Recharging Batteries using only voltage spikes. A Results Log Thread

[jeanna]

My Nicd battery is continuing to recharge and it seems to perform as well as it did 10 days ago.

It is interesting to point out that I can recharge it from a battery that is working at a much lower voltage than what it is causing to appear in the charge battery, but for durations tests from the charge itself, I do not think I am seeing anything great.

I did change the test circuit to a silicon transistor based one making the light from the secondary.
First I tried one I already had. which is now on the plant battery#1 and it ran for 10 hours with this recharged battery.

Then I made a circuit especially for testing this charger and it has a 2N3904 and a secondary and so is very similar to that one just mentioned, but it only runs for 3 to 4 hours before the light is a small dot.

I am a little tempted to stop this and use a normal amps recharge, but then I will not be able to return to this.

Monday, I will see what happens with the alkaline battery, since I have a box full of them.

thank you,

jeanna

[stprue]

Jeanna, this is a perfectly fantastic topic to start up!  I'm glad you are the one driving this 

I thought I remembered Bedini mentioning that he had to "condition" his batteries!  Basically meaning that he charged and discharged his gel cell's a number of times before they preformed optimally.  It sounds similar to what you were describing with your ni-cad!  Anyways I thought I would share that piece of info if you haven't heard it already.

Keep up the good work everyone!

[IceStorm]

Take care to not sum both battery voltage to know if there a gain or not, battery discharge curve are not linear so voltage doesn't tell you anything useful, for example, a 12v battery at 13v for a load X can take 30 minute to go to 12.9v, so you assume a decrease of 0.1v per 30 min but the reality is it can take 45-60 minute for 12.9->12.8 and 20 minute for 12.8->12.7.

Best Regards,
IceStorm

[jeanna]

Welcome icestorm
Good point! thank you.

@Stprue.
Thanks.
In fact I did get that information from John Bedini.
I think I would have been stumped otherwise.
It makes a better recharge to cycle it more times than to have it recharging longer.
It is a good rule to remember about this.

@all,
This is odd.
Just after I said nuthin much yesterday, I am seeing great results.

Today's results are something like the day before yesterday.
I have been switching between 2 drive batteries.
I cannot say it is the drive battery, but maybe there is a bad drive battery which makes the results took not so good occasionally?

So anyway,
The light has been very bright and throwing the light for more than 24 inches since 6 hours ago.

I think I will need to make note of the drive battery from now on.
Maybe I can learn something else here.

jeanna

[jeanna]

OK I will keep the light on but I am going offline so I want to report.

The recharged battery which has never had anything recharging it but spikes since early feb this year has just run a jtc with a bright led on the secondary for

11 hours.

And the beam is still over 20 inches away from the light.
And, it was recharged for 14 hours with a jtc whose battery had dropped to  0.76v when I took it off this morning.

So, this is definitely a successful way to recharge a battery... at least sometimes.

Now, to figure what is wrong when it does not work very well.

More later,

jeanna