3 Battery Generating System

[Turion]

I can't go down to the basement until tomorrow to check on whether or not that battery is shorted out because the dogs will go nuts and wake up everyone, but look at it like this. Two batteries wired in series. Connect the free terminal of one battery to one side of a headlight bulb. Connect the other side of the headlight bulb to one leg of the motor. Connect the other leg of the motor to the free terminal of the other battery. You have made a loop, and the light will light up and the motor will run. Now connect the bad battery in parallel with the light and suddenly the light goes out and the motor won't run. Why? Look at it from THAT perspective, because that is what is happening. Add a second light in parallel with the first and still nothing will run. But when you add a THIRD light in parallel with the first and second, it comes on, and the motor runs.

It's as if I'm matching POTENTIALS. Each light is a potential, and when I get enough of them, suddenly the circuit is complete and everything works. Just throwing things out there guys.

This is definitely a GOOD battery for these experiments, because it took between 10 and 15 minutes of the setup just sitting there before the motor magically came on with no load connected. SInce I KNOW from experience that my motor will start IMMEDIATELY tomorrow, I will go ahead and play with two transistors in parallel. Matt, the one 47 ohm resistor I had in the circuit today got hotter than heck, even though nothing ever worked. Now I know it didn't work because of the weird battery behavior and not because my circuit was wired incorrectly, but I am concerned about how hot that resistor was. Too hot to touch. Should I have used two of them?

Dave

[ewizard]

It sounds like high strangeness at first but I can sort of see it. Battery 3 is put in the opposite polarity of 1 and 2 so it could (if it has any potential) be sucking enough power from 1 and 2 that the light doesn't get enough to run and with an opposing potential the motor doesn't get enough to run. Do you have a reading for voltage on 3 once it is hooked up? Now once you lower the resistance enough by adding more lights across #3 then you may short 3 to the point that it does not oppose the flow of 1 and 2 through the lights so they light back up and the motor starts back up because #3 is essentially bypassed by the lower resistance of 3 parallel lights. Not sure if I have that right but I think that sounds like a possible explanation for the current situation.

[Neight]

Hey guys

Just a quick update. I gave the circuit from Matt a try and noticed a very clear improvement in performance.
I used what I have on hand, so it wasn't a 100% true replication, but the results were very encouraging.
I am using much smaller batteries and motors than what most are using, so maybe that is why I was able to get away with smaller components.
I am using 1Ω 10W resistor, and a 2n3055 transistor. I have the same 100Ω 1/2W resistor as in the schematic. 12V 7Ah input batteries, and 12V 5Ah bat3, which has at least one bad cell, and possibly two, so it really shouldn't ever hold a charge.
the motors I used are the same printer motors I have been using. I have a belt driven motor being used as a generator from the motor I am using between good and bad batteries.
I did hook up the genny motor to a rectifier and routed that back to both battery one and battery two individually. I didn't get any significant charging, though it did slow down the voltage drop while running a bit. I also used a 12V PC cooling fan as a load on the generator, and I am sure it was running at full speed, and the LEDs on the fan were very bright. unloaded, I measure 20V coming from the small generator, though I don't have a decent enough amp meter to trust the results I get from current output.
I ran this with and without the circuit in place, and there is absolutely no question the help this adds to this system. I did see my batteries input voltage drop over a two hour run, but the recovery has been much much faster than without the circuit in. On a two hour run, I have full recovery in both batteries, and it's maybe been an hour since I shut it off.
trying to balance a load on the bad battery is a bit more difficult with the circuit in place, and I wasn't sure if I was in the zone or not, as this system seems to run more stable with the circuit in, I get hardly any motor speed variation over the duration of the run. Using a load on battery 3 with the circuit in seems to give mixed results, though doesn't seem to do any harm.

all in all, great test, and I look forward to hearing more results come in as others get this built!

