Micro CoGen.

Hi Veggie. Long time no see. My 8x8 foot shed was built on a 5 1/2 " (2x6 form) slab poured on grade with rebar on 2 foot centres. Survived the best part of 1000 hours of Changfa pounding with the set resting on a couple of 1/2 inch thick pieces of horse mat. Still looks as good as new except for the oil stains ...

Quote from: scottpeterd on March 14, 2013, 06:10:20 AM
Ok, I think I have the problem.

I'm using the 555 re-purposed to charge a 24v battery bank.  I need to be spinning it at about 5,000 rpm for it to put out the amperage I'm expecting.

Since I can't find a bolt-on pulley, I'm probably going to be forced to go with an intermediate shaft and set of pulleys.

If it helps I have a very similar setup that I plan to use to charge at 48V. I solved the pulley problem by running a 8 rib belt around the flywheel to a 4.1"  * rib pulley from George at Utterpower. Gives me about 3.3:1 if I recall correctly. The pulley is held on the alternator shaft by a taper lock bushing. Now I haven't done much more than fire this up for a basic load test so I can't comment on its long term performance but it seemed to work OK ...

Simon.

Quote from: thomasonw on January 08, 2013, 01:54:40 PM

Yellow Head, you are more then welcome to a board - and if you want to pass on the cost, that is fine as well 

What all is your project?  Somewhere in the back of my mind I had thought this effort might become a basis for a basic engine controller for folks, and hence I tried to make things a bit more generic when making choices.

Drop me an email at mvVikingStar@gmail.com and we can set up the details.  And if you have time, perhaps it would be best to  hang tight for a few weeks till I bring one of these up and see if they even work!

-al-

I have a Changfa R175 belted to a Leece-Neville 555 (picture attached I hope) and I'm planning to use it to charge a 48V battery bank based on the work done by mobile_bob (thanks bob!)

I was originally going to run the thing fast at full field and let my solar charge controller take care of the battery regulation. But the idea of matching engine speed to load is appealing as is removing the charge controller from the charging path. This allows me to supplement whatever is coming through the charge controller to handle 'big loads' as well as providing a bit of backup if the charge controller should ever fail.

I've dabbled with the Arduino before; seeing your project made it an easy choice. Thanks so much for sharing it. I think it will make a great basis for a general alternator based charge controller. Having a single board that does 90% of what I need seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.

Quote from: thomasonw on January 07, 2013, 12:30:58 PM

Now, it is a bit misleading as though the price per board is $33, one needs to purchase 4 of them!  (So, if anyone wants an extra board to play with, let me know - else they will become Green Coasters  )  In the end, the total cost was $149.92, including S&H.

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I'd be happy to take on of those extra boards off your hands for $33 (or more for that matter since I couldn't get a one off for that I've been following your project with interest and at some point I expect to be trying something very similar. What you have is close enough to what I need so that using your board would put me way ahead of assembling it from regular Arduino boards and shields.

If you do have (some) power available I can confirm starting at -35C running 5W40 by blowing hot air from a heat gun into the intake for a short period of time. The colder it is the longer it takes before the engine is 'happy' but I don't recall ever needing it for more than a minute. You need to make sure nothing nasty gets blown in along with the hot air; I eventually built a box around the intake filter so that I could feed the engine hot air but leave the filter in place just in case.

I would be interested as well. Out of curiosity which Leece Neville alternator is this based on?

Simon.

I have a grey market Yanmar tractor and have found these guys very helpful parts wise:

http://www.hoyetractor.com/

Quote from: bschwartz on October 05, 2011, 02:09:18 PM
Greg, if you find that info, ill buy you a bunch of beer!!!!
I bought one of those a year ago, and never got it working.
The seller was no help.

I've been using a couple of these for a year now. I have a PDF spec. sheet if it helps which I'm happy to share. Pins 1-4 are +V1, pins 5-8 are V1 RETURN for the DC output and to get the unit to turn on I've jumpered pin 12 (module enable) to pin 16 (another V1 RETURN).

I forget the sense of +V1 and V1 RETURN but I have a recollection that its is reversed; a quick check with a meter will sort that out.

In case it is of interest, I have 2 of these with the DC outputs wired in series (since they appear to be floating). This gives me 96V to feed to my charge controller; handy if you need to get the voltage up there to do more than a bulk charge. The spec. sheet suggests the trim pot can bump the output to ~53V but that's not enough for me to absorb/equalize.

I tried one of these on my DI Changfa 195 in various locations (oil pan, head beneath the injector, head next to the injector etc). Didn't do a thing but then it was -30 here last week (C or F - you pick  I figure there is just too much metal for the typical unit (mine was 200W) to pump heat into.

What I did find worked like a charm was a heat gun/hair dryer into the air intake. I need to automate this for next year but right now I'm just happy to get the thing started.

I've moved the heater to my Yannie tractor. Hopefully it will help a bit here when it comes time to blow the next snowfall away ...

Simon.

Anyone know if these could be persuaded to fit into a DI 195? I know these don't come with a glowplug port but my head has a curious round depression behind the injector. Could this be a plugged port? Seems odd to cast this feature for decorative reasons only ...

Thanks,

Simon.

Quote from: BruceM on February 11, 2010, 10:17:28 AM
Yellowhead sent me a note questioning my comment on power factor correcting circuitry.  I did some research on PFC chips and applications this morning and I think he is right-  a PFC front end on a switcher should be helpful for low frequency operation (bulk storage cap is less affected), and is not inherently problematic as I thought.

