# Charging li-ion EV batteries directly from tower mounted wind tubine



## nat_ster (Oct 19, 2012)

Hi all

I joined the forum only a short time ago. Since I have been reading and learning non stop. All this is so vary interesting to me.

To make a long story as short as possible, I will post my goals.

My goal is to charge a EV with Li-ion batteries directly from my permanent magnet generator powered by from the wind turbine I built. 

Right now I have the turbine hooked directly into a grid tie inverter. No batteries necessary. http://www.solacity.com/PowerOneWind.htm
After some trial and error, I have the MPPT working correctly, loading the generator to keep the rpm at optimal speeds. This system works well. It has offset the electricity bill by as much as half on good months.

Now I may be moving location, and when I do, there will no longer be a grid to tie into. My goal is to charge my EV battery bank directly from the Permanent Magnet Alternator, with either the wild AC, or the rectified DC. 

I would like to do it with as few devices between for both efficiency, reliability, and cost. 

I don't have a EV yet. My plan was make low cost clean electricity first, then build the EV.

Suggestions welcome. I look forward to reading them.

Nat


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## nat_ster (Oct 19, 2012)

One method I considered may work, was to set up my EV with a AC motor and controller with regen. Then set up the car so I could couple the wind turbine shaft to one of the drive wheels. This would bypass the Permanent Magnet Alternator all together.

I still need to do more reading on this. I don't know if there are duty ratings for the regen. 

I also need to do more reading on what controllers will stop the regen when the battery voltages are too high\full.

I also may need to build a wind turbine of larger size output to take advantage of this.

This would be a good alternative if I can make it happen.

Thanks Nat


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## nat_ster (Oct 19, 2012)

I'm kind of surprised that there were no reply's.

Anything?

Nat


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## Sunking (Aug 10, 2009)

Well I can answer your question, but I suspect no one is answering because what you want is pretty much futile, and a huge waste of time and money. Solar is not much better.

Problem is there is not really a way you could put up a large enough generator to generate any useful amount of power. For example you will see many residential wind generators on the market rated at 1 Kw with 25 mph winds. Well first you have to erect a large tower to get 50 feet or more above any near obstructions like trees or building. Towers are expensive and most cities will not allow you to erect such a monster.

There is also something not many manufactures will tell you about output but is simple law of physics. If you have a 1 KW generated rated @ 25 mph wind speed, at 12.5 mph it only generates 250 watts. At 6.25 mph only generates 62 watts. 

Second unless you live in an area where you have to lean into th ewind all the time, you are not going to generate any useful power.


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## nat_ster (Oct 19, 2012)

Thanks for the reply.

I disagree about the wind not making enough electricity. 

My turbine is a home made hybrid H Darrieus, with lenz 2 wings, with a Savonius rotor in its centre. The Darrieus develops most of the power, whereas the Savonius enables self-starting, as well as regulating the maximum rotor speed by adding drag at high wind speeds. Its blades rotate clockwise when viewed from beneath.

Without making this too long, I will explain. My turbine is up a 30 foot home built tower. We have wind over 70% of the time over 15mph, 40% over 30mph. We are in a optimal location at the top of a huge hill. 90% of the time the wind is out of the west. 

The turbine is up and running. This thing has serious torque. At a 25mph wind, the grid tie inverter will push around 2000 watts. That's more than a 15 amp, 120volt circuit will handle. I know because we tripped the 15 amp breaker testing it.

Ok, so charging a EV from a 15 amp, 120 volt circuit by my calculations should be approximately 1 kW per hour. That would mean 8 to 10 hours to full charge. My car sits there all night doing nothing now. It may as well be charging.

Now, that's only one turbine that cost me under $500 to build, and erect. 

I have space for over 500 turbines, not that I would build that many.

If I need more power, I will just build more, and bigger turbines.

Thanks for reading

Nat


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## evmetro (Apr 9, 2012)

I have to say that you are way ahead of the game with your alternative energy. You seem to understand that leaving your alternative energy behind when you drive the car is the way to go. People keep wanting to burden their vehicles by attaching alternative energy that stays on the car, but it just doesn't work. I hope you can get your a good ev/ windmill setup going. Best of luck to you!


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

nat_ster said:


> ... My goal is to charge my EV battery bank directly from the Permanent Magnet Alternator, with either the wild AC, or the rectified DC.
> 
> I would like to do it with as few devices between for both efficiency, reliability, and cost....


Interesting project... A relatively simple approach with high efficiency would be to full wave rectify the AC from the PM alternator but with no capacitor filter followed by a buck-boost converter controlled by a PFC IC as the battery charger. The loop dynamics will be very slow on account of the output regulation and PFC functions being combined, but that's ok when charging batteries.

