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[Aikirob]

after getting in contact with a UPS company, They have informed me that the ups can be used to power the bike, so unfortunately this system cant charge the bike while your riding it, but it can charge it while you are stopped meaning my theory was sound.

You CAN use a ups system and solar panels to systematically charge the zero motorcycle in the way I said, just like you would plug into a normal power point for slow charging, meaning you can get energy from the sun to power the bike at a VERY slow rate.

From my calculation it would take roughly a day for the UPS to charge and it will put 5% back into the battery(over another 8 hours), so it would take 20 days to reach full power off a small trickle charge.

As I said its not practical at all, but in a situation where you don't have any available power and still be able to get %5 per day into your bike, its a pretty cool failsafe if you get stuck somewhere and its not bulky or cumbersome at all, A larger UPS and SOLAR array could be used for better results, but that would add too much weight and luggage and bypass any benefits, the setup that I've theorized will take up not more space then your average laptop would.

[togo]

That's why I said you may have to tap into the battery directly at the motor controller. ...

We are on the same page : - )

[JaimeC]

From my calculation it would take roughly a day for the UPS to charge and it will put 5% back into the battery(over another 8 hours), so it would take 20 days to reach full power off a small trickle charge.

And THAT is the point I was trying to make.  20 DAYS??  That's an awful lot of effort and work for very little return.  Your best bet is just to use an ICE bike if you're going someplace where recharging is in the least bit questionable.

I use my Zero as a daily commuter, local runabout and occasional sport riding on nearby back roads.  For anything else, it is one of my two ICE bikes.  Gotta use the proper tool for the job.  Just because you can bang in nails with the head of a screwdriver doesn't make it the best tool for the situation.

[togo]

...
thanks for being the only person who gave me a straightforward answer to my question.

No problem.

[Erasmo]

Aikirob you have one thing going for you, there is no lack of sun in Australia. After all they do solar racing over there for a reason.

The Zero is just too power hungry for such a project, but if you'd took a motorcycle around 4kW you should be able to power a significant part of you need. 4kW seems not enough on the first place but with a Vetter fairing you should have power enough due to the minimal drag and on that fairing there a lot of surface area to mount flexible solar panels.

[Lenny]

Aikirob what you're thinking about is absolutely possible. But why do you want so use a UPS or chargers to do it? You'll have multiple conversions then, all of them reducing efficiency.

You can connect another battery which is in about the same voltage range directly in parallel to the Zero pack, either using the AUX port (100 A max) or a direct controller connection. I think Terry has done this in the past and is doing this currently with two longbricks on the side of his bike. The Zero won't be able to detect the second battery once its running, it will just show a very low consumption due to foreign current coming in ;-) The range indication may be far off as well.

However, you need to be very careful with balancing the two packs. They shouldn't have any big difference in voltage, otherwise you will get very high compensation currents once you connect them to each other. That can become very dangerous.

[Aikirob]

Aikirob what you're thinking about is absolutely possible. But why do you want so use a UPS or chargers to do it? You'll have multiple conversions then, all of them reducing efficiency.

You can connect another battery which is in about the same voltage range directly in parallel to the Zero pack, either using the AUX port (100 A max) or a direct controller connection. I think Terry has done this in the past and is doing this currently with two longbricks on the side of his bike. The Zero won't be able to detect the second battery once its running, it will just show a very low consumption due to foreign current coming in ;-) The range indication may be far off as well.

However, you need to be very careful with balancing the two packs. They shouldn't have any big difference in voltage, otherwise you will get very high compensation currents once you connect them to each other. That can become very dangerous.

Thanks for the info lenny, I didn't know if this would work, so if I make a couple of extra batteries with the same voltage and capacity as the 13kw/h battery already on the bike and connect them I could increase my range, that's very cool, I'll definitely give it a go, just terrified of breaking my bike, since the nearest person who fixes them around me is 4 hours away >.<

[togo]

Yeah, that would be a big risk.  Something gentler than trying to match up voltages would be safer.  Definitely you'd want fuses on anything you do.

[MrDude_1]

Soo waaay back on thursday I started a reply right when this was posted. I then had to leave work for a family emergency and just got back today...
but since I typed it out, I figure I would post it anyway...

actually the power tank has shit all in terms of battery capacity and its priced at $4000 in Australia, its an overpriced gimmick that offers very little in terms of range improvements, I can buy tesla 18650 batteries for pretty cheap so if I was after another battery pack I could buy a second hand worn out zero battery pack and exchange the old batteries with 18650's, there are youtube tutorials on how to do this.

