Solar Joule Thief Circuits

[SkyWatcher]

Hi folks, I replicated lidmotor's automatic solar joule thief and it works well. It uses the solar panel to bias off the transistor that routes the main 1.2 volt rechargeable to the joule thief circuit, which then turns off led and when the solar panel outputs no voltage, the led turns on and the solar panel charges the battery. Any circuits or ideas related to oscillator circuits and/or solar circuits may be discussed and shared if you wish. Here is a link to lidmotor's video and a couple pics and a circuit diagram I drew on cad.
YouTube - Lidmotor's Channel


Uploaded with ImageShack.us


Uploaded with ImageShack.us


Uploaded with ImageShack.us
peace love light
Tyson

[ashtweth]

VERY good direction, harnessing the R and D into practical co- generation experiences a genre lacking for WAAAAY to long.Well Lid and the energetic forum have always been pioneers .

I wonder if this Thermoelectric Generator
could run from a parabolic dish with this and be more efficient?
only cause your joule theif could run at NIGHT and day with the thermoelectric effect.

[SkyWatcher]

Hi Ash, thanks for the reply. It's a nice little circuit yes, lights up a bathroom with usable light, well at least to see what your doing. Though it has expansion capability, that's what I think is cool about it. Thanks for the link to those thermoelectric generators, I had thought about that in the past. My idea was to use it in ceilings in homes, to possibly take advantage of the temperature difference. Though my red flags go up any time i see the word profit. Are folks that are making a profit, is it really their intention to help people. If i had any kind of company, I would in no way what so ever be making profits. Everything would be priced to only pay for my basic needs and to pay off the banksters and the like which accounts for most of it, lol, and for any employees to do the same. I don't like to rant, however this world is so ass backwards, people are slaving away for no reason other than to pay off people that have engineered it to be this way. Talk about ice skating uphill. This company's website talks about economic survival and yet is talking of making profit, i think it means its own survival, not that of the masses. Again, i really would like to stick only to the subject at hand, but it's extremely difficult with a big elephant sitting in my living room and hardly nobody speaks about it. And until other human beings cease the practice of making profit off of others and claiming they own the dirt and charging others rent for there dwelling and preventing anything in general that would make people more self sufficient, I am going to speak about it. Now, back to the regularly scheduled program. Figured I'd say a few things since this thread is not likely to go far. Anyway, if anyone has replicated this circuit or has any ideas on how to make it better or use it for different things as Ash is showing, feel free to share it, if you can get over my previous words and if not, oh well.
peace love light
Tyson

[Matthew Jones]

I've managed to build about 4 pretty descent earth batteries over the last 2 weeks from nothing more than some junk metal in the ground. I'm up to 4.5 volt at .85 amp.
I was trying to get some more stuff together for more cells and use something like this to pull the small amount of power out of the system for collection.
Just an idea at this point.

Matt

[SkyWatcher]

Hi Matt, thanks for the reply. That sounds like good output for earth batteries from what I've read of others experiments. What kind of metal or metals did you use and how was it put together and the placements in the earth, thanks. I currently have my solar joule thief light cycling outside for a day now and it seems to be recharging nicely, though that solar panel is from an led light that was meant to charge 2 or 3 AA cells if i remember correctly and so i could probably run 2 or 3 leds off it, especially using the bigger AA cell instead of the typical AAA that comes with most solar garden lights. Though I have plans on building a solar circuit that is similar to Bedini's cap dump charger, so then when the moon is out and/or the skies are cloudy, I can still charge a cap and dump into a battery. I will probably use something similar to nvisser's simple circuit i saw on a thread here.
peace love light
Tyson

[Matthew Jones]

I got all kinds of junk. Balled up copper wire and aluminum wire, Pipe, a radiator.
But so far the best single cell to put out is Balled up Scrap Copper wire (Kinda pressed flat) and vinyl coated Aluminum Sheet with the anodizing sanded off the backside. It puts out 1.2 volt, can't remember the exact amperage.
The big thing is I got quite a few in the ground right now and they are all serialized and paralleled out. It no little thing to get that potential, but hey, its a little junk in a hole.
I am going to dig some of it back up and see how much it has deteriorated.

I have just been on kick to look at different thing a simple configuration.

