Keith, what do you mean when you say that the switched mode chargers constantly "pulse" the water turbine. As far as I know that as long as the input voltage is above some threshold the power "goes straight through it". The problem is more on the output side, suppose that at some instant your battery voltage is 24.1 V, when the charger is producing 24.0V it will produce no current at all, if the turbine speeds up and the charger produces 24.2V, the batteries will take 50A and the turbine, now under load will slow down, so the voltage falls, so the current goes to zero, the turbine is now off load and speeds up. . .?
At a first stab at a solution, suppose you adjusted the current limit on the charger back to 20A( maximum battery charging current), in the above example, the amount of braking the turbine will experiance would fall, so its speed would not reduce so much, so it might actually be able to sustain this current.
With wind turbines there is a magic figure, which I think is 2/3, that relates to the turbines off load speed and the speed at which it gives maximum power output. Is there a similar speed for water turbines and how close/far away from this figure are you operating? i.e. when you are trying to drag all this power out of the turbine, is the waterflow going turbelent or something?
Frank

It was a lack of wattage that was causing the pulsing chuckey. I'm going to post a pictorial description of the hydro system next week now that I have it working well.

http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/forum114/comments.php?DiscussionID=3073&page=1#Item_10

mike7

that's an amazing difference between a 90' bend and a 45'. Would that suggest that 2 45' bends with a straight between could be 30% better than a 90' ?
tom