Thats a great theory, but its really hard to find a used zero battery pack, and near impossible to find a worn out 2013+ zero battery pack.
Even once you do, its just a box. The BMS would not work for you, so just make a box.
Now that you have a box, take your 18650s and ideally pack them for the max amount in the space.. You will find you can not fit the same capacity, because a decent percentage of space is wasted by the areas between the round cells. the zero pouch cells are flat and take up almost 100% of the space. also each one of your cells has a case around it, meanwhile the larger cells of the zero mean theres less space wasted by the case.

All that is irrelevant though.. if you pack the hell out of them in a box, and then use the resulting power to charge the bike, that would be  cool.

what I was asking was can the bike be charged while riding, from your responses I'm thinking yes?

Depends on how.
I dont think the stock onboard charger for the newer S models will work... there should be some kind of CAN interlock that says not to move if its plugged in the wall, but I have not tried that. If you have a zero you can test this by using an extension cord and trying to ride down the driveway.

ok, if it works, great. The stock charger is only 1200w or so... BUT you can use DC voltage to power the charger.. so if you stack your Tesla cells to about 90v or higher it can directly charge the bike via the onboard.
OR
you could power a second charger of your own choice. they would also work on DC power. Most switching power supplies will. then plug this into the charging port. that should work without issue in 99% of the cases. Im sure there is some seasoned expert **cough*Terry?**cough** that can explain any possible issues to look out for if you choose this path.

what I  was actually thinking is modifying an Uninterrupted power supply

Bad idea. You're taking a DC voltage upping it to AC at the wrong voltage then feeding it into another device(the charger) that just makes it DC again and corrects the voltage for the bike.
cut out the middleman, put the DC power directly to the charger. MUCH more efficent.

connecting a few solar cells to a windshield and on my side saddles to trickle charge the ups lithium batteries

This is one of those things that sound great in theory, until you do the math. If I said I had an unlimited supply of AA batteries, so I will connect them one at a time to a massive EV pack to recharge the pack, you would think I was nuts... but all of your surface area of the bike, covered in solar panels in ideal light (impossible since atleast one side is shaded by the sun btw) you would get the equlivent of less than 8 AA batteries.
Think of the big panels you see on the roof of homes. one of those HUGE panels makes about 250watts. Your charger requires 1200watts.. or about 5 of them. so to run your charger 1 hour, you need 1 of them to charge for 5 hours... or about the entire day of "solar time" for most of the world. outside these ideal 4-5 hours of time the panel puts out less and will make less than 250w.
I'll rephrase this again. Lets say you drag out 5 massive panels on a trailer. you set them all up and aim them perfectly, all during the ideal riding time... your bike takes 8 hours to charge. that is the majority of daylight time to charge.

In otherwords, solar is cool when you have the space and time... but it is not practical for EVs.

and use the ups (when its full) to charge the bike (because solar panels don't give enough WATTS to charge the bike directly)

It also doesnt make enough wattage to charge your add-on pack in a week...

it can be used to put some power into the battery while riding that would also increase the range slightly, I'm guessing the increase would be about 10% on a full trip

highway crusing you're using just over 6kw.
Your charger consumes about 1.2kw and about 90% of that goes in your pack... so  about 1kw. so fudging a bit, you may get 15% more range, even with the tiny stock charger, IF you're just highway crusing... 10% average if you're really riding sounds reasonable.

also if I stop the ups could remotely charge the bike without needing to be plugged into a power point, great for a bit of extra range.

as I pointed out, solar is not practical to charge, but if you make the battery the same voltage as the zero, you can flip the chargeport charger into the extra battery and charge it on a second EVSE.
This would allow for further distance and quick charging.
As noted earlier, even if you had massive house size panels, solar isnt really an option right now.

The Ups can be plugged into a power point to slow charge just like the bike can, or use solar power, the downfall to that is that it would take the UPS like 2 days of direct sunlight to charge completely and could not charge the bike to full in one go anyway, so it would take probably a few days to solar charge the bike in this way.

again, the UPS aspect can just be removed in favor of just an actual battery... but even if it was not, any UPS that fully charged in 2 days of sunlight with panels the size you described, would only have enough power to get you a kilometer at low speed... maybe less distance than that.

The point being that you can get all of your power from the sun and get your bike to 100% charge from a setup that's no bigger then a side saddle.

You either have to throw out the side saddle size concept, or throw out the solar charging one.

Meaning its completely free energy from the sun and no power points required meaning you can camp out and never be stuck as long as you have sunlight. you could also get some fold out solar cells to lay on the ground to help power the UPS if you need it to charge faster, which could halve the time you'd be waiting.

