SSG Where the rubber hits the road

[min2oly]

Hi all,
been busy with runs all week (amongst other things). This is how I've been getting the data points:

As you can see, it's pretty much what John K suggested. I'm not sure if this is exactly what he intended so it may be mostly my interpretation. I was running into issues so I had to tweak it a bit.

I am open to any suggestions.

I'm also continuing the runs so this might be considered a sneak peek.
Hope your weekend is finding you well...
Kind Regards,
Patrick

PS keep in mind this is still mostly VANILLA! and I am not including the charging I get from the pickup coil to a 2nd battery.

[min2oly]

All I can say on sulfation is what I am seeing. I picked up these T105's on craigs list in pretty good condition. The guy I bought them from does burning man every year and wanted to downsize. They were stored for long periods of time and heavily used for a month here and there. The plates look better now than when I picked them up. The only couple of times they received a full charge from me in the more than two years I've had them has been off a 12volt 6A Zap battery charger.
KR,
Patrick

[min2oly]

no I didn't know that.

Which DVD # are you refering to?

#2

and he charges to 90% of What?

capacity

JB has an instrument that can measure the capacity. He performs the experiment w/ both the 10 coiler and the pendulum. I think I've watched this DVD more than any of the others. I'm not saying it's necessary, just that it continues to hold my interest.

thanks

Yves

You're most welcome - Kind regards,
Patrick A.

[yvesbaggi]

no I didn't know that.

Which DVD # are you refering to?
and he charges to 90% of What?

thanks

Yves

Hi Tom,
not sure how I missed this info. over all these years...
This is very big for me, I always thought that was part of the conditioning the batteries had to go through before we could see OU.
It all makes sense. my big bank never gets to 15.5 let alone 14.5.
my small 3.6 and 7Ah's always charged to 16 but took a long time before I was able to see OU.
In JB's DVD's he charges to 90% !!!!!!!
should have been a big clue eh :-)
Maybe I'm the only one who did not know this and it just seemed like common sense to all.
Stay at it folks....
Kind Regards,
Patrick A.

Oh here are a couple of pics from one of my bathrooms. No flash was used and no compensation. looking at the pictures side by side w/ the real world, the light in the pictures is actually darker than the real world. This bath has no windows so all the light is coming from the leds.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3485[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3486[/ATTACH]

[Allen R.]

Hi everyone. I am always at a disadvantage desulfating. My wheel is undersized (single circuit) . So when I do cycles I run until the wheel has taken the battery to the highest point it can. Many people hit "the wall" as they call it. If all my cells are bubbling I know the cells are somewhat good. Once I have reached the top of my wheel's ability and the battery is not really proceeding I stop the run and begin discharge. Usually I run the battery on the ssg 24 full hours before discharging begins. Whatever the battery reaches I will take it down a volt or two depending on how bad the battery is when I begin the run. Every charge run the wheel will "top out" at a higher point and the discharge cycle following it will last longer. This tells me that the battery is progressing and desulfation is happening. Even batteries with bad cells will get stronger to a point. That is how I have been doing it for years. When that battery tops out at 15+ volts I know it is done and can go back into a car. Usually I get lazy and stop the cycling in the high 14's. They will start cars easily after that and that is what I'm after.

Anyway , that is what works for me. Thought that would be of interest with the current discussion. I believe that the runs should be run all the way out to 15+ but in my situation I had to improvise until I found a charge cycle that works for a single circuit bike wheel ssg. (ant pushing an elephant)

al

[Nofear]

"so what are your thoughts on "radiant undercharging"?"

Hi Patrick,
I agree with Tom's explanation. If I can paraphrase: On one hand you have modes of charging (i.e radiant, gen mode, cap dump...etc) and on the other you have levels of charging (i.e Battery final voltage). Sulfation buildup will always occur if the battery is not fully charged, irrespective of the mode of charging. But as you all know some charging mode are very good at reversing sulfation.

NoFear.

