3 Battery Generating System

[Matthew Jones]

Tony P.S. Matt, I never passed Electric 101. I was absent on the day of the test.

I don't mean to be jerk I am just wondering what I got to do to spell everything out now.
I don't want someone getting hurt because they are not following whats supposed to be happening.

Matt

[fathershand]

Keep Going

I don't mean to be jerk I am just wondering what I got to do to spell everything out now.
I don't want someone getting hurt because they are not following whats supposed to be happening.

Matt

Matt, I don't think you're a jerk. You're just working hard on this thing. We're all tired and wanting real results, so making mistakes is inevitable.

I tried the diodes, but the bad batteries are shorted, so I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Got any suggestions? I have 4 bad batteries that won't work for this.

Tony

[Matthew Jones]

Trade them for 4 batteries that will. LOL Gas station or someone small might do it.

Matt

[Turion]

I have three bad batteries that are dead as door nails. They were brand new when I got them. I succeeded in killing them by discharging them with two car headlights (much faster than the c20 rate) then recharging and discharging continually over about a week. ( This was four years ago when I was first experimenting with this setup and knew nothing about batteries. I thought you could discharge them any way you wanted to, down to the point they wouldn't light up a bulb.) So if you've got the time, you can kill a battery doing that. The three I have show nothing on a volt meter and connected in the third position of the 3BGS the motor won't start no matter how long I let it set there.

[blackchisel97]

I bought a motorized treadmill yesterday (only $20 at garage sale) thinking it would have a nice big DC motor in it I could try with this. It turned out to be a 1HP AC motor Nice smooth motor but no good for this.

I thought they all ran DC motors on treadmills or I would have looked before buying.

Glad to see so many involved in this and that there are some interesting results.

I found one treadmill nearby and I'm going to check tomorrow if it has DC or AC motor inside. Either way I'll keep it. Hopefully my DC motor will arrive this week. I was trying to simulate motor in my setup by different coils and FET switch but couldn't balance darn thing. Also managed to injure one channel on my scope while experimenting with newly made large toroid.
Not so happy weekend for me

Vtech

[Turion]

3BGS schematic 6 test - YouTube

Tried a test this morning. Battery three showed less than one volt on the meter, but the instant it was connected into the system it jumped to over 11 volts. This is why you need a DEAD battery in this position.

I have two batteries and will try them as my wings on the bad battery and run it again. Going down to do that now.

Dave

[Turion]

OK,
Had success with the second run. Was able to stabilize it and get it to run the inverter with no problem with the new batteries. Got the primaries to increase in voltage, but I had already drained them monkeying around earlier in the day with that first setup. So I am charging up the primaries and will do a full run tomorrow and see if I can balance loads and see how many watts of power I can get out of the system. I will connect the AC side of my light board to the inverter and the DC side of my light board to the generator. And I will watch the heat on my motor to make sure it doesn't get too hot running the generator. If this is successful, I will move on to the larger motor running the two motors as generators.

Dave

[fathershand]

Bad Battery Test - New & Improved

3BGS schematic 6 test - YouTube

Tried a test this morning. Battery three showed less than one volt on the meter, but the instant it was connected into the system it jumped to over 11 volts. This is why you need a DEAD battery in this position.

I have two batteries and will try them as my wings on the bad battery and run it again. Going down to do that now.

Dave

You know that we have discovered that all my bad batteries are no good for the wing batteries.

So, today I worked out a way to check to see if a bad battery candidate is usable for our circuit.

Take the candidate battery, a good battery, and a light. Use the the candidate battery as a switch between the light and the good battery. Connect one side of the light to positive of the candidate. Connect the other side of the light to the positive of the good battery. Connect the negative of the good battery to the negative of the candidate. If the light comes on, the candidate battery will NOT work for you in this circuit.

I have a totally sulfated battery that I tried with this and the light didn't come on. Even though the voltage was zero on one of my other bad batteries, the light would come on. This indicates that the battery was shorted.

Try this and let me know your results.
Tony

[Turion]

fathershand,
That test worked perfectly for the two dead batteries I have that worked well with my system. It also indicated that the low voltage battery (the one that shot up to 11 volts) was NOT a good candidate. At last, a simple method anyone can use to test for the right "Bad" battery.

