Understanding Battery Charge in Capacitive Discharge and SSG Chargers

[theremart]

Re Weird thing.

I have noted that with the SSG, that if I leave the charging battery plugged in it will drain it. Also I have noticed that the higher the charge of the charging battery the less work there is on the primary battery.

I have started putting a capacitor on front with the supply battery and I have found this was of good benefit to the circuit. It seems to buffer the systems request for more energy, and put less stress on the primary battery.

I am thinking you are moving close to building the window motor in what you are doing.

Mart

[Jetijs]

So far it does not look too good. The current draw from the primary is in the c20 range, the caps fill up slowly - about 5-6 seconds till they get from 12v to 15v. The solidstate relay works fine, I mean, I can see the voltages rising on the caps and then suddenly they fall back to 12v. Also on the batteries I see them at about 12.04v and when the caps are discharged, the voltage on the batteries rises to 12.08v for a short time. So the capacitor discharging seems to happen well. Althought when I increase the discharge frequency, it appears that the SSR can't discharge the caps fast enough in one pulse. For example, I charge the caps to say 30V and then pulse the caps to the batteries with about 5-8 pulses per second. The voltage on the caps only graduatly decrease while pulsing and not all in one pulse. Yesteday I let the SSG run for about 5 hours, and the voltage on the 3x7Ah batteries had risen from 12.04 to 12.06. I think that with a standard SSG and no cap pulser it would charge alot faster. Then I tried to charge up only one 7Ah battery, there was maybe a tinny little bit faster charging, but nothing big. So what can you recommend me to try? Mybe I should reduce the cap bank capacity? This way I could get them to charge faster and pulse to the batteries at greater frequency. Or should I cycle the betteries till they are conditioned and only then try to use the cap pulser? My goal is to be able to swap batteries around so that the charging battery charges faster than primary one discharges. Maybe I should get rid of that SSR? I will make some scope shots on the battery voltage when they are pulsed, this way we should see if the SSR is working as needed and if it can discharge the whole cap bank in one pulse.
Thanks,
Jetijs

[Aaron]

discharge method

Hi Jetijs,

I agree that you should decrease the capacitance. I'm surprised the bank isn't charging quicker.

When I had this coil on this schematic:

http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/366-bedini-solid-state-oscillators-2.html#post4023

hooked to a bike wheel, the output on the 3rd winding charged a cap bank of 60volts and each cap was 33,000uf. I had about 6 caps...198,000uf.

I had a mechanical pulley discharge the cap bank when it was a few volts above the charging batt...maybe 15v or so. It would get to a few volts above the charge batt about every 2-3 seconds or so.

If you're using a 555 circuit similar to what you see on that same schematic linked to above, I'm using that 2SC3281 instead of a relay. I might have the trigger drawn on the wrong side, but the point is, it needs to point in that direction if pulsing inverted on the negative side.

Is the relay off/on fast enough in comparison to the 2sc3281? It works really well for me. I never really used relays before so I don't know how to compare them.

Anyway, I'd try to arrange your system so that the caps would be 2-3 volts above the charge batt voltage and have it happen about every 2 seconds then discharge at that frequency. Also, try charging only 1 battery on the output and see what happens.

[Jetijs]

Aaron, thank you
One problem was the solid state relay, it could not discharge the caps in one pulse, maybe due to its resistance. I switched to a normal 2 pole relay which I trigger with the same 555 circuit. I switched to a variable power supply on the input instead of a battery. Also I found out that if I make the circuit self oscillate when the wheel is not turning, the caps charge faster. There is a high pitch noise coming from the coil, nothing new, but if I increase the voltage of my power supply when the coil is self oscillating, the pitch changes. If I lower the voltage, the pitch goes higher (so does the frequency) and I can get as low as 1.5v before the oscillations stop. If I increase the input voltage, the pitch goes lower and lower (so does also the frequency) and amp draw increases. But this happens only till the input voltage reaches about 18V, if I increase the voltage further, the pitch starts to go higher again. Maybe that is the resonance sweet spot? Anyway, now the setup is drawing about 0.2 amps at 18V and the caps charge up fast, I have to discharge them about one time per second, because this is how fast the voltages on the caps rise to about 15-16v. Also I noticed, that if I connect the output from the rectifier to the battery directly, the high pitch noise is still (not changing in tone), but If I charge the capacitors, then the pitch increases till the caps are discharged and the this starts all over again. Sound kinda like a fire truck or an ambulance car The relay seems to work well, there is no arcing on the contacts if I don't let the voltages on the caps go higher than 17-18v. Now I am charging only one 7Ah battery on the output.
Will see how it works
Thanks again Aaron
Jetijs

[Aaron]

battery continues to charge on its own

Hi Jetijs,

If you can get this system to charge the battery good and I think mechanical switch is maybe best, you will see that you charge the battery for a while then turn everything off... the battery will continue to climb for another hour without any further input. That was my experience with the cap discharge circuit pulsing into a batt every 2 seconds a few volts above the batt...on a pulley triggered copper switch pulsing on the positive...I didn't do it on the negative.

