Hi John and Aaron,
Thanks for the feedback. What you are saying sounds about right. In the normal single battery supply my 7 strand SSG will charge a 13AH lawn battery to well over 16 volts. It does it very quickly in generator mode and a little slower in radiant mode. And it will push a 30AH car battery well over 15 volts in generator mode. It's definitely too small for the 100AH batteries I'm playing with now. I may add more coils to it at a later date. In the meantime, I'm just topping them off with my 10A12 charger to keep them in reasonably good condition.
What I'm experimenting with is comparing normal charging to the "three battery supply" rotation in a "split the negative" arrangement with radiant spikes added to the battery under charge. It takes about an hour to pull them back up to 14 volts using this method, which I thought was pretty good for this size of batteries. It won't top them off, so after I've cycled them all a couple of times I finish charging each one individually to 15 volts on the 10A12.
I think raising each battery to 24 volts would also make a big improvement, as well as switching to faster diodes to collect the radiant. Or I could invest in some 30 AH batteries and leave it the way it is for now. But first, I need to finish up a couple of other projects that are higher on my priority list.
Thanks for the feedback. What you are saying sounds about right. In the normal single battery supply my 7 strand SSG will charge a 13AH lawn battery to well over 16 volts. It does it very quickly in generator mode and a little slower in radiant mode. And it will push a 30AH car battery well over 15 volts in generator mode. It's definitely too small for the 100AH batteries I'm playing with now. I may add more coils to it at a later date. In the meantime, I'm just topping them off with my 10A12 charger to keep them in reasonably good condition.
What I'm experimenting with is comparing normal charging to the "three battery supply" rotation in a "split the negative" arrangement with radiant spikes added to the battery under charge. It takes about an hour to pull them back up to 14 volts using this method, which I thought was pretty good for this size of batteries. It won't top them off, so after I've cycled them all a couple of times I finish charging each one individually to 15 volts on the 10A12.
I think raising each battery to 24 volts would also make a big improvement, as well as switching to faster diodes to collect the radiant. Or I could invest in some 30 AH batteries and leave it the way it is for now. But first, I need to finish up a couple of other projects that are higher on my priority list.
Comment