3 Battery Generating System

[ewizard]

Nice work Turion! I did some things similar about a year ago. Don't have time now to write more - just skimmed your info but will check back in later. I really think there is something good to this to further investigate.

[Neight]

Hey guys, Great thread!
I am poking through my batteries for a bad one that fits the description.
I have been testing one for a few days, attempting to charge it up with an SSG then draining it with a small load.
It is doing some odd stuff, like reading over 12V when on the charge side of the SSG, but immediately after you remove it, it drops to maybe 2V. When I put a joule thief on it as a load with 3 series LEDs, it will run the LEDs and the voltage drops to less than a volt.
is this what I am looking for, or should I move on to another one?
(almost forgot to mention) it is a 12V 4Ah battery, and my run batteries will be 12V 7.5Ah, if that makes some difference.
I am interested in giving this a shot, and might start with the AA version mentioned by Stealth.
Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Thanks
N8

[Turion]

Neight,
If that is a lead acid battery, I'd say it's an excellent candidate. I don't have any experience with having ANY success with other than lead acid batteries. There is just something about them that I don't think other batteries have, so I will stay away from anything else. That's my advice, but this is all about experimentation.

I got 10 batteries that were in the trash pile. Four of them I have restored to working usable condition using this setup. The others I am working my way through, trying to find a battery that will mimic my original setup. If you can find a battery that sits at low voltage and WILL NOT TAKE A CHARGE, you are probably Golden...at least for a while. I think eventually it might even restore a completely sulfated battery if there is any lead at all left in the plates.

[clueless]

Some random rhoughts on this 3 battery setup

First let me say I'm intrigued by this arrangement. I seem to remember that the load on the motor and the third battery needs to be closely matched for best results. I wonder if matching the motor and third battery in either capacitance or resistance would help.
As I was reading this thread I had another thought about using a generator instead of a motor. The generator I'm referring to was in use in US cars until about 1965. The ones where the headlights would dim at an idle and dependent on rpm to make current.
Turion thanks for posting this as it would seem to have potential if nothing else using regular LA batteries in a solar setup instead of the more expensive deep cycle. Exhaust those batteries and at "worse" recondition them. Speaking of deep cycle batteries would those make a difference as the first two batteries in this set up?
-Lyn

[Turion]

Lyn.
I have used deep cycle batteries. They recover as well or better than what we are using. The reason I have been using the smaller batteries is because I want to see rather quickly that they are being drawn down by my loads, so I know whether what I am trying is working or not. With the deep cell it takes a while to be able to tell, just because they are so many amp hours.

And I need to make a correction here. I have ben using the 18 AMP hour batteries since the very beginning, not the 7.5. I have some of those, as well as 3 amp hour batteries, but it is the 18's I have hooked up. In the third position I am trying a variety of batteries. Sorry about that. For some reason I had it in my head that those batteries were 7.5 and it was Luther that pointed out to me that they are not.

I never work on this stuff on the weekends, and this was a three day weekend for me, but will be back at it hard tomorrow, trying some new things and continuing to work on my energizer.

David

[Neight]

Neight,
If that is a lead acid battery, I'd say it's an excellent candidate. I don't have any experience with having ANY success with other than lead acid batteries. There is just something about them that I don't think other batteries have, so I will stay away from anything else. That's my advice, but this is all about experimentation.

I got 10 batteries that were in the trash pile. Four of them I have restored to working usable condition using this setup. The others I am working my way through, trying to find a battery that will mimic my original setup. If you can find a battery that sits at low voltage and WILL NOT TAKE A CHARGE, you are probably Golden...at least for a while. I think eventually it might even restore a completely sulfated battery if there is any lead at all left in the plates.

Excellent, thank you Turion! It is a Lead Acid battery. I found it in my house when I moved in, it was in an old security system control panel that hadn't been in use for years. I have been trying to get it to take a charge with my SSG for quite some time with no luck. I need to pick up a 12DC motor somewhere to run this experiment, but short of that, I am eager to give this a try!
I will see what I can come up with, and will post my results!
I am pretty excited to see what comes out of this, and thanks for sharing!

