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[Doctorbass]

Actually your calculations are flawed.  PV cells are DC so you arent going to use the onboard charger, that would be silly and inefficient given that by the time you had converted to AC you probably lose 10+% and then the charger back to DC is lossy again.  You probably need more like 800W of generation.  BUt bare in mind that Solar isnt guaranteed so you would more than likely need 2 or 3 times that amount to be certain of a charge on a cloudy day.

You are right that a portable system to recharge at normal rate is impractical, but that doesnt mean that charging at a lower rate isn't worthwhile.

I think you may have missed my earlier post.  There are many battery chargers that work from AC power or DC input. http://www.meanwelldirect.co.uk/products/120W-Single-Output-IP65-Rated-LED-Lighting-Power-Supply/HLG-120---A-Series/default.htm  Since the first stage of these chargers is AC/DC, you can input DC and they work just fine, so you don't need to go from DC solar to AC power back to DC in the battery. The Mean Well that I linked works that way, you just need to have 127V-370V DC input. That would require minimum 230 silicon solar cells in series which wouldn't be too bad for a home installation, but for a portable array is not feasible.  Assuming a cell is about 2W, you would probably find a 500W panel that outputs more than 120V DC, then charge directly from that without having to convert from DC  to AC back to DC, and save yourself from having to buy a large inverter as well.

One thing that is neat (but not related to solar panels) is that with these chargers you can plug directly into the High Voltage battery of a Prius (or other car that has a 127 - 370V battery) and charge directly from that. The Car will start up and idle act as a nice and quiet generator if the car's battery gets low while your bike charges .  The Prius makes for a great electric bicycle or motorcycle , race / road trip vehicle if you have a charger that can run off its battery, because you don't have to pack a generator, or rely on sketchy track or back-woods motel power, and they are good on gas and very capable of pulling a light weight motorcycle trailer.

Someone might want to take a look and see the manufacturer / part number of the on-board chargers on their Zero, and see what they can actually use to power it.

-ryan

I agree with Biff about the Dc at the input of standard AC charger. It work and i made a quick video to confirm to you guys.

[protomech]

Very cool Doc. I love that you have enough toys in your basement to just go hook something up and try it : D

One question. The Delta-Q says 85-265V AC input. That's RMS AC voltage, so the minimum voltage the Delta-Q expects is really 120V AC peak, or 240V peak to peak. You're driving it with 90V DC and it seems to work fine.. is there any way to estimate an appropriate DC voltage range for the charger based upon its input AC voltage requirements? Or just test?

[DesignerDan]

Thanks for the video Doc



Progress is slow because I've been busy but I've finished 5 out of 20 panels. It's 70 "rated" watts but I'll do a real life test today. That string of panels folds up into a 13x13" square and is no thicker than an inch. So the completed 20 panel array should only be about 4 inches thick which, in my opinion, is definitely in the realm of portability.

Only problem is, I still have no good way of charging. The array will only be 40 volts. I guess the best option would be a dc dc boost to 120 volts to power a meanwell 200 watt power supply. (and hope my panels can sustain 200 watts)

[Doctorbass]

Very cool Doc. I love that you have enough toys in your basement to just go hook something up and try it : D

One question. The Delta-Q says 85-265V AC input. That's RMS AC voltage, so the minimum voltage the Delta-Q expects is really 120V AC peak, or 240V peak to peak. You're driving it with 90V DC and it seems to work fine.. is there any way to estimate an appropriate DC voltage range for the charger based upon its input AC voltage requirements? Or just test?

Yes i have "few" toys in my garage .. 2x zero DS 2010 for parts and my DS 2011 Plus my 113kmh Giant electric DH bicycle, my drag racing and drift E-trike and a great lab for battery testing and building!

I have not showed that in the video but i was able to drop the voltage as low as 85V DC wich is the same for the AC low limit. below that the charger goes in error  and stop working.

since it's a switching power supply with CC-CV at the output, as you decrease the voltage at the input as it will try to raise the current to keep the same input and output wattage.

ONe next thing i could try is to find the internal current sensing shunt of the delta Q and play with the detected sensing mV value with a voltage divider and lower the current to have the delta Q to operate also at lower power to accomodate solar charging to avoid the need of 10 square meter of solar pannel to trigger the charger ON !

[trikester]

I agree with he Doc, modern switching converters will take a DC input as well as AC.

Ever since the wall plug-in small device chargers started using switching converters I have taken advantage of this when needing to recharge cameras etc on wilderness trips. Back in 1996 I went into the interior of Quebec to raft the Magpie River for six days. I had a video camera with me that used a charger that was rated 100 VAC to 240 VAC. In order to have that wide range it had to be a switching converted. So I put the input on a DC powers supply source, just as the Doc did here. I found that the little charger would work down to about 13 VDC input. For my trip I series connected two 12 v dry cell lantern batteries to get 24 VDC. Every evening I would recharge my camera using the 24 v battery and the "AC" charger. The 24 v, non-rechargeable, battery pack lasted the entire trip and I discarded it at the end.

So the AC input rating may not be a good indicator of how low the input can go on DC before it quits. Of course the lower the input voltage the higher the input current (constant power output), so that has to be considered.

Trikester

[mr1396]

I was wondering what kind of solar power kit or setup would be able to charge the fx 5.7. Doesn't have to be mobile. Just a simple system, panels, charge controller, inverter and battery bank.

[eyeinsky]

Here'' what I'm thinking of using on the truck and a small honda generator with 12VDC 7amp output. 0 to 80V DC to DC step up converter 600W at 12 v X 50 amp = 72 V v 8.4 amp

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251340428395?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

http://www.ebay.com/itm/261293791102?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

Jerry

[eyeinsky]

I've been working on this project for my house on the island of Newfound Land. NFL is by far the windest place on the planet, Puoch Cove NFL where my place is on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean is almost the farthest east you can travel in Nort America. For this reson I have started to build a wind turbine system. This power plant will be wind and solar with a max estimated output of 600W wind generator. It will also contain load dumps into hot water tank to off set this cost and maximize efficiency. I've link a little video i made last Easter just in case anyone was interested in this geographic location and some if the weather we may see there. I also attached link to my Photobucket with the CAD drawing of my final plan. The main generator will be a Fisher Paykel Smart Drive PM motor wired to 48V output charging 70 ah Ni Cad batteries with 2 1500W full sin wave inverters. The turbine rotor will be a vertical design capable of operating in wind up to 80 mph.



http://s204.photobucket.com/user/eyeinsky/story/20093