This is a cool idea if you have a day or two and want to recharge... however it would be a custom travel trailer. you could then stack home size solar panels to unpack at camp... charge its battery and have that battery charge the bike with a DC-DC converter.
We're talking a decent size motorcycle trailer stacked with several panels, the battery and electronics... and then I would assume room for packing camping stuff too.. This could be cool.
However, its not "free". What Im thinking of will probably be about 2,000USD if you did it on the cheap, knowing what you're doing. very cool... but it would take me 2 years for my house to use that much money worth of power, nevermind the bike.

I know its not practical, but it would work.

If its not practical... is it really working?

I have a fast charger for convenience, this idea is just a working theory that I might use to travel around australia for free with...

again, for this to work, it would cost so much in equipment that calling it "free" is out of the question.... or it wont work at all but you'll have one of those bikes with a bunch of electronic junk all over it, not charging but looking like it could.

[MrDude_1]

Aikirob what you're thinking about is absolutely possible. But why do you want so use a UPS or chargers to do it? You'll have multiple conversions then, all of them reducing efficiency.

You can connect another battery which is in about the same voltage range directly in parallel to the Zero pack, either using the AUX port (100 A max) or a direct controller connection. I think Terry has done this in the past and is doing this currently with two longbricks on the side of his bike. The Zero won't be able to detect the second battery once its running, it will just show a very low consumption due to foreign current coming in ;-) The range indication may be far off as well.

However, you need to be very careful with balancing the two packs. They shouldn't have any big difference in voltage, otherwise you will get very high compensation currents once you connect them to each other. That can become very dangerous.

You do NOT want to do this.
There either needs to be a DC-DC converter between the two, or there needs to be some logic electronics and a contactor like Zero uses for the FX models.

While it may appear that terry "just connected extra batteries" what you're calling a battery has a contactor, BMS and custom logic that does not let the extra battery connect until it matches in voltage with the other batteries. Without this the batteries WILL have massive surge currents when connected and will probably burn the bike to the ground.

[Aikirob]

Soo waaay back on thursday I started a reply right when this was posted. I then had to leave work for a family emergency and just got back today...
but since I typed it out, I figure I would post it anyway...

actually the power tank has shit all in terms of battery capacity and its priced at $4000 in Australia, its an overpriced gimmick that offers very little in terms of range improvements, I can buy tesla 18650 batteries for pretty cheap so if I was after another battery pack I could buy a second hand worn out zero battery pack and exchange the old batteries with 18650's, there are youtube tutorials on how to do this.

Thats a great theory, but its really hard to find a used zero battery pack, and near impossible to find a worn out 2013+ zero battery pack.
Even once you do, its just a box. The BMS would not work for you, so just make a box.
Now that you have a box, take your 18650s and ideally pack them for the max amount in the space.. You will find you can not fit the same capacity, because a decent percentage of space is wasted by the areas between the round cells. the zero pouch cells are flat and take up almost 100% of the space. also each one of your cells has a case around it, meanwhile the larger cells of the zero mean theres less space wasted by the case.

All that is irrelevant though.. if you pack the hell out of them in a box, and then use the resulting power to charge the bike, that would be  cool.

what I was asking was can the bike be charged while riding, from your responses I'm thinking yes?

Depends on how.
I dont think the stock onboard charger for the newer S models will work... there should be some kind of CAN interlock that says not to move if its plugged in the wall, but I have not tried that. If you have a zero you can test this by using an extension cord and trying to ride down the driveway.

ok, if it works, great. The stock charger is only 1200w or so... BUT you can use DC voltage to power the charger.. so if you stack your Tesla cells to about 90v or higher it can directly charge the bike via the onboard.
OR
you could power a second charger of your own choice. they would also work on DC power. Most switching power supplies will. then plug this into the charging port. that should work without issue in 99% of the cases. Im sure there is some seasoned expert **cough*Terry?**cough** that can explain any possible issues to look out for if you choose this path.

what I  was actually thinking is modifying an Uninterrupted power supply

Bad idea. You're taking a DC voltage upping it to AC at the wrong voltage then feeding it into another device(the charger) that just makes it DC again and corrects the voltage for the bike.
cut out the middleman, put the DC power directly to the charger. MUCH more efficent.

connecting a few solar cells to a windshield and on my side saddles to trickle charge the ups lithium batteries

This is one of those things that sound great in theory, until you do the math. If I said I had an unlimited supply of AA batteries, so I will connect them one at a time to a massive EV pack to recharge the pack, you would think I was nuts... but all of your surface area of the bike, covered in solar panels in ideal light (impossible since atleast one side is shaded by the sun btw) you would get the equlivent of less than 8 AA batteries.
Think of the big panels you see on the roof of homes. one of those HUGE panels makes about 250watts. Your charger requires 1200watts.. or about 5 of them. so to run your charger 1 hour, you need 1 of them to charge for 5 hours... or about the entire day of "solar time" for most of the world. outside these ideal 4-5 hours of time the panel puts out less and will make less than 250w.
I'll rephrase this again. Lets say you drag out 5 massive panels on a trailer. you set them all up and aim them perfectly, all during the ideal riding time... your bike takes 8 hours to charge. that is the majority of daylight time to charge.

