3 Battery Generating System

[FRC]

Plengo

Good to see more members trying this. I just tried another bad battery That I
had tried before. Let things sit with the three motors hooked up for about 15 minutes. Did not have a load connected. When I hooked up the halogen light
everything started up and ran it for about half an hour. Would hooking up the
load just be acting as a dead short completing the circuit?

@Turion, Dave, I am confused here. Is it all right to do a long run of 12 hours.
Or are they supposed to be limited to a half hour at a time ?


Heorge

[Turion]

FRC,
Unfortunately, there is no good answer to that. I have done runs with batteries in the third position that quit working correctly and the voltage on my two primary batteries started dropping after three or four minutes. I have had batteries that lasted fifteen hours before that same thing happened. I have friends who have had runs as long as ten hours and batteries one and two recovered overnight. You just have to watch those two batteries closely. My first system ran for several weeks and I thought I was going to be RICH!

We haven't done enough experimentation to set parameters that people need to stay within. For instance, what is the MOST that batteries one and two can go down in voltage and still recover? I don't know. I thought I knew, but then I waited a couple extra days and they DID recover. So it would be NICE to say, run your system for X amount of time, or run your system until the voltages on batteries one and two drop to X voltage, but we're not there yet. We NEED to start collecting that kind of data, but is it even meaningful when we are all using different batteries in the third position and it all depends on the voltage and sulfation of that battery? I just don't know. And it is one of the many things about this that is driving me crazy!! The ONLY good thing so far is that other people are getting successful results so I don't have to worry about people thinking I'm a fraud anymore!! THAT is such a relief. I was afraid to even stick my head up again with this thing, but the results we were getting were just to important to NOT let people know there is something here. My main concern with harping on the short runs has been because when I first posted at OU, people immediately jumped into doing these long runs, where of course batteries one and two were drained, and they didn't recover. I want people to see that if you are careful, you can milk this cow forever. But if you milk it until it runs dry one time, you have to get a new cow. (recharge your primary batteries on a conventional charger)

[hello_all]

here is what i did .... i had 2 12v bateries from UPS , they were already connected in series so no worry.

2. i had a black and decker electric lawn trimmer , which has a 12v motor. opened that one from middle and took connections off the cable.

3. i have 2 bad batteries one 12v small lead acid and another 6v lead acid.

connected the circuit as shown all in series .. with motor after the good batteries.

now wait and wait nothing happened , so i am anxious to know what is wrong ..
took out multimeter, hmmm bad battery is blocking the circuit to be completed.hmmmm...

took load of a 12v tail light and connected across the bad battery , the motor starts working ..ok .. simple.. and then i try to put resistance on the motor the light glows back up more brighter .. so it looks simple i have 2 loads battery and light , each of them compensating each other to drain my good batteries....

the electrons will always tries to take the shortest path .. in this case the light and ignoring the battery.. if something else happens i have not seen ..

so it is failed experiment for me .. 2nd attempt with bad battery same results.. but in video i see the bad battery is big .. next time will try those big ones..

[Turion]

hello_all

There are a few issues with your setup:
1. If the UPS batteries are not lead acid, they will not receive the CEMF from the motor that helps them stay charged.
2. You need to read my first post that outlines the process for checking a battery for the third position and how to start this system up.
You made mistakes that prevent the system from EVER working. You bypassed battery three to get the system to start. You can't do that. It MUST start without a load on battery three. If it doesn't, you have a battery that is so bad in that spot that it won't work. It could take up to 15 minutes for the motor to start once all connections have been made. If it doesn't start by then, the battery in position three is no good. If it starts immediately, the battery in position three is also not the best for this project, but MAY work if its voltage is low enough and if it is sulfated enough. BAttery three begins the process of drawing in energy, and THEN you add loads.

[plengo]

I have been playing with batteries for a long time so I kind of do understand their behavior pretty well.

I noticed in my setup that B1 and B2 in series were giving a mere 1ma towards the B3 (bad battery) with the motor in series. That tells me the B3 is really bad and so sulfated that its internal resitance is very high therefore the current that can flow is very small, and indeed 1 ma is very small.

More times passes slowly that 1m goes to 1.5ma and soon 2ma. I noticed that the voltage on B3 is the sum of the voltages on B1 and B2. That makes sense.

Than I added a load to B3 (LED 25 watts light) and the motor ran and current increased to 150ma. That also makes sense since I added a lower resistance path to the flow BUT the voltage on B3 now dropped to 13v and slowly goes up.

That tells me that B3 now is somehow getting a better charge from the more powerful current passing through the LED. Which it should not really but it is. That is where one has to make sure the motor has a load. If you add a load to the running motor in that scenario voltage on B3 rises pretty quickly and current goes up too and so brightness on LED. That does not make sense to me. Why a higher load would create a higher current. I = V/R. Higher resistance from the motor lower should be the current not higher.