N8

[Turion]

Neight,
All the motors that Luther and I have used so far have been wound rotor and wound stator 12 volt DC. No PM (permanent magnet) motors. They may work, but I don't know for sure.

David
Edit:
I think I'm getting senile. These ARE PM motors. The ones I have with wound rotors and stators were for the motor modification that Dr. Lindemann discussed in his thread. Sorry about that!! Don't know what I was thinking.

[Neight]

That is what I meant, I have made several brushless motors, but I don't have any on hand with wound rotor and brushes. I might try to hook something up through a simple brushless motor, but ultimately I want to stay true to the current tests, and that means I need to find a working motor somewhere.
would I need 24VDC motor, since I will be using two 12V batteries to power it?
I need to re-read your first post, but I do get the concept, and I am sure I can find a DC motor easy enough, though I might have to wait a bit, if I have to buy one.
Thanks for the heads up, I am not always great on details in my posts, but I did mean a brushed DC motor

N8

[FRC]

Motor

Here is the motor I have been using (video made by kcarring). I also use a smaller 12v fan as a load. I have retried the battery that seemed to get fixed
and it still works when drained. It did not get fixed completely, but is better than it was. Also tried another battery and the process worked for a while.

12volt DC motor - Bedini Mod? - YouTube


George

[Neight]

Here is the motor I have been using (video made by kcarring). I also use a smaller 12v fan as a load. I have retried the battery that seemed to get fixed
and it still works when drained. It did not get fixed completely, but is better than it was. Also tried another battery and the process worked for a while.

12volt DC motor - Bedini Mod? - YouTube


George

I am glad you posted this! I completely forgot I have a few 12DC PC fans. They are brushless, but it gave me something to try tonight.
The bad battery that I am using wouldn't take any thing more than 3.5V on my SSG, and as soon as I connected any load at all to it, even a joule thief, it would drop down to 1.5V or less, and die in a hurry.
when it is on the SSG charging, it would read 11-12V charge.

I hooked everything up as per Turion's first post (fan connected to pos of battery 1 and 3, neg of 1 connected to pos of 2, and neg of 2 connected to neg of 3) and the fan started right away, which I understand may not be a good thing, but oddly enough the bad battery (bat 3) is reading 17V and climbing at the moment when it is under load. when I remove the fan, I now get 4V and dropping, instead of the 3.5V I had seen on it previously as a high mark. Not sure what to make of it yet, but I am looking to connect a load to bat 3 and see what happens next
The fan is running, though no where near full power yet, and it has some LED's in it, which will flash off every few minutes. the fan doesn't seem to change speed when it happens, though it is hard to tell. Not sure what that means either. I will leave the test running for a while, monitor all three bat voltages, and post what happens.
Thanks for making that post FRC, you got me started at least!

N8

I have connected a light bulb I pulled out of a drill press that stopped working to bat 3, to see what happens. With the bulb connected, The voltage on bat 3 drops to 14.5V and sort of stabilizes, though it does still show it climbing slowly. Batteries 1 and 2 don't seem to notice the extra load at all, and in fact, bat 1 gained a few mV after the bulb was connected. I do not get much light at all out of the bulb mind you, but it does glow ever so slightly...
Again, not sure if any of this even means anything, but I am trying to document it, in case it is helpful in any way

[Turion]

Neight,
I think you will find that battery one will hold its own. It is usually the second battery of the two in series (the one with the neg connected to the neg of battery 3) that tends to drop in voltage. You will get some charging of batt 3 and then it will level off. At this point the two batteries will hold level for a while and then #2 will begin to lose a little charge. This is when I will shut it down and allow my batteries one and two to recover. If you push it too far, they won't. The longest I have had to wait for full recovery is two days. But I have been running loads on battery three for "free" during the time it was running. My next attempt will be to switch my motor to between the two NEGATIVES at this point and see if I can flip the polarity of the batteries back the other way. Run it this way for a while, and then go back to splitting the positives again. Once that polarity has flipped and run that way for a little while, that's when we lose the ability of the system to generate power without USING power. Getting it to sustain the power production without using power requires a VERY SPECIAL battery in the third position. You need one that will still let current flow, but will NOT accept a charge AT ALL. Totally sulfated!!! This will be very hard to find. Possibly switching the motor to between the negatives and then back to between the positives will extend the power production window. I don't know. That's what I will be working on tomorrow, among other things.

