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Re: (ET) Fully charged pack voltage



I took an appropriately low tech approach to that issue, one that's in keeping with the rest of the "Apollo Era" technology present.An outlet mounted 15A rated Intermatic® 24 hour timer.Set for a one hour on / off cycle every 24 hours, I just reset the GE charger's timer once every two weeks or so.That's how it was maintained while sitting outside under a tarp this winter.

If needed, the minimum resolution is one- half hour, so an experiment is in order this Summer to see if additional watering will be needed during idle times this mowing season.A half hour per day should be enough to keep everyone happy.

I have a similar timer maintaining my jump box collection that has either AGM or Valve Regulated lead acids in them. Nice for portable lighting during power outages AND starting vehicles and an assortment of NiCad / NiMH chargers for hand held power tools.Even though the tools' chargers are supposed to keep their batteries maintained, as warm as they are after the rapid charge has ceased can't be good for them.

RJ

Mike Wallace wrote:
David, you said, "I don't think it's as simple as connecting the charger's output to the Lestronic timer."

Well now I'm not a EE either, but it looks to me like it's about that simple. Take a look at this Lester info.
www.lesterelectrical.com/techservice/servicedocs/34001_D.pdf
It actually talks about a 36 volt, rather straight forward charger like the ones GE put in these tractors. A lot closer anyway than your reference to the Model 9868.
http://www.evdl.org/docs/lester9868_schematic.pdf

As for building our own homemade charger, well I think I'll try my idea of adding the Lester "electronic timer" to the OEM charger and see what happens. Or maybe I'll just keep on using my Lestronic II off-board charger.

I'll let Harry comment, if he wants to, on the possibility of adding one of his controllers to maintain the pack after the OEM charger gets the pack back to full charge. I'm bettin' that could be done too, and a lot easier than us building our own chargers.

In fact it might be as easy as figuring out how to open the secondary side of the Lester/GE charger circuit after some period of time or at some reduced pack voltage, and then the "electronic timer" module would turn the Lester/GE charger back on to maintain the pack.

Mike in KY

----- Original Message ----- From: "David Roden" <etpost drmm net>
To: <elec-trak cosmos phy tufts edu>
Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: (ET) Fully charged pack voltage


On 24 Apr 2009 at 10:35, Mike Wallace wrote:

I think you could buy a rebuilt "electronic timer" for around $50 from
Lester ... Anybody have any thoughts on this approach to upgrading the
OEM charger?

I don't think it's as simple as connecting the charger's output to the
Lestronic timer.

To see how it's used, you can check out a schematic of a typical Lester
charger.  I have one for a model 9868 (120 volt / 12 volt) in the EVDL
library,

http://www.evdl.org/lib/

or direct link

http://www.evdl.org/docs/lester9868_schematic.pdf

The page is oriented at 90deg so you'll want to print it out (or twist your
neck reading the screen ;-).

I haven't worked on a GE charger as I don't use mine, so I don't know
whether it implements the hardware that the Lester "black box" wants. For example, at a glance, I noticed that the Lester timer controls a DC relay on
the transformer's primary, so you'd at least have to add something like
that.

Normally you wouldn't use two charge controllers with a charger as they'd more or less disagree over when and how to charge the battery, so I wouldn't recomment using both a Lester timer and one of Harry Landis's controllers,
or any other pairing for that matter.

If you want a cheap and fairly easy to build charge controller, see this
diagram :

http://www.evdl.org/docs/c_car_charger.jpg

This is a simple adjustable cycle-dropping charger design (literally right
out of an engineering handbook).

I'm not a EE by any means, but I've worked on these chargers.  Most
component values don't appear to be very critical. L1 is a small 12 volt pilot lamp. On the C-car it was one of the dash indicators. You can (and I did) replace it with a resistor (sorry, I don't recall the value, but it's
easy to determine empirically) and an LED plus series resistor.

CR3 is a generic SCR, chosen for the current and voltage the charger can
produce.

SCR is a small part and again almost anything that can handle 100-200 volts should work. I think when I replaced this on mine I used something right
off the hook at the Radio Schlock around the corner from my house.

CR5 is a generic small silicon diode; IIRC a 1 amp 400v should be plenty.

CR6 is a 12.6 volt zener diode. Something close to that should work; you
might have to tinker with the values of R4 and R6.

R5 is a 5K pot which adjusts the voltage limit.

You'll probably have to tweak the values of R4 and R6 to use it for a 36
volt battery instead of a 48 volt one.

This circuit charges at a rate limited only by the charger's wiring and
transformer, until it reaches an adjustable voltage threshold.  Then it
begins cycling on and off.  As the battery reaches full charge, the on
cycles get shorter and the off cycles get longer. When the on cycles are a second or less long, and separated by a few tens of seconds, the battery is
essentially fully charged.

This is the same simple algorithm used by probably millions of $50 NAPA
battery chargers -- and, incidentally, by Rudman Regulators, for those of you who are road EV followers. It's essentially a faster taper charger with no temperature compensation or any other deluxe features, but it's cheap and
if properly adjusted is more or less adequate for flooded batteries.

Longtime readers here know that Harry Landis and I don't agree on what
constitutes an appropriate charge algorithm for a battery used cyclically. His is somewhat unorthodox. However, he has several advocates here, and I'm
sure they'll be more than happy to argue in his favor.  ;-)

Hope this helps.


David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA

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