David Bowling's Continuous Charging Device

[SeaMonkey]

Every time I try to talk about this stuff I am shouted down by
naysayers who insist you can't run loads off the potential
difference between two sources of power, and they want data
to back up my claims when I say you can

Ignore the naysayers who are unaware of this technique.
Actually, it is quite common in certain esoteric military and
commercial applications.  This technique is routinely covered
in most technical training programs in its basic form and
analyzed in the study of Kirchoff's Theorem.


Before the advent of efficient Buck Converters this technique
was commonly utilized by experimenters in the '40s, '50s and
'60s to provide reduced voltages without the wasteful power
loss of dropping resistors.

[Magluvin]

I looked at the first post of this link Chet posted above.

http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/20494-split-positive-boost-charger.html

If you look at the circuit, the Ni packs are 30v and the car battery is 12v. The 30v pack, while running the inverter as shown, will be already charging the car battery being it is the higher potential battery. Depending on the voltage drop of the inverter, which could be 17v, 30-12=17. So looking at the current flow, the 12v batt is being charged by the Ni packs.  So my question would be, why would we be using the output of the inverter to run a charger to charge the car battery when it is already being charged, and shouldnt we want to charge the Ni packs instead?

Mags

[Magluvin]

The current flow through the loop of 2 batteries and the inverter input would be clockwise electron flow.

Mags

[Magluvin]

I looked at the first post of this link Chet posted above.

http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/20494-split-positive-boost-charger.html

If you look at the circuit, the Ni packs are 30v and the car battery is 12v. The 30v pack, while running the inverter as shown, will be already charging the car battery being it is the higher potential battery. Depending on the voltage drop of the inverter, which could be 17v, 30-12=17. So looking at the current flow, the 12v batt is being charged by the Ni packs.  So my question would be, why would we be using the output of the inverter to run a charger to charge the car battery when it is already being charged, and shouldnt we want to charge the Ni packs instead?

Mags

Just thinking about it more, possibly at idle and no load on the inverter the voltage divisions would be close to 30v Ni pack, 12v car bat and 17v inverter. Now when we load the inverter, its input voltage drop goes down, which is normal. But what happens to the batteries and their drops? This is just me thinking after seeing the circuit.

Mags

[citfta]

Hi Mags,

I have worked with Matt and Dave on this system for the past couple of years or more.  What will happen when you load the inverter is the 12 volt battery will start charging faster and the 30 volt pack will start to drop in voltage some also.  But the surprising thing is the 12 volt battery will normally charge faster than the other side goes down.  Most of us have not tried this with a 30 volt Ni pack.  So I can't say for sure how they will act.  We normally run this system using three 12 volt batteries all the same size.  This is for the simple circuit to get the idea of how it all works.  You need to read the rest of Dave's info to understand how to use the boost circuit and about letting batteries rest between charging and using and several other tips.  Dave and Matt have spent several years working with this system to learn all they could to make it a practical and useful circuit.

Respectfully,
Carroll