# KOSTOV SEP Motors and REGEN



## rwaudio (May 22, 2008)

michaeljayclark said:


> Kostov says that regen is native to this line of motors and just a controller is needed to get the regen.
> 
> the soliton1 right now doesnt have regen. Kelly makes a 400amp controller that does regen.
> 
> can a system be set up that the soliton controls the motor for acceleration and then when the bake is pressed it switchs to the kelly to send energy back into the traction pack?


First of all the Soliton1 won't control a sepex motor.... So the fact you couldn't parallel the controllers and expect it to work doesn't matter.


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## DavidDymaxion (Dec 1, 2008)

Regen is native to sepex motors. My Kostov does great regen with no controller! Right now I just have a big contactor. The motor wants to spin at a key speed of 1600 rpm at 48 Volts. Go down a hill, or downshift, (in other words, spin it faster than 1600 rpm) and it regens.

This is not a recommendation for or against, but look again at the Kelly website. They recently introduced a 1000 A 144 V sepex controller. If you get one please let us know how you like it.

You could rig up something where one controller handles the field, and another controller handles the armature. You would need a controller for the controllers, or a very simple control algorithm and mechanical control of the pots. You need to know what you are doing, as there is considerable risk in that route. If the field gets too weak the motor can overspeed, sudden regen can skid the wheels resulting in loss of control, you can burn up the fine field wiring, etc.


michaeljayclark said:


> Kostov says that regen is native to this line of motors and just a controller is needed to get the regen.
> 
> the soliton1 right now doesnt have regen. Kelly makes a 400amp controller that does regen.
> 
> can a system be set up that the soliton controls the motor for acceleration and then when the bake is pressed it switchs to the kelly to send energy back into the traction pack?


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## michaeljayclark (Apr 3, 2008)

when i saw regen for the motor i emailed kostov to get more information. they just replied yes it can regen based on the controller. I asked if the motor just send dc power back to its power source if not drawing power. they just replied controller...


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## Plamenator (Mar 6, 2009)

DavidDymaxion said:


> This is not a recommendation for or against, but look again at the Kelly website. They recently introduced a 1000 A 144 V sepex controller. If you get one please let us know how you like it.


 
Indeed the Soliton1 will not work with a sepex motor.
I looked at Kelly's site but could not find any 144V/SepEx controller.
Do you know where I can find some specs/prices? I may actually be interested in buying one to test


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## Plamenator (Mar 6, 2009)

Disregard my question 
Just found it:
http://kellycontroller.com/hse141011000a144vsep-ex-with-regen-p-903.html
Looks good. I just hope it lives up to claimed performance.


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## DavidDymaxion (Dec 1, 2008)

I'm going back and forth in my mind whether to buy one or go custom old school control. Please do let us know your results!


Plamenator said:


> Disregard my question
> Just found it:
> http://kellycontroller.com/hse141011000a144vsep-ex-with-regen-p-903.html
> Looks good. I just hope it lives up to claimed performance.


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## Plamenator (Mar 6, 2009)

There is just one thing that worries me.
I know Soliton1 is like 17lbs and with the fans it "barely" manages 400A continuous with IGBT.

Kelly claims 450A continuous without fans, with mosfets and at 11lbs.
Or maybe 450A is with water cooling though I do not see where the water inlets are. Then what would the ratings be as is (without fans and without water)? 300A?
Definetely needs testing. If it lives up to specs, it can be a great controller.

Maybe Major/Tesseract will have some comment on it?


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## jockepocke (Nov 24, 2009)

I am using an ABB sepex motor at 120 V. I bought an unknown Italian controller: Phoenix T62 (not on the list here, email them) http://www.elektrosistem.com/e/p2.htm which is supposed to handle 600 A. I only use 300 in my car though, but the controller barely gets warm at all, and this is with passive cooling. It has 7900 Hz switching freq, which means little less loss than 16 kHz I believe. They also have a 120 v controller that they claim can handle 800 A up to 75°C.

Oh, and it uses MOSFETs too!


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2011)

Plamenator said:


> There is just one thing that worries me.
> I know Soliton1 is like 17lbs and with the fans it "barely" manages 400A continuous with IGBT.
> 
> Kelly claims 450A continuous without fans, with mosfets and at 11lbs.
> ...


The Kelly is designed like most others for you to provide a proper heat sink that will properly move heat away. You must put a heat sink on that controller. You could put a water cooled one on or a finned one on. I have a finned heat sink and will be including a large fan to help dissipate the heat away. Worked like a charm on my other controller. 

Each mounting application is different. Soliton1 heat sink is built in and is also set for water cooling. That is one reason it's so blasted heavy.


