for many years  Cheers, Tony. |
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