You may find that this setup "fixes" your bad battery. I have 'fixed" several. LOL It really ticks me off!

David

[Neight]

Neight,
I think you will find that battery one will hold its own. It is usually the second battery of the two in series (the one with the neg connected to the neg of battery 3) that tends to drop in voltage. You will get some charging of batt 3 and then it will level off. At this point the two batteries will hold level for a while and then #2 will begin to lose a little charge. This is when I will shut it down and allow my batteries one and two to recover. If you push it too far, they won't. The longest I have had to wait for full recovery is two days. But I have been running loads on battery three for "free" during the time it was running. My next attempt will be to switch my motor to between the two NEGATIVES at this point and see if I can flip the polarity of the batteries back the other way. Run it this way for a while, and then go back to splitting the positives again. Once that polarity has flipped and run that way for a little while, that's when we lose the ability of the system to generate power without USING power. Getting it to sustain the power production without using power requires a VERY SPECIAL battery in the third position. You need one that will still let current flow, but will NOT accept a charge AT ALL. Totally sulfated!!! This will be very hard to find. Possibly switching the motor to between the negatives and then back to between the positives will extend the power production window. I don't know. That's what I will be working on tomorrow, among other things.

You may find that this setup "fixes" your bad battery. I have 'fixed" several. LOL It really ticks me off!

David

So far, my results seem to be more or less fitting the profile here. Battery 3 did pretty well stabilize at around 12.5V and the other two batteries drained a tiny bit, bat 2 more than 1, so I removed power, and placed battery 3 under a load to drain. Battery 3 did drop back down to 4V again, and when I put a joule thief with a few LED's on it, it dropped down to 1V pretty quick, though it is still running the joule thief nicely. It's kind of funny seeing that big of a battery running a small joule thief with 3 series LED's and not getting full light out of them, but they are lit, and I will leave it go until bat's 1 and 2 are no longer going up, and until bat 3 is dead again. Might take some time to drain bat 3 with such a small load, but I will test again once it is done

I look forward to seeing what happens when you split the negatives, sounds like an interesting couple of tests you have in front of you
I will keep testing and updating as I have more info

N8

[FRC]

Neight

Glad that the post helped. I should start trying smaller loads on battery 3 also.
I have a lot of 12v computer fans and should be using leds also. The reason
for smaller loads is that I go from one 12v fan then try a 12v ceramic heater
and this usually kills the process very fast. Instead I should be trying to extend each run longer. I also have noticed that battery 2 has dropped a bit also. All
in all, we do have free energy happening here and it is very fascinating. Hope
more members try this so more information comes out with different variations,
as you have done Neight. That way we will all find out what works best.


George

[Turion]

FRC,
I think you will find that the more sulfated your battery is, the longer the runs you can get before you drop out of the power window. That has been my experience so far. My original battery ran mine for more than a month, and I was running HEAVY loads on an inverter.

In case you didn't catch my edit in one of the posts above...

These ARE PM motors we are using. The ones with the wound rotors and stators were for the motor modifications Dr. Lindemann was talking about in his thread. I don't know what I was thinking. I must be getting senile!

[LutherG]

Neight,
All the motors that Luther and I have used so far have been wound rotor and wound stator 12 volt DC. No PM (permanent magnet) motors. They may work, but I don't know for sure.

David

Hi Guys,

Actually, the CIM motor I'm using and the Pacific Scientific motor are both permanent magnet DC motors with brushes and commutator. My next test setup will be with 2 of these 2.5HP PacSci motors nose coupled together.

I'll drive lights off the second motor to create the mechanical load on the first motor... I may even try a dimmer switch of some kind to tweak the adjustment to keep battery 3 in range for the inverter... What would be really interesting is if we can route some of the generated power from the second motor back to batteries 1 & 2...

I also want to take a moment to thank John Bedini for this circuit and for generously releasing it on his pages. This is where I first became aware of this circuit and became reaquainted with it when David first appeared on Peswiki... This is an awesome circuit with many possibilities!

Great posts guys!

Luther