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## Plamenator (Mar 6, 2009)

I have tested T82 from Electrosistem - it is 350A(800 peak)/13lbs controller but up to 120V. Was very difficult to wire the first time but then worked fine in lab conditions. Price is like Kelly - 1900$: http://www.elektrosistem.com/xtra/53%20-%20News%20PHOENIX%20ING.pdf
The advantages of Kelly (based on specs only) are:
-programmable via PC
-144V (180V peak which is perfect for 45 lithium cells).
-1000A peak.

It is nice to find someone who has actually tested it in a car.
How long have you used it for?


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2011)

jockepocke said:


> Oh, and it uses MOSFETs too!


Nothing wrong with mosfets. They actually work quite well. They have been used for a long time and have a proven track record.


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

gottdi said:


> Each mounting application is different. Soliton1 heat sink is built in and is also set for water cooling. That is one reason it's so blasted heavy.


Yes. Other reasons are that it can provide 1000 Amps continuously and of course that it has built in contactors and precharge circuit so you don't need to mount those externally. All those things add up so to be fair you should compare weight and price with those external components included.

Btw, you never answered my question I asked a while back:



Qer said:


> So, what's the complete price tag when it's all done? How much have you paid when you sum up the cost for the controller, the contactor, the heat sink, the precharge circuit etc?





gottdi said:


> Nothing wrong with mosfets. They actually work quite well. They have been used for a long time and have a proven track record.


Indeed. They also have their limitations which is why IGBTs make more sense in high power applications.


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## DavidDymaxion (Dec 1, 2008)

IGBTs have a fixed voltage drop, and mosfets act more like a resistor. So at low currents mosfets are more efficient, and at higher currents IGBTs are more efficient. Don't know if 450 A is "low," or if this is the reason for a difference, but it's a thought. Maybe the Soliton is just built stronger.


Plamenator said:


> There is just one thing that worries me.
> I know Soliton1 is like 17lbs and with the fans it "barely" manages 400A continuous with IGBT.
> 
> Kelly claims 450A continuous without fans, with mosfets and at 11lbs.
> ...


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## tomofreno (Mar 3, 2009)

Plamenator:


> I know Soliton1 is like 17lbs and with the fans it "barely" manages 400A continuous with IGBT.


Qer:


> Other reasons are that it can provide 1000 Amps continuously and of course that it has built in contactors and precharge circuit so you don't need to mount those externally.


Which is correct?


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## Plamenator (Mar 6, 2009)

Both.
1000A is continous with water cooling, 400A (or thereabouts) without.


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## Guest (Feb 27, 2011)

Water cooling is a big deal. Big difference too. 

I'd like to see the Synkro go to water cooling too. Might raise the bar but with air it does a cool 400 amps and that was for the Beta units. The production units I believe are at 450 amps. The production version is IGBT as well. Still same dimensions as the Beta Units. Beta units are mosfet units.

I will push a water cooled version as well for future use. Might mean a bit larger box but maybe not.

Pete


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## michaeljayclark (Apr 3, 2008)

From a few run ins with kelly they never seem to live up with their specs unless you run the controller in a freezer lol

the soliton is a high amperage unit that dc systems love. thats the whole idea behind the igbts being used. the contactors in the unit is the icing on the cake and make installation so much cleaner.


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## Guest (Feb 27, 2011)

Most I have seen were or are not properly heat sinked if any heat sink at all. I am amazed when folks just slap it onto a flat piece of metal with no thermal compound and expect it to work. I have tested sinks and a good fined sink with a large output fan is required to keep the controller cool. I am not even sure the sink I have for my Kelly is adequate enough. It is heavy and and has deep fins but maybe not enough fins. My last sink was excellent and never let my controller get hot even in 108 degree temps and running my controller hard and with max amps in those outside temps. With out the sink or with out the fan the controller would go into thermal cut back. Once the fan was installed I could never heat it up again. It was a 72 volt 550 amp controller. Low voltages use high amps which creates high heat. 

Any controller like the curtis, Alltrax, Kelly must have a deep fined sink and fan installed. A must. Or you could build a custom water cooled sink and use that instead. I have a nice block of aluminum that could be drilled and plumed for water. Might just do that.


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Plamenator said:


> There is just one thing that worries me.
> I know Soliton1 is like 17lbs *and with the fans* it "barely" manages 400A continuous with IGBT.
> 
> Kelly claims...
> ...


Actually, Plamen, the Soliton1 weighs closer to 33 lbs, IIRC. And, yes, if you insist on running it continuously _on fan cooling alone_ then the maximum current will generally get derated down to about 400A after a minute or two. That's still higher than the maximum continuous current of a Zilla Z1K _with liquid cooling_ so I don't feel particularly bad about that spec.

As for me having any comments on Kelly... uh, no. 




tomofreno said:


> Which is correct?


See that phrase from Plamenator I put in bold? Yeah, I guess you missed that in your haste to lambaste us, eh?


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## michaeljayclark (Apr 3, 2008)

everyone has their fav controller and will exacerbate the advantages and play down the disadvantages.