[BobZilla]

I will chime in real quick about that last push at the end. It does take a little while like Tom is saying but it is WELL worth it. You will not notice so much if you just disconnect early and let it settle and say ok it settled at 13.2 or 12.8, whatever it normally settles at. It would do this if you do the last push or not. Where it shows up is in the work performed by the battery. Those of you who have a CBA can easily verify what I am saying. The full charge where you run up the curve and flat at the top will power loads much better. It shows up under load not standing.

Another way to think of it is density. You get a harder packed charge so to say if you take it all the way and since you have invested all the time into bringing it that far it seems a shame not to finish it off to get that really dense charge.

As far as the sulphation goes, hard to say but I imagine either way keeps them pretty clean. For me it is the loose charge vs the firm charge which shows up under load.

[Tom C]

Tom, Patrick
Charging to 90% or running in the middle of the charge curve is the best way to see good cop. But is it also true that not fully charging a battery can lead to plate sulfation?? I am not really breaking any new ground here, but I guess a possible good practice is to alternate the runs: Running at high cop and then once in a while go to higher voltage to maintain a high battery capacity. Does any of this make any sense?
NoFear

nofear,

this is where the water gets murky... once a battery is fully charged, and consistently topped off, it should charge faster. the new solar trackers are pure DC linear amplifiers. John built these to keep good new batteries , well new! here is how I look at things. pure radiant for battery restoration. gen mode charging which combines pulse charging and current for fast charging. cap dump for slower charging with slow pulses but hi current. all 3 of these modes make your batteries better. pure dc charging, constant current until it reaches 15.3 or so is for good batteries that are kept new. any sign of degrading because of sulphation requires a trip to the SG or a cap dump SG.

you have to fully charge to remove sulphation otherwise the material is not returned to solution. one is restoration the other is maintainance.

if you are doing cop runs, its important to run at a fixed point in the curve. if I run at c20 on charging and c100 on discharge, its going to be lopsided. so we like C20 at both sides. cop numbers can get tricky depending upon how you are charging, the best way is joules in and joules out.

another thing with cop numbers I can charge to just 14.5 or almost to 14.6, its still 14.5 but there is more in the battery.... its not as easy just grabbing an arbitrary number. once your battery is restored then you can run pure DC or gen mode charging on it.

sorry I probably made the water muddier not clearer...... John K's way of doing cop is the same way we did it in John's shop when we ran Ralph's 6 coil machine. put an hour in, take an hour out.

Tom C

[min2oly]

Hi Nofear,
so what are your thoughts on "radiant undercharging"?
Since this type of charging should be desulfating the batteries at all times while under charge. Should we be able to get away w/ undercharging?
Thanks -
KR,
Patrick

PS not posting so much because I'm doing some long runs... where I just walk away from the wheel all day - no meters!

Tom, Patrick
Charging to 90% or running in the middle of the charge curve is the best way to see good cop. But is it also true that not fully charging a battery can lead to plate sulfation?? I am not really breaking any new ground here, but I guess a possible good practice is to alternate the runs: Running at high cop and then once in a while go to higher voltage to maintain a high battery capacity. Does any of this make any sense?
NoFear

[Nofear]

Tom, Patrick
Charging to 90% or running in the middle of the charge curve is the best way to see good cop. But is it also true that not fully charging a battery can lead to plate sulfation?? I am not really breaking any new ground here, but I guess a possible good practice is to alternate the runs: Running at high cop and then once in a while go to higher voltage to maintain a high battery capacity. Does any of this make any sense?
NoFear

Hi Tom,
not sure how I missed this info. over all these years...
This is very big for me, I always thought that was part of the conditioning the batteries had to go through before we could see OU.
It all makes sense. my big bank never gets to 15.5 let alone 14.5.
my small 3.6 and 7Ah's always charged to 16 but took a long time before I was able to see OU.
In JB's DVD's he charges to 90% !!!!!!!
should have been a big clue eh :-)
Maybe I'm the only one who did not know this and it just seemed like common sense to all.
Stay at it folks....
Kind Regards,
Patrick A.

