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New Features Coming On The Wakespeed WS500 Alternator Regulator


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Mark Hamstra

Wakespeed’s Communication and Configuration Guide v2.6.0:

There are dependencies for allowing DVCC to be utilized:

 The Current Shunt must be located at the Alternator and not being ‘Ignored’

So, that’s one reason for needing to measure alternator current and not just battery current.

Mark Hamstra

Yeah, it doesn’t require two current measurements, but it does require measurement of what the alternator is producing, not just what is going into the battery.

Pepijn Toornstra

John, apologies for threading on this. I think it is a misunderstanding on my side, as I am confused by your remark that “…WS500 has supported moving the shunt to the alternator for years.”

I have multiple sources of charging. Ie. solar when engine is running. In your excellent article “How Batteries Charge (Multiple Charging Sources Too)” you wrote that the shunt must look at the net inflow of charge into the battery. And therefore the shunt is placed directly at the negative side of the battery.
This is also in line with the diagram of WS500 product manual page 7 where the shunt is directly placed at the battery.

Can you clarify your remark about moving the shunt to the alternator?
Note: I do not use DVCC.

Michael Guryan

This might be off-topic, but is the PredictWind Datahub the same device as the OPE Tether?

David Jade

There is one scenario where I have found that having an alternator shunt is useful. As mentioned it collects the amps out of the alternator regardless of any loads on the battery (whereas a battery shunt is output in minus any loads).

Heat management tends to be the Achilles heel of high output alternators, which when pushed to their limits can result in throttling of their output. If you are trying to manage maximal output by tweaking field values and other parameters, to keep an alternator happy, then being able to see what the total actual output over an hour of charging is useful (provided you can log that, as I have).

With variable battery loads, white space curves, engine rpm changes, etc. knowing the actual output can be helpful. I have found it to be a very useful datapoint on the way to tuning a system’s performance.