Removing the load from B3 I noticed its voltage again rising and current dropping but now current is around 5ma and going higher. That is NOT GOOD. that tells me that my B3 is becoming a good battery which we don't want.

So one must play with the motor and loads on B3 to keep it very high internal resistance and allowing all the power being generated to go to the LED or load.

The magic here is how B1 and B2 are getting higher in voltage too. That is a total mystery. Replacing the motor with a different form of load such as LEDs or lamps did not work.

There is something about the motor and its fluctuation as it runs that causes this effect.

I think what people might be experiencing is the restoration of B3 into a good battery which causes the energy from B1 and B2 to be used up and therefore their voltages to go down for good.

If you keep B3 bad all the time they don't really fall but opposite grow in voltage. VERY STRANGE.

Fausto.

[Turion]

Fausto,
Because you are putting meters on this you are seeing the things that we are seeing. You should try putting a scope on the batteries and seeing some of the strange things we have seen. There are lots of things about this setup that don't make sense according to current electrical theory, but as long as it works, I couldn't care less if people tall me it can't. And you are right, balancing the two loads is essential. Trying to figure out a system to do that is one of the other things that drives me crazy about this. So far it's hit or miss, but the more time I spend with it, the better I become at it. The problem is, how do you TEACH that to someone else? If we want people to have successful replications we have to have things that can be replicated. Right now it's kinda like throw a rock in the lake. Somewhere under the water is the target, and if you throw enough rocks, maybe you will hit it. And maybe not.
Dave

[clueless]

What would happen if

you get thr right bad #3 battery and if as it begins to take a charge and batteries 1 & 2 voltage starts to drop, you connect battery 3 to battery 1. That should result in voltage rising in 1 & 2 and of course in time less energy transferred from #3. That I understand is a bad thing.
But what if you increased the load on the motor drawing more current from 1&2 which then should draw more current through #3, hopefully keeping it in the sweet spot.
What am I missing. It seems this should work to keep all three batteries at their optimal level.
I haven't tried this three battery thing but I will.
Thanks again, this is exciting because it seems to reproductible, does more than just lights and is fairly simple and inexpensive.

[Turion]

clueless,
Run a 120 volt generator off the inverter connected to battery three, and a generator off the shaft of the motor. If you can balance them, you have ALL KINDS of power, and batteries one and two will lose hardly ANY charge at all. And they actually GAIN charge when the motor is running at higher RPM's because of the load on battery three. My original system could run that all day and all night. We are not there yet. We are not even able to get people to balance loads at small voltages, and I don't know if ANYBODY has really put a constant load on their motor yet to try and balance with a load on battery three.

The only way to get the motor up to high enough rpm's to have it working as a charger for the primary batteries is to get a significant load on battery 3. But this will DRAIN batteries one and two without a matching load on the motor. So you have to gain enough experience with loads on both to MATCH the loads. I think a couple of people here have seen that.

Too much load on battery three, you drain the batteries. Too much load on the motor, you drain the batteries. When the bad battery gets too much charge on the plates, you drain the batteries. What worked yesterday with the exact same batteries may not work as well today because whenever you are running the system you are working on making battery three a good battery.

Maybe hooking a generator to the inverter off battery 3 and a generator to the shaft of the motor, and the output of both to the SAME LOAD would balance the system. Just one of a thousand things I need to experiment with. And if it doesn't, what to do to make it balance so that as you up the load it remains balanced. That is my ultimate goal. I don't ask for much. World Peace is my next request.

[plengo]

I have played with batteries for YEARS but I have never seen this effect before. It is so simple and yet amazing.

How did you even thought about that man?

I started thinking what could be the reason this works. It must be because the flow of electricity is not what we think it is. It may be actually 2 flows and one is the hot one and the other the cold.

The hod flow is the one the heat things up while the cold one is the one that really charges a battery more efficiently than the hot one. EV Gray mention that separation once.

It may be that battery B3 (the bad one) being so high in internal resistance only allows the cold flow to go though and therefore converts that into energy BUT it can not readily use it when a load is attached to it.

Because it also does not flow to go through or the hot flow, B1 and B2 do not discharge. To prove this crazy idea all one has to do is measure the current right before the motor - negative terminal of B2 and also right before the positive terminal of B1 - in essence both flows at once. I bet they are different.

Some may criticize me for what I about to say: Once I did that when running an SSG and did get two different current measurements from both terminals of the charging battery - and that was using an analog meter.

Also the motor under load, creates a stronger BEMF (now talking about Peter motor DVD secrets) where higher the load higher the internal resistance or BEMF inside the motor and more power B1 and B2 must pump out to win the race. When doing that and having a B3 bad there it may suck more cold energy towards B3 - causing more output power - while allowing the hot energy to fight back better the Forward EMF from B1 and B2 causing them to not lose power.

