Charge Controllers & Grid-tie Inverters [RE-wrenches]

[Peter Parrish]

The same customer that wanted a production meter has also indicated an
interest in having a solar chager for his GEO (sp?) electric car. He was
thinking of a system distinct from the two-inverter, grid-tie system he
already has. Of course, the way he charges the GEO is via a AC/DC
charger, which he appreciates involves a dual conversion (DC-AC-DC)
which wastes power.
 
I told him a seperate off grid system would have two problems: (1) the
PV modules would not be eligible for a rebate, (2) when the GEO's
batteries were fully charged he would be not be using the availble
generation capacity of the seperate sytem.
 
So I proposed looking into placing a charge controller in parallel with
one of his inverters, and so long as the PV string sizing matched the
inverter input range and charge controller input range, we might have a
solution. The customer would not have to add more PV modules and he
could charge his GEO from his solar resource directly. 
 
How might the inverter and charge controller work together, expecially
when the PV DC power availble is low or the batteries need a healthy
charge? Could we err on the size of a small charge controller, to limit
contention between the two units?
 
Thanks in advance for help on what is admittedly an odd-ball request.
 

Peter Parrish, Ph.D. President
NABCEP Certified PV Installer (Cert. No. 031806-26)
California Solar Engineering, Inc.
820 Cynthia Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90065
Office 323-258-8883
Mobile 323-839-6108
Fax 323-258-8885
peter.parrish at calsolareng.com
www.calsolareng.com 


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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