Comparator Wiring for Generator Mode

[jelloir]

Attached is a pic of my comparator, which is working. The wires leading off to the right are the charge battery and the wires to the left the run battery.

It's late and I'm a little confused. I have been looking at Generator mode with the comparator (mode 4) from EFV 34 2013 conference and cannot quite figure out how JB has the diode wired.

Can someone please provide a schematic or some advise.

I am still new to this and little paranoid about wiring something wrong and killing transistors etc.

[John_Koorn]

Hi James,

i dont have have time right now to do a schematic for you, but see if you can follow this:

Coil top wires all go to primary positive and nowhere else.
Primary negative goes to SG8 board negative.
SG8 output positive and charge battery positive goes to comparator positive (where you have the yellow wire).
SG8 negative goes to cathode of diode, anode of diode goes to comparator input negative.
Comparator output negative goes to charge battery negative.

John K.

[jelloir]

That's great and makes sense, thanks John!

[jelloir]

Does cap dump generator mode have any benefit over straight radiant/cap dump mode for de-sulphating old batteries? Watching Peter's battery rejuvenation gave me the impression that radiant/cap dump mode would be better instead of trying to force the charge?

I have this mode working now thanks John.

[John_Koorn]

James, in my opinion the only difference is generator mode is going to charge the caps up quicker but the down side is your primary won't last as long. But try it out and see for yourself what happens. There may be more to it than that.

When rejuvenating batteries you can't be worrying about efficiency anyway, as it is a slow process where it seems like the energy is going nowhere. The method you will need to use depends on how badly the battery is sulfated. What you may find is that a battery that is severely sulfated will only take a charge from the raw radiant output of the SSG. You may find that when using the comparator the cap dump pulse seems to bounce straight off the battery because the impedance is too high.

It looks like you know have all the tools to do what you need, you now need to experiment with what works best with the batteries you have. Remember that the batteries are a large part of the system and studying their behaviour will give you more intuition with what they like best.

John K.

[jelloir]

Thanks for the advise John. I'm getting more comfortable with the SSG now and have begun trying to desulphate an old 150Ah 12V Trojan Golf Cart battery. I'm inexperienced, but can see what you mean about the charge seeming to go nowhere, this was partly why I was interested in mode 4 as it seemed to get to a point and just stop taking charge, so I figured it might need more current.

Anyway, I'm still in the very early stages. It's really opening my eyes about batteries, they really are quite unusual and seem to have unique characteristics from one another.

Thanks again,

James

[Tom C]

another thing about generator mode...... a normal SG will stop running when the battery gets around 10 volts on the primary. with gen mode you can suck a battery almost to zero and the SG still runs charging up the secondary if its not full. you can run a gen mode SG off a primary battery with only 10 volts in it. I did a run on a pair of 12 amp hour gel cells from a EZgo scooter. one was ok one had a bad cell so it was at 10.79. I use dthe bad one as the primary, charged the onther one right up!

Tom C

[jelloir]

One last question... Can 6 or 8 volt batteries be used as SSG charge batteries? I have access to a heap of old 8V golf cart batteries and if I could get these going again they could make 24V for my planned solar setup. I have a few 6 volts but can connect those in series if 12V is the only option.

Tom, I just recycled a starter battery with a shorted cell a few days ago that I could have tested like you mentioned, haha typical...

[aln]

Jelloir,
the answer to your question is YES. 6v, 8v, 9v, 12v all work. So does 6+8+9+12 if you go with the raw inductive spike/radiant/pulsed DC or what ever you want to call it. I've put 5 12volt car batteries in series and charged them too.(had excess heat in the circuit on this one, but may have been from issues in the circuit.) Just rotate them if you are doing series charging a lot. For desulfating I prefer the raw over cap dump until the battery holds a decent charge for reasons John K. mentioned. Have fun waking the dead, you are doing well. Aln

[BobZilla]

*EDIT*

Ha ha ,, ,Aln and I must have been replying at the same time,, anyway ;-)


Hi James,
Others may have different opinions but here is mine. Yea you can charge up 6 or 8v whatever you want but I would recommend dong them with straight radiant. Generator mode and the cap dump mode uses current and it may be a bit hard on them. If you use mode one it is all about potential and you wont cook them with current. That is not to say you couldn't use other methods because you certainly can but if it were my project I would use mode one for that. It will also help if they are sulphated. Heavily sulphated batteries will not even take the current but they will take the radiant.

Good Luck

[aln]

Hey bob,
we posted at the same time, with basically the same answer. There you have it from bob, don't cook it unless you want to eat it. Aln

[jelloir]

That's fantastic guys! Thanks for everyone's help. Real nice community here.

[Faraday88]

Another thing about Generator mode..... you can Configure the secondary and primary Batteries to run a load and charging another Battery at the same time.. This charged Battery can then in turn be configured either in primary or secondary to charge one of them and so on.....
Rgds,
Faraday88.