Oh here are a couple of pics from one of my bathrooms. No flash was used and no compensation. looking at the pictures side by side w/ the real world, the light in the pictures is actually darker than the real world. This bath has no windows so all the light is coming from the leds.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3485[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3486[/ATTACH]

[Tom C]

Patrick,

This is just my experience with an SG they charge quickly to 14.5 and then the last bit takes a lot longer.... because its a potential charger not a current charger. there are so many types of regular chargers out there, some are constant current to the top voltage and some taper near the top. my big Christie charger is adjustable current and will just pump current til the battery explodes, its not a leave alone charger, but I can charge 40 T105's in parallel if I want to.

Tom C

[min2oly]

Hi Tom,
not sure how I missed this info. over all these years...
This is very big for me, I always thought that was part of the conditioning the batteries had to go through before we could see OU.
It all makes sense. my big bank never gets to 15.5 let alone 14.5.
my small 3.6 and 7Ah's always charged to 16 but took a long time before I was able to see OU.
In JB's DVD's he charges to 90% !!!!!!!
should have been a big clue eh :-)
Maybe I'm the only one who did not know this and it just seemed like common sense to all.
Stay at it folks....
Kind Regards,
Patrick A.

Oh here are a couple of pics from one of my bathrooms. No flash was used and no compensation. looking at the pictures side by side w/ the real world, the light in the pictures is actually darker than the real world. This bath has no windows so all the light is coming from the leds.

the top of the charge curve is always the hardest because its stuffing it into an almost full battery..... running in the middle of the charge curve is the best way to see good cop numbers. over time batteries wil charge easier up to higher voltages once the plates are really clean, and they have been cycled a bunch of times. it takes time for the plates to be really good. I just bought a brand new battery from napa for a pressure washer, it has a manufaturing date of less than 4 months on it. I opened it up and the top of the plates already had a light dusting of white on them..... nothing the 2a12 could not fix quickly.
Tom C

[Tom C]

the top of the charge curve is always the hardest because its stuffing it into an almost full battery..... running in the middle of the charge curve is the best way to see good cop numbers. over time batteries wil charge easier up to higher voltages once the plates are really clean, and they have been cycled a bunch of times. it takes time for the plates to be really good. I just bought a brand new battery from napa for a pressure washer, it has a manufaturing date of less than 4 months on it. I opened it up and the top of the plates already had a light dusting of white on them..... nothing the 2a12 could not fix quickly.
Tom C

[min2oly]

Small discovery on my toyota true start (yes, I could not give up on it). It does not like to be charged much past 14.5V. When I say “does not like” what I mean is, it takes on a charge w/ less resistance, it charges faster at the lower range then it does at the top. I can spend an additional hour going from 14.5 to 15.3.
OK:

Fully charged to 15.5 then 2 hour rest 12.89
discharge for one hour then rest for one hour 12.75
using the same watts as discharge, it takes another 1.5 sometimes 2 hours to get back to the 15.5!


however if I repeat the same cycle starting at 12.75, discharge for an hour, rest, charge back using the same discharge watts for only one hour. After resting 2 hours the battery hovers at 12.79 no problem.


so, for this one hour experiment, the best results are in that range. I have to repeat quite a few more runs now to verify that the voltage readings are consistent and not leading me astray. Oh, This does not include the Geny Coil charging on the side... Perhaps I’ll work on a cap dump to load measuring device however.

I feel like we should all be able to come up w/ some very simple and serious method to measure the in and out, especially now that JB is using the cap dump method as a way to increase the output even further.
Kind Regards,
Battery Woes Patrick

[BobZilla]

Hi Patrick,,

Ok now I see why you were asking it in the way that you were. When you said there are many ways to tune, well that says it all doesn't it ;-)

We spend a few days to a few weeks BUILDING,, and then months and years adjusting.

By the way my big machine did have an axle and I played around with mechanical resistances such as fans, pullies, grabbing at it like a monkey and scratching my head. You can get the effect that way too but I was not even thinking about it until I watched your video. I was so excited to build a fixed axle into that machine and it is kind of cool but honestly I think I got more precision from a genny coil, plus as you are doing you can use that 3rd voltage for interesting things. I don't think any future builds will have a fixed axle, was cool but just not as cool as I had thought it would be.

Great videos!