[Jetijs]

Aaron, did you use conditioned batteries when you observed this effect? And what kind of batteries did you use, lead/acid or gel cell batteries?
The charging with the self oscillating coil is faster than with rotating wheel, the caps are charging well and so does the battery. I left this 7Ah battery to charge for 12 hours, it climbed from 12.15V to 12.75 (when charging). Then I removed the battery from the circuit and the voltage decreased to 12.55v standing voltage. No increase in voltage was observed after disconnecting it from the circuit.

[Aaron]

battery info

Hi Jetijs,

I used 7ah 12v gel cells just like in your pics. I had one on the front end and one on the back end. With the high capacitance impulses, I think you will get the effect of continuous charging after disconnection. Also, the cap voltage doesn't necessarily have to drop down to the charging battery voltage and if the impulse is fast enough, it won't.

[Jetijs]

Ok, I will just try this again and this time I will pulse the positive lead of the cap/battery bank. Also, after I stopped the test, I shorted out my caps till 0 volts. I measured them again in a hour and they were showing about 2V. This is interesting
Thanks,
Jetijs

[Ewhaz]

Hi Jetijs,

I used 7ah 12v gel cells just like in your pics. I had one on the front end and one on the back end. With the high capacitance impulses, I think you will get the effect of continuous charging after disconnection. Also, the cap voltage doesn't necessarily have to drop down to the charging battery voltage and if the impulse is fast enough, it won't.

Is that to say that in normal (that is in conventional electrodynamic theory) circomstances capacitors will not retain any voltage after discharge? So then is this a good test for radiant energy, voltage gain after total discharge?

I turned off my system and disconnected the batteries. After shorting the capacitor some 3 times, it still gained voltage.

[Solace]

Hi Ewhaz,

It is my understanding that it is normal for caps to do this.

S

[Ewhaz]

Here is something I've noticed since I started running. The situatation was something like this.

Not knowing how to test my circuit for it's proper operation, I assmebled it and ran it at first without realizing the 555 wasn't triggering the opto and thus not the SCR. In other words it wasn't pulsing the cap to the batteries, it was just holding the circuit wide open to the baterries. The coil was discharging directly into the battery.

In this condition, I charged my first battery. The voltage rose steadily over 12 hours reaching roughly 13.9 volts. After that I turned the unit off. The next day I charged it again, wanting to reach at least 14v before I switched my batteries. The voltage at that point climbed and climbed over 15v in the space of a few minuets. After that I decided it was time to switch them back. The resting voltage was around 13.17.

After that I switched to the other battery, it began taking an increadibly long time to charge. I began fiddling with my circuit over the days and realized my 555 wasn't working and simply dumping directly into my battery. So I went and switched the 555 and it began to operate normaly, charging the cap to 155v round about and pulsing into the battery.

From this point on the charging became slow, very slow. I'd been charging it for about 5 days on and off, more than 24 hours total. It bearly got to 13.3 volts after all of that and I was having problems with my capacitors overheating. Sooo, I tested something. I disconected my pulsing circuit and hooked the output of the bridge rectifier strait to my battery. From that point on it charged steadily, jumping to 13.6 volts within and hour. as it reached 13.67 votls it seemed to peak out, leveling off between .67 and point .68 volts. It never got above that and I'm learly of charging it further as it was slipping backward in voltage, but only slightly.


But still, it seemed from experiments so far, that the battery charged much quicker discharging the coil directly into the battery.

[Aaron]

self charging

Hi Ewhaz,

It is my understanding that it is normal for caps to do this.

S

This is what I thought too. When I short out caps, the voltage always seems to rise a few volts.

Even when I short my water cell tubes, the voltage immediately rises a few volts.

When I got the oscillator to run for a long time on just a cap, I think it was partly because the cap has the tendency to charge by itself.

[Peter Lindemann]

Electret Effect

This is what I thought too. When I short out caps, the voltage always seems to rise a few volts.

Even when I short my water cell tubes, the voltage immediately rises a few volts.

When I got the oscillator to run for a long time on just a cap, I think it was partly because the cap has the tendency to charge by itself.

Aaorn,

Yes, the caps bounce back after discharge. Good caps will bounce back quite a bit. The high voltage electrostatic nature of the Radiant Spike tends to put an extra stress in the dielectric material of the capacitor. This makes the cap behave partially like an electret. This produces one of the gain mechanisms in the system.

Peter

[elias]

Batteries behave like this too

Aaorn,

Yes, the caps bounce back after discharge. Good caps will bounce back quite a bit. The high voltage electrostatic nature of the Radiant Spike tends to put an extra stress in the dielectric material of the capacitor. This makes the cap behave partially like an electret. This produces one of the gain mechanisms in the system.

Peter

I suppose that electrolytic capacitors behave like this. Batteries self charge upon resting too, which I think that everybody has noticed this. It is as if they want to maintain their previous state somehow.

[thedude]

This is a great thead.

This is a very helpful thread.
Thanks for the excellent insight. Wish i had read this one sooner.

I'm making some references to this and other discussions to help people find it.
Some really good information that people who are new to SSG s, such as myself, definitely need to know.