N8

[Mario]

Hi Turion and all,

This is a great thread guys, I've built a few Tesla switches some time ago so now I've made some small attempts with the 3 batt setup, but I'm in between other projects I'm working on so I don't have anything special to report about it yet, but following the thread with interest.

That thing with your third battery is weird...! And when you remove it and leave the lamp only the motor starts?

About Matt's setup, as far as I can tell from the schematic the purpose of the MJL is to connect the hi wattage resistor in parallel with batt 3 only when the motor is turned ON, or am I missing something?

regards,
Mario

[Neight]

having trouble making an edit to my last post, so I am making a new one.

I am running this same setup with a bad 6V power wheels battery, and one 12V good battery (2BGS) same resistors and transistor as before, and so far, I am seeing nearly 0 drop in input voltage, and it's been running for about 15-20 minutes now.
I am using a bit smaller motor than in the previous test, and no generator hooked to it, or load of any kind (it's too small, I don't have any way to couple a load to it, with what I have on hand.)
So this does work with the 2BGS as well.

I also wanted to add to my last post that the big resistor is ceramic, not wire wound.

[Matthew Jones]

Hi Turion and all,

This is a great thread guys, I've built a few Tesla switches some time ago so now I've made some small attempts with the 3 batt setup, but I'm in between other projects I'm working on so I don't have anything special to report about it yet, but following the thread with interest.

That thing with your third battery is weird...! And when you remove it and leave the lamp only the motor starts?

About Matt's setup, as far as I can tell from the schematic the purpose of the MJL is to connect the hi wattage resistor in parallel with batt 3 only when the motor is turned ON, or am I missing something?

regards,
Mario

I get small 1-2 volt variation ripple coming out of the motor, that drives the transistor on and off. The transistor will only turn on for top portion of the sine wave. So the resistor is only availible during the highest point of torque on the motor and the lower portions in which the BEMF shows up the motor is force to either dump it directly into the dead battery or back to the source as serial connected power source. Then of course when it comes back on you get surge cause you have no BEMF in the coils.

Matt

[Joit]

having trouble making an edit to my last post, so I am making a new one.

Click the 'Go advanced' Button at the Tab below, and then save it, and it will work.
You can delete then your second one at with the same Button at the upper Menu

[FRC]

Dave

I just woke up. Could not leave until I could get caught up on some sleep. Hardly had any the last couple nights.

Yeah that battery 3 is sure showing strange behavior. Ewizard seems to have a
plausible explanation for whats happening. Hope you can get it sorted out Dave.

Glad to here neight was able to get results with the circuit. I was wondering
if it could be done on a smaller basis like that.

Thanks Matt for clarifying what is happening with the circuits operation.

Well this will be my last post for a while. Good luck to everyone working on this. "Gone Baby Gone" as Matt says.

George

[Mario]

I get small 1-2 volt variation ripple coming out of the motor, that drives the transistor on and off. The transistor will only turn on for top portion of the sine wave. So the resistor is only availible during the highest point of torque on the motor and the lower portions in which the BEMF shows up the motor is force to either dump it directly into the dead battery or back to the source as serial connected power source. Then of course when it comes back on you get surge cause you have no BEMF in the coils.

Matt

Hi Matt,

thanks, if I got this correctly, when the motor coils charge up the resistor is connected thanks to the tranny, when the coils discharge it's disconnected and the spike goes through all the series connected good and bad batteries.

regards,
Mario

[boguslaw]

It may look unrelated but I have two thoughts I would like somebody explain to me.
When we have two batteries in parallel and one have larger voltage then the other one is charged by this one, is that correct ? What is going on when we have two batteries of different capacitor and voltage connected in series and then load attached to them to close the loop ?

[greekstile]

If some one get's this working w/ that transistor and wire wound resistor in place. I would be curious to see what happens if you rectify that resistor/inductor? to a battery or cap... will the effect go away or will we have yet another source to draw energy from...

actually, Matt do you have an inductance meter? if so is there any inductance coming from that wire wound resistor, or is it one of those that is double wound back on itself to remove the inductance? Then... is there any capacitance value there etc...?

we should be able to replace that with a coil, or a bifilar coil, twist the bottom ends together and use the top leads, one to the battery and one to the emitter. otherwise, this is looking more and more like the SS SSG being triggered by the motor w/ no place for the spike to be rectified except maybe partially through the transistor itself.

