48v Golf Cart Motors......

[injin man]

Electric Golf Carts/UV's seem to be all the rage today. While speaking with
an old friend today he suggested instead of building a Transformer based
inverter that I take a 48v motor and create a rotoverter to say 110/220
using a gen head. I can't seem to get specs for the motors and they range
around 10hp at 3,500rpm or so. Any ideas. This roto setup would be charged
with solar primarily and topped off periodically with the ole Ningbo 3.5kw
gen set. Any UV experts here?

Forklifts, pallet jacks and Golf Carts are seemingly a good source for high
power 36-48volt AE ideas.

[Ronmar]

Motor/generators are not particularly efficient.  You can usually find them surplus at places like www.surpluscenter.com

[BioHazard]

Just off the top of my head...

I don't know how efficient a golf cart motor is. Let's say 90%.
Gen heads are more like 80% efficient.
80% of 90% is only 72% total efficiency. That's pretty bad. Inverters are more like 80-95% efficient.

There's a reason "those things" went away after they invented power inverters.

[rcavictim]

Rule of thumb for the efficiency of MG sets is historically about 50%.  That was with the stuff that was common 50 years ago.  Improvements have been made in the efficiency of the motors and generators since then but you can't get anywhere near the efficiency of a modern solid state electronic converter made today.  Even SS converters just 10 years old are as much as 10% less efficient than the modern offerings.