Re: Even more homebuilt charger madness

[Rich Rudman <rmanzan@tscnet.com>]

David Dymaxion wrote:
> 
> Bill, some excellent points backed by your extensive experience.

> 
> The ultimate setup could be both. A bulk charger doing all the
> batteries in series, and a flying charger to balance and help weak
> batteries one at a time. A regular charger with a Zivan smoother or
> Lee Hart's prototype system would do this.
> 


Lead acid does have the reverse Puekert effect. But it alot lower than
the discharge curve.
	Those High tech Ni-mH batteries do toss off a lot more heat than lead
does. They also make a lot of heat if you overdischarge them. ASK Seth.

	I feel the cheaper and more robust concpet would be a PFC20 charger and
a string of Rudman Mark II regs. The power dissapated in equalization
action at the end of the charge cycle should be fraction of a kilowatt
hour. Your E-meter will measure and track all the power put into your
battery, and track even closer the discharge curve just as it's
desinged. 
	The smoother is NOT cheap , and fully loaded Regs with the RegBuss
interface are $40 a pop. Also not cheap with 20 AGMs to monitor. 

In the long run I am betting on disapative Regs. They will be cheaper
and more reliable than any other form of batter block equalization. And
soon as we have to do CELL by CELL equalization, things will get one
step nastier. This will be required for Lithium technologies. 
	Good question for the batter Gurus out there. How many cells will a EV
sized Lithium battery have?
2,3,4 (8,12,16 volt blocks)????? I may need to make a tripple Reg on a
card. Not a pleasant cost benifit calculation.

Rich Rudman
Manzanita Micro