Patrick

Long time no post. But I have been following this thread. Patrick, I have been thinking the same thing. Being an SSG guy, swap out that wirewound resistor with a coil. You could also use the core material as a sort of potentiometer, by sliding it in and out for adjustment, to help balance the load. If nothing else, you could use Bedini's old Tesla Tech technique and rectify the output of the coil and tap into another source of what should be free power in the system.

Hoping to start tinkering again soon!!!

[fathershand]

Relay

Matt, Dave, Guys, maybe if you connected the transistor to a relay that switches on/off the motor we wouldn't burn out the transistor.

Just a thought.

Great efforts, guys. Keep up the good work.

Tony

[citfta]

Mosfet circuit

Hi guys,

I have been working on the mosfet circuit to control the motor and load across battery 3. I have not quite got it done and have run out of time. I have to leave in a little while to go out of town for a couple of days. I will get back on this when I return. I am using the mosfet driver circuit that Vissie posted to Matt and I for Matt's simple TS. I had thought it was posted on the TS thread but I did not find it. I am modifying it to work on the 3BGS. Visssie has given the okay to repost it here when I have something that works.

C ya later,

Carroll

[Turion]

Carroll,
Thanks for doing that. I saw Vissie's post on Matt's private TS thread and I may play around with it while you're gone. I don't imagine I'll have much success, but I love to tinker anyway. I could always get lucky!

I'm headed down to the basement. Going to try and get at least one more system up and running today so I have a couple to play with and try different things.

EDIT:
Ok, something interesting to report. Hopefully you all saw the video I posted yesterday, and from that video, you can see how long my motor actually ran. In addition to that, I also reported that I accidentally left the on switch in the on position but shut my system down by turning off the lights that act as the load across battery three and cause the system to start up. While I was upstairs posting, I heard my motor come on down in the basement, and walked down to turn it off. That couldn't have been more than an additional minute of run time. During BOTH of those runs I had a load on the motor of a second motor acting as a generator and running a 12 volt auto dome light. Not MUCH of a load but some. Anyway, that's the summary of events. Here's what's interesting:

When I began, voltage on battery 3 was zero volts. It ran without load for the time it took me to walk down to the basement and had charged up to 11+. I don't remember what, and I didn't write it down, but I think I did post it here somewhere. Doesn't matter, because it has dropped to 5.8 volts
Battery 1 Began at 12.11 (low, I know...shame on me!) When I went down to measure it just now it was at 12.19
Battery 2 Began at 12.09. I just measured it at 12.21
And that's after resting all night, and I measured it with a light bulb connected as load. Now I wish I had measured the amps on both those batteries yesterday, but I didn't.
I also flipped the switch to run the thing, and it did NOT start up. This is the first time EVER that a motor which was allowed to start on its own with no load on battery 3 did not start IMMEDIATELY the next time I flipped the switch (for at least the next couple days) AT least for ME it is, and I have been doing this off and on for four years.

Sooooo, I am going to go down and use the same three batteries. I will measure the amps on each one. I will flip the switch with no load on battery three and let it start itself, and then add loads. I will run the generator and connect some lights to it and try and balance the load. Right now I am still working with the basic circuit. I have not added the transistor or resistor or anything....just my funky weird acting battery number three.


Dave

[provelless]

Turion, I had a similar third battery as you. This battery would only hold 11 volts so I knew it might not work for this application but I might be able to renew it. So I hooked it up and of course motor started instantly, I wanted to speed the motor up so I loaded third battery with one light, nothing then a second and still did not speed up. I to thought this was strange but figured it was something simple I didn't understand. By the way third battery is holding a steady 12.68 volts now.