In otherwords, solar is cool when you have the space and time... but it is not practical for EVs.

and use the ups (when its full) to charge the bike (because solar panels don't give enough WATTS to charge the bike directly)

It also doesnt make enough wattage to charge your add-on pack in a week...

it can be used to put some power into the battery while riding that would also increase the range slightly, I'm guessing the increase would be about 10% on a full trip

highway crusing you're using just over 6kw.
Your charger consumes about 1.2kw and about 90% of that goes in your pack... so  about 1kw. so fudging a bit, you may get 15% more range, even with the tiny stock charger, IF you're just highway crusing... 10% average if you're really riding sounds reasonable.

also if I stop the ups could remotely charge the bike without needing to be plugged into a power point, great for a bit of extra range.

as I pointed out, solar is not practical to charge, but if you make the battery the same voltage as the zero, you can flip the chargeport charger into the extra battery and charge it on a second EVSE.
This would allow for further distance and quick charging.
As noted earlier, even if you had massive house size panels, solar isnt really an option right now.

The Ups can be plugged into a power point to slow charge just like the bike can, or use solar power, the downfall to that is that it would take the UPS like 2 days of direct sunlight to charge completely and could not charge the bike to full in one go anyway, so it would take probably a few days to solar charge the bike in this way.

again, the UPS aspect can just be removed in favor of just an actual battery... but even if it was not, any UPS that fully charged in 2 days of sunlight with panels the size you described, would only have enough power to get you a kilometer at low speed... maybe less distance than that.

The point being that you can get all of your power from the sun and get your bike to 100% charge from a setup that's no bigger then a side saddle.

You either have to throw out the side saddle size concept, or throw out the solar charging one.

Meaning its completely free energy from the sun and no power points required meaning you can camp out and never be stuck as long as you have sunlight. you could also get some fold out solar cells to lay on the ground to help power the UPS if you need it to charge faster, which could halve the time you'd be waiting.

This is a cool idea if you have a day or two and want to recharge... however it would be a custom travel trailer. you could then stack home size solar panels to unpack at camp... charge its battery and have that battery charge the bike with a DC-DC converter.
We're talking a decent size motorcycle trailer stacked with several panels, the battery and electronics... and then I would assume room for packing camping stuff too.. This could be cool.
However, its not "free". What Im thinking of will probably be about 2,000USD if you did it on the cheap, knowing what you're doing. very cool... but it would take me 2 years for my house to use that much money worth of power, nevermind the bike.

I know its not practical, but it would work.

If its not practical... is it really working?

I have a fast charger for convenience, this idea is just a working theory that I might use to travel around australia for free with...

again, for this to work, it would cost so much in equipment that calling it "free" is out of the question.... or it wont work at all but you'll have one of those bikes with a bunch of electronic junk all over it, not charging but looking like it could.

I did the math and the finances, using the new technology I can get 1/13th of the battery capacity back on the bike from one charge of an external solar powered UPS system that will only cost me $600 to set the whole thing up and I can pack it into my side saddle. You are right, there are more efficient ways to do this, but my way doesn't require a trailer or much space at all, it isn't cumbersome.
It isn't Expensive and it doesn't require you to mess with any of the bikes internal wiring at all, its a plug and play accessory, meaning its idiot-proof.
I'm not going to follow through with this as a project, I was just figuring out how to solar charge my bike on the go and what it would take to do so in a convenient way.

[togo]

: - )

[Doug S]

I've given SOME thought to strapping on something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Generac-6866-Starting-Inverter-Generator/dp/B0128KR4EE/ref=sr_1_10?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1510866983&sr=1-10&keywords=generator&refinements=p_n_feature_browse-bin%3A13883100011

It might have a use case for motorcycle camping; fire it up and charge over several hours, ready for the next day. I think it could be done, but it's pretty bulky, heavy, expensive and not all that useful, however. The ROI just isn't there.

[togo]

I bought at 3500 watt generator last year for less than that.

But too big to strap on, would have to make it in to a trailer.

[Doug S]

...would have to make it in to a trailer.

That's the thing I'm eyeballing now. Get a trailer just big enough to mount my bike and a 6kW generator, maybe haul it to Colorado and watch the Pike's Peak hillclimb, spend some time riding around, recharging with the SCv2 on the generator. I could explore some much more remote areas than relying on public charging stations. Might be a nice few days' riding.