I look at controller for what they are.

Id like to see a EV on a dyno and get all the stats and compare that way.

anyone want to buy me all the ocntrollers so i can test all of them


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## jockepocke (Nov 24, 2009)

Plamenator said:


> I have tested T82 from Electrosistem - it is 350A(800 peak)/13lbs controller but up to 120V. Was very difficult to wire the first time but then worked fine in lab conditions. Price is like Kelly - 1900$: http://www.elektrosistem.com/xtra/53%20-%20News%20PHOENIX%20ING.pdf
> The advantages of Kelly (based on specs only) are:
> -programmable via PC
> -144V (180V peak which is perfect for 45 lithium cells).
> ...


I have owned the controller for about a year, BUT I have not finished the car, so I have very limited experience. I agree that setup was quite difficult, wiring took a while, and once I got some help from major setting the parameters of the controller I got good performance. Although a little fine-tuning is still needed (but FLA batteries are sold, waiting to mount my new TS!  ). The issues I had at start was mainly difficulty to maintain constant speed at certain intervals, but I also had a bit trouble to get torque when starting the car. Those issues are history now, though!  I like the ability to set parameters yourself! Regen works great! Not the FLAs... 

I also bought a chip from them, that they integrated in the controller, to limit motor speed to 7000 rpm, which works perfectly. 

I also got contactor and heatsink mounted. It is a quite small aluminium piece, maybe 10*500*300 mm, without fins. Temperature is monitored by the controller, and I am surprised how cool it keeps. Like +8°C at 0°C is the only value I can remember now. Probably went up to 20°C above ambient some time, but not sure. going to push it harder with the TS batteries


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

michaeljayclark said:


> everyone has their fav controller and will exacerbate the advantages and play down the disadvantages.
> 
> I look at controller for what they are.
> 
> Id like to see a EV on a dyno and get all the stats and compare that way.


See, that's the thing. We've run the Solitons on the dyno and we've reported all the hard data here in this forum. Here's for example a very eventful milestone in the development of the controller:










http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/new-controller-prototype-29062p41.html

First time the Soliton blew a motor. It survived (the motor obviously didn't). 

So do we exaggerate? Well, so far noone has proven us wrong.


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## michaeljayclark (Apr 3, 2008)

we need videos! if we could see all the controllers graphed on the same graph then a comparison, a fair one, can be made.

id like to see a video when the motors are blown up mythbuster style!


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## tomofreno (Mar 3, 2009)

> Both.
> 1000A is continous with water cooling, 400A (or thereabouts) without.


 Ahh, thanks. I guess I should have realized 1000A would cause enough power dissipation in the controller to require water cooling. I'm used to most systems using air cooling and didn't think about it.


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

michaeljayclark said:


> we need videos! if we could see all the controllers graphed on the same graph then a comparison, a fair one, can be made.


Ok, I'll bite. WHO should do that? You?



michaeljayclark said:


> id like to see a video when the motors are blown up mythbuster style!


Blowing up motors might look impressive, but it doesn't prove a shit since it's really just a question of i²t. Even a relatively small controller can blow up a motor as long as it's continuous current rating is higher than the motors, if you "cheat" by running the motor at rather low RPMs I bet even a Curtis 1231C could do it (depending on motor size of course).


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DavidDymaxion said:


> Regen is native to sepex motors. My Kostov does great regen with no controller! Right now I just have a big contactor. The motor wants to spin at a key speed of 1600 rpm at 48 Volts. Go down a hill, or downshift, (in other words, spin it faster than 1600 rpm) and it regens.
> ...


Right, so if you have a 144V battery pack you need to spin the motor at (144V/48V) * 1600 RPM = 4800 RPM to get any regenerative braking out of it without zorching the armature UNLESS you have a fully-controlled half-bridge for the armature controller and additional inductance to boot (ie - so the armature controller can be operated in boost mode).

Boost converters are inherently unstable, but that can be counteracted relatively easily in this application with good field current control. What can't be ignored, however, is that if there is a gross mismatch between battery pack voltage and "native" armature voltage then you need a boost converter, and, more than likely, won't be able to rely on the armature's inductance alone for it to work properly. This is strictly a gut-instinct assessment of the engineering problem, not the result of a worked-out analysis, so I could very well be completely wrong. I doubt that I am too far off the mark, however.

In other words, for a sepex controller/motor combo to provide any meaningful advantage over a series system _without costing more than an ACIM system_ it would have to be specified for a rather narrow range of battery pack voltages (and limited to very few motors).

If you need to resort to boost conversion in the armature circuit you have just doubled the complexity of the armature controller. The external inductor, if needed, would likely have to be at 10uH (probably closer to 50-100uH) and capable of supporting whatever the max armature current rating of the controller is. Without getting into the math here, that's a rather big (read: pricey) inductor.




michaeljayclark said:


> we need videos! if