There are other ways to skin this cat, of course, but I suspect it will be hard to beat this approach.

On second thought... the MPPT algorithm you came up with for the grid tie application will still be useful if not necessary here - use it to set the average current limit of the PFC IC.

EDIT - I am making no comments on whether this is worth doing vis-a-vis the amount of wind, etc...


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## alvin (Jul 26, 2008)

Nat
I would like to see a picture of your Lenz 2 turbine. I have a 10 ft H A T windmill. It produces 500 watts in my location normally. All I use it for is to charge a battery bank. Then I use that if there is a power failure.

I did build a Lenz 2 turbine about three years ago but the generator I built did not put out enough power. I have been collecting parts to wind a new stator more suitable for the Lenz RPM's. 

Are you on otherpower or anotherpower?

Good luck

Alvin


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## nat_ster (Oct 19, 2012)

evmetro said:


> I have to say that you are way ahead of the game with your alternative energy. You seem to understand that leaving your alternative energy behind when you drive the car is the way to go. People keep wanting to burden their vehicles by attaching alternative energy that stays on the car, but it just doesn't work. I hope you can get your a good ev/ windmill setup going. Best of luck to you!


Thank you for your encouraging words.



Tesseract said:


> Interesting project... A relatively simple approach with high efficiency would be to full wave rectify the AC from the PM alternator but with no capacitor filter followed by a buck-boost converter controlled by a PFC IC as the battery charger. The loop dynamics will be very slow on account of the output regulation and PFC functions being combined, but that's ok when charging batteries.
> 
> There are other ways to skin this cat, of course, but I suspect it will be hard to beat this approach.
> 
> ...


Thank you, This is the kind of information I was looking for.

Now a question to follow that answer. Would there happen to be anything of this nature I can buy already built? Or do I need to expand my knowledge a bit more and construct one of these devises myself? Upon searching the internet, I found several schematics on how to build one.



alvin said:


> Nat
> I would like to see a picture of your Lenz 2 turbine. I have a 10 ft H A T windmill. It produces 500 watts in my location normally. All I use it for is to charge a battery bank. Then I use that if there is a power failure.
> 
> I did build a Lenz 2 turbine about three years ago but the generator I built did not put out enough power. I have been collecting parts to wind a new stator more suitable for the Lenz RPM's.
> ...




I tried to run my turbine\pmg off a cheep controller and 4, 12 volt lead acid batteries, and almost gave up. Without the grid tie inverter loading the pmg to the torque curve of the turbine, it was all over the place. Too fast, or too slow. Someone needs to come up with a mppt wind controller for use with li-ion batteries, that works as well as the Power-One Wind Turbine Grid-Tie Inverters.

What I'm saying is the generator you built may still make good power if loaded properly by a good charge controller. Also skip the trouble of building one, and just buy one of these. 

http://www.windbluepower.com/Wind_Blue_Motor_Hydro_Permanent_Magnet_Alternator_p/dc-500.htm

Mine runs with a 5 to 1 ratio pully. For every one rotation of the turbine shaft, the PMG turns 5 times. Again this fully depends on size of turbine, torque output, ect. Mine has enough power at wind speeds over 20 miles/h to add a second PMG. Until I add another, I use the turbine's disk break to lock it down in winds above 25 miles/h.

No, I am not a member of otherpower or anotherpower. However, I'm off to check them out.

Thanks Nat


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## nat_ster (Oct 19, 2012)

I think I found what I was looking for.

http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/10kw-60a-diy-charger-open-source-59210p8.html

This is from post 80



valerun said:


> After talking to a couple of you offline, just realized that my PFC stage can be easily used to boost the DC voltage to the same output value. Reading the datasheet for the ir1153 chip we are using, it is clear that the chip will force the input current track whatever input voltage. In the case of rectified AC input, this will result in half-sinusoidal current draw and hence the power factor correction. But in the case of DC, this will result just in a constant current draw but the booster will produce the same voltage.
> 
> So the charger design with PFC stage can be used for ANY type of input - universal AC or any DC input voltage within ~100-400V. Both limits are soft and can be changed by changing the values of the resistors on the PFC board.
> 
> ...


The best part is they can build it for us we need here.

http://www.emotorwerks.com/cgi-bin/VMcharger_V9.pl

Nat


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## aeroscott (Jan 5, 2008)

nat_ster said:


> I think I found what I was looking for.
> 
> http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/10kw-60a-diy-charger-open-source-59210p8.html
> 
> ...


 We talked about adding mppt to this charger , check my posts


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