Matt

[SkyWatcher]

Hi Matt, thanks for the information on the earth battery. This circuit has caught my interest, the simplified series to parallel cap pulser by nvisser. I assume this circuit needs a pulsing input, say from a joule thief flyback so the pulses will pass through the capacitors and charge them, since that middle diode shown in my cad pic of nvisser's modified circuit would not conduct without the pulsing. Does that sound right. Anyway, I am going to build this circuit and use a 555 timer to switch a darlington pair and dump into a gel cell i have for testing. The goal being to use a solar panel or wind generator or other source to power the joule thief or other oscillator to charge the caps. As i said, my only question is, does the circuit need a pulsing input to charge those series caps, it seems as though it would. Any thoughts appreciated, thanks. Here is the modified circuit.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us
peace love light
Tyson

[nvisser]

Hi Tyson
The input needs to be higher than 28V. The two caps charge up in series through the middle diode.
When they are in series , the capacitance are half and they charge up to 28v much faster. When the transistor switch turns on they discharge in parallel through the other diodes and the discharge voltage will be 14v less diode and transistor voltage drop with higher current.
I used the ssg or solid state ssg (joule thief ) from JB's patent to charge the caps up. Then you need to switch the output at a frequency that will prevent the caps to charge up over their specified voltage that will damage them .
Circuits and related methods for ... - Google Patent Search
I used fig 5 with an 9 filar coil. One for trigger.
According to the patent this circuit of John should start to work with an input voltage of 0.7V!! Ideal for Matt's earth batteries.

[SeaMonkey]

Hi Tyson
The input needs to be higher than 28V. The two caps charge up in series through the middle diode.
When they are in series , the capacitance are half and they charge up to 28v much faster. When the transistor switch turns on they discharge in parallel through the other diodes and the discharge voltage will be 14v less diode and transistor voltage drop with higher current.
I used the ssg or solid state ssg (joule thief ) from JB's patent to charge the caps up. Then you need to switch the output at a frequency that will prevent the caps to charge up over their specified voltage that will damage them .
Circuits and related methods for ... - Google Patent Search
I used fig 5 with an 9 filar coil. One for trigger.
According to the patent this circuit of John should start to work with an input voltage of 0.7V!! Ideal for Matt's earth batteries.

Good Points.

For the very least loss of energy be sure
to use Schottky Diodes with suitable current
ratings.

[nvisser]

I used SBL3040 Schottky diodes before that I got from old pc power supplies.
They are 30A, 40V
They did not last as the voltage spikes from the boost converter killed them fast.
So I went back to normal 3A 1000v diodes as I could not find higher voltage Schottky diodes.

[SkyWatcher]

Hi nvisser, thanks for the reply and information. I have built cap dump circuits in the past using the 555 as the signal to fire the caps through transistor, though never tried the charging in series and dumping in parallel method, which makes good sense to me. It makes good sense since when we use the radiant pulses from these solid state self oscillators, they are higher voltage and low current, so it should work well and we have your simple circuit design without needing any extra switching to go from series to parallel, very nice. Hi SeaMonkey, thanks for the diode information, I'll probably go with 3amp, 1000 volt diodes as there fairly cheap. Unfortunately, i don't think the earth battery thing will fly, being in an apartment. So, will have to use either solar or something else as input into cap charging oscillator for my experiments. As far as the garden type solar joule thief circuit i built, it works really well and could surely power a couple more leds if i setup the oscillator to output adequate voltage at the 1.2volt input. Had it running outside all night for about 10 hours and then let it sit in the sun all day and it gained voltage over what it started at the night before.
peace love light
Tyson

[SeaMonkey]

...
I'll probably go with 3amp, 1000 volt diodes as they're fairly cheap.
...

peace love light
Tyson

Your choice of diodes is fine.

Schottky Diodes have rather low reverse
breakdown ratings so will only be suitable
for low voltage applications.

Since my applications are all low voltage
I often "forget" that others may have
other needs...

[Seumas]

switching question from newbie

I am a bit confused on the switching with the 2 npn transistors, would it not be simpler to just use one pnp to handle the switching between the solar panels charging the batteries during the day and the batteries powering the joule thief at night/in darkness?

Here is an example, a simple circuit I found online and it seems to work pretty good:

The resister value should be higher around 5k, batteries could also be in parallel.

[SkyWatcher]

Hi Seumas, The circuit you posted, if that is supposed to function like the first circuit i posted, the automatic solar circuit, then I'm not sure how your circuit will even forward bias the pnp transistor without a negative polarity on the base. Maybe you have the circuit drawn incorrectly from where you said you got it, or the transistor turns on in some manner I am unaware. Let me know. If that circuit does work, it would be nice with so few parts, but it doesn't look right to me, have you tested it yourself and if so what are its functions.
peace love light
Tyson

[Seumas]

I have built it and it actually does, at first it didn't work because I didn't have the solar panel hooked up but when it is all connected it works perfectly with just a led on the output. I am not new to building stuff from schematics but I am new to understanding and designing them. I am now trying to learn not just how to connect things properly but to understand how they work so I can modify and or customize circuits to my own needs, like y'all are doing. The parts I used are readily available at Radio Slack err Shack. The diode is a N914, the transistor is a 2N3906 PNP. slap it together on a breadboard and see for yourself, it works.