I had assumed most implementations of PFC would be AC zero cross and time based, but I was wrong. Of the three most common schemes, none would seem to care about AC frequency.

Thanks, Yellowhead, for your message and for forcing me to get a better understanding of PFC circuitry.

I have this in service as of this morning. I eventually went for a 48V system so I bought 2 of the PFC corrected power supplies and wired the outputs in series to get 96V into the charge controller. This seems to work just fine and I can throttle my set back to about 1400rpm which subdues the Changfa roar a bit Below this the power supplies drop the AC input. I still need to figure if this is because the AC frequency is below spec. (47Hz) or because the voltage from the head has dropped too much. It gets down to 160-170 at 1400 rpm which is also below spec.

I'm going to add AVR to the head to see if I can hold the output voltage up at lower rpm. If this works I'll try dropping towards 1200 rpm and see if everything still hangs together. I can't see going any lower as I'll be running out of hp and I'm worried about the thumping on the coupler and the reduced cooling in the head. Still I only need ~3kw in bulk charge so I might be lucky ...

FWIW the reason I want to do this is that my set is (for better or worse) direct drive and at 1800 rpm it simply makes too much power for battery charging without a substantial diversion load.

Either way it looks like the use of 2 of these power supplies connected in series is a viable alternative to a passive approach using transformers/rectifiers/chokes etc.

Simon.

I just ordered one of the ST AVRs from Tom at Central Georgia Diesel. He was most helpful and included a wiring diagram for using the unit without the harmonic winding as has been suggested earlier in this discussion.

In essence, the AVR appears to sense voltage between L1/L2 and then supplies excitation to the field winding by series regulating between N/L1 and the rectifier. This looks very similar to the approach taken by BruceM's AVR although in his circuit it is the rectified AC that is being regulated. Not sure how the Chinese unit is doing its job but Tom suggests that it has worked fine on a variety of ST heads.

Regardless, my concern in both cases is what happens in the event of a failure causing the full rectified 120V to be applied to the field? No doubt field current will cause the suggested 5A fuse in BruceM's circuit to blow before the field winding is toast.  I think I'll include something similar with the Chinese unit. Before that happens though I'm guessing the output voltage will spike quite a bit. Am I right? Any idea how much? I don't want to damage any household loads or (worse) the inverter ...

I'll post some before and after pictures of the AC waveform when I have this hooked up but in the meantime I thought I'd better ask about this as it might be a bit of a safety issue.

Quote from: BruceM on February 24, 2010, 04:36:43 PM

Yellowhead-  The MX80 has a programmable charge current limiting feature, which you can set to whatever you want.  Marcus would like to get his AC charger to match his PV system output of 3400 watts, so that the MX80 will handle it with no changing it at the keypad; his concern is for simplicity of operation for his wife.  This also has the advantage of reducing charging time and getting the best fuel efficiency out of the Listeroid. 

Apologies. I thought the solar array was bigger than the potential capacity of the charger. I just checked back to the start of the thread and I see that this isn't the case ...

FWIW, I've PM'ed the guy who was using that 48V power supply I mentioned a while back. He claims to be able to use it just fine for bulk charging a 48V battery bank so he must have been able to push the output to 57.6V (spec. sheet notwithstanding). Obviously not enough for equalizing though. I've opted to go with a 48V battery bank after all so I'll give this a go at some point in the next couple of months. If I get no luck (or smoke) I'll be chasing down the same path as Marcus ...

Since I've been running through similar calculations for my system I thought I'd jump in.

Assuming the MX80 delivers the full rated 80A into a 48V nominal battery bank being bulk charged at 57.6V thats a maximum input power of ~4600W isn't it? So it might work with a 5kva transformer although I'd probably be inclined to bump up to 7.5kva as well; I hate running things at their limit (although you could argue the same for the MX80 in this case 

But if I understand all this correctly, the Lister will be blowing smoke long before the MX80 gets to pulling 4600W off the charger. So I guess we need a way to get the MX80 to back off before this happens. Assuming that dropping the current limit for the MX80 to say 60A isn't acceptable (and it would be less than ideal if you forgot to reset it and then limited the charging from the solar array) I'm thinking we need a way to start reducing the input voltage to the charge controller when the current reaches some defined limit. That way the MPPT tracking smarts can hopefully be persuaded to back off the charging current in an attempt to restore 'maximum power' to the batteries.

For the ST/rectifier/filter approach your are planning reducing the field current on the ST might be a way to persuade the head to start dropping the output voltage. For the switch mode power supply approach I am hoping to use it looks like I can drive a control input to achieve much the same effect ...

Or maybe I'm just confused 

Quote from: BruceM on February 09, 2010, 09:06:13 PM

Yellowhead-  I wouldn't go below 50Hz myself unless someone gave me some free Iotas to experiment with/smoke for fun.  Many switchers will do 120V 50/60Hz or 150-180 VDC input, but much below 50Hz the input storage caps aren't going to be big enough in most designs.

Thanks for the warning Bruce. I wouldn't try it on an IOTA  I might push the limit on one of those $99 power supplies though to see what happens. I need to go and review SMPS theory a bit to understand why the input caps are the limiting factor. 47Hz would be 1400rpm on my set (more or less) which might work out just fine ...