Dave

[fathershand]

Simple Bad Battery Check

fathershand,
That test worked perfectly for the two dead batteries I have that worked well with my system. It also indicated that the low voltage battery (the one that shot up to 11 volts) was NOT a good candidate. At last, a simple method anyone can use to test for the right "Bad" battery.

Dave

Thanks, Dave for verifying my result.

Now, we have a method to use for going to the battery recycle place and going through their discards to find one that we can use here.

Thank God, I had one battery that was sitting in a dead computer UPS in my living room for several years. Something [Some One ] told me not to try to restore it, so I put it to the side. It was what I used to test my theory. It is too small for this circuit, so I have to get some large ones to continue the work on this circuit.

Tony

[Turion]

Yeah, I wish we had come up with this a week ago. I just spent $45 for three dead batteries that I can't use for this. But I will trade those cores in for new batteries when I go to buy batteries for another project, so not a complete loss.

Dave

[clueless]

At a standstill

I have tinkered with my setup for the past 4 days and have reached the limit of what I am able to do with the system. I have used the voltage from the 2nd motor to charge a separate battery.
I am able to put a couple of loads on the bad bat and watch the motors respond with increaded speed and voltage out from the 2nd motor. But I run into a snag with loading the inverter. I thinking it is the voltage rising and falling with adding loads that causes the inverter to shut down and start up and the motors to follow that rythum too.
I think what it needs is a control circuit to stabilize the voltage but that skill is one I don't have. But I have a friend who will loan me an old electricial inverter that uses fuses and doesn't mind voltage flucations. That should work short-term.
I'm also going to get him to give me a hands-on-demonstration to build this circuit. I learn better by doing and observing and I got a demonstration of that yesterday when I accidently shorted out my #1 bat. That tiny slip welded my test clip together and burnt the palm of my hand. There is a lot of power in a battery!
I wanted to let you guys kinow that while I'm behind most of you that I'm still plugging away as this has potential to be a game-changer. I'll keep you updated as I go and I will appreciate any insight anyone has to share.
I've noticed these two motors has plenty of torque and you can basically run them for free. My batteries were used and reclaimed but after several hours of running they have together lost 3/10 of a volt, practically nothing.
Thanks guys.
-rg

[LutherG]

Just an update

Hi Guys,

I brought home 16 used golf cart batteries on Friday. It turns out that they are all freshly charged, topped up and holding above 6.5 volts so this turned out better than I'd hoped.

Also my second currie motor arrived Saturday so now I need some #25 chain to link them together. I had to give up some other batteries I had around as core exchanges for these GC batteries but that's ok. I still have 3 bad car batteries. One of them is being used in the little setup but I have 2 more that are sitting at 1 and 2 volts so hopefully they'll be usable for the 3 bad battery array...

Cheers,

Luther

[ewizard]

Hi Guys,

I brought home 16 used golf cart batteries on Friday. It turns out that they are all freshly charged, topped up and holding above 6.5 volts so this turned out better than I'd hoped.

Also my second currie motor arrived Saturday so now I need some #25 chain to link them together. I had to give up some other batteries I had around as core exchanges for these GC batteries but that's ok. I still have 3 bad car batteries. One of them is being used in the little setup but I have 2 more that are sitting at 1 and 2 volts so hopefully they'll be usable for the 3 bad battery array...

Cheers,

Luther

WOW ! Nice score there - I'm guessing you got them for a good price or better? I'm looking for some more of these myself so if you got any hints on where to find them for a good price please do tell.

[Turion]

Did another run this morning. Got it to hold steady at about a 10 watt load feeding the generator back to the primaries. I took some video of that.

3BGS schematic 6 Test 3 - YouTube

Then I was able to run a 25 watt bulb off the motor for a while and get it balanced with higher wattage on the inverter, so THAT DOES WORK!!! I had it up to 50 watts off the generator balanced with a load off the inverter, but I didn't write down how much. Then I added too much load and it overtaxed the inverter and shut it down, which messed up everything. But I am starting to see what can be done at least, and it's a lot.

Matt, my motors did not get hot, but I didn't do a ten hour run either. Doing some really long runs would be my next step. I did get it to hold stable for a couple hours.

Dave