I know it is crazy but this whole thing is crazy. I can barely wait to get home and play more.

Fausto.

[hello_all]

hello_all

There are a few issues with your setup:
1. If the UPS batteries are not lead acid, they will not receive the CEMF from the motor that helps them stay charged.
2. You need to read my first post that outlines the process for checking a battery for the third position and how to start this system up.
You made mistakes that prevent the system from EVER working. You bypassed battery three to get the system to start. You can't do that. It MUST start without a load on battery three. If it doesn't, you have a battery that is so bad in that spot that it won't work. It could take up to 15 minutes for the motor to start once all connections have been made. If it doesn't start by then, the battery in position three is no good. If it starts immediately, the battery in position three is also not the best for this project, but MAY work if its voltage is low enough and if it is sulfated enough. BAttery three begins the process of drawing in energy, and THEN you add loads.

the UPS battery is lead acid ,
http://www.amazon.com/APC-RBC2-Repla.../dp/B00004Z6TW

if this is not the right kind which one should i go for?

[Neight]

I let my setup run yesterday for close to an hour after I thought bat3 had stabilized, and have noticed that recovery of bat's 1 and 2 is taking a significantly longer time. It is possible that I did eat some energy out of one and two, but I will let them rest for the next few days and see if recovery continues.
Once I have made sure that recovery is done, I will run the test again, and let you know how it goes.
so far, battery 3 is not getting any better at all though. after draining it of the charge it has immediately following the test run, I have been tracking its voltage, and it still wont hold more than 1V, and it wont even run a joule thief as a load. That is encouraging for battery 3 which is a SLAB 12V 5Ah.
I plan on improving my setup with a better motor soon, one that I can load down. Hope to have better data after that

N8

[Nasa Nate]

the cosmic collector schematic mentioned specifically using a brushless DC motor, aka a ECM motor, to generate BackEMF. Perhaps a variable to test is the load as a brushed motor, vs a brushless motor.

my 2 cents

[Turion]

hello_all
As long as it is a lead acid battery it should work in either position one or two. It is battery three that is tricky. It has to be a lead acid battery that is so low in voltage it won't start the motor running when you first connect it. But after a few minutes (no more than about 15) the motor should start up. If the motor starts right up, it won't work WELL because it has too much juice (but may work a little.) If the motor NEVER starts up, it won't work at ALL. Don't put a load on battery three until you have tested it to see if it meets these two criteria. (Those are the procedures for selecting a battery for position three I talk about in the first post I made that I am going back to edit right now to be VERY specific.) If it does't meet these two criteria, it won't work for this setup and you will have to try a different lead acid battery. You can try anything you want to play around with it, but if you want one that will do what we're trying to do, it needs to meet those two criteria.

Nasa Nate,
I can already tell you it won't work with a brushless motor, or at least not with any of the ones I have tried to use.

Dave

[ewizard]

the cosmic collector schematic mentioned specifically using a brushless DC motor, aka a ECM motor, to generate BackEMF. Perhaps a variable to test is the load as a brushed motor, vs a brushless motor.

my 2 cents

I agree with Turion and I think a lot of info in the cosmic collector is wrong or at least suspect. At least for this application you want a brush motor.

I keep trying to think what it is about a dead battery that's able to do this. I also keep thinking a battery acts, among other things, as a diode. But what about a bad battery? I'm wondering if it's like 2 diodes back to back. I've seen enough reference to certain 'magic' in diodes and seeing them inserted backwards (from what you'd expect) to take pause and think about this. In fact one case where the diodes were backwards was the Tesla switch circuit in Patrick Kelley's Free energy book from Electrodyne corp. that supposedly had a 30 HP motor running off 4 vehicle batteries and somehow the batteries were staying charged - not only that but they were said to be climbing as high as 36 volts on a 12 volt battery. BTW I verified this situation with Patrick Kelly that the diodes were indeed intended to be backwards. At one point he changed the to the normal configuration in his book and so I wrote asking him which was correct. He checked into it and the corrected them back to the 'apparent backwards' configuration. I think all diodes also have a small amount of leakage and with this in mind I'm thinking about trying some different configurations with them in place of battery 3 when I get to this. I've got some very high current diodes on hand that should work.
I can see a lot of possible configurations to try. I can see why this might be driving you crazy Turion but just have fun with it. You'll hit the magic combo again sometime or one of us will.

[ewizard]

BTW Turion I don't know if it was you or someone else but a while back on OU there was someone else doing something nearly identical to this but with just AA batteries. At one point he was saying you had to remove one segment out of the motor where the brushes contact (he had a very small one) but later said it worked without removing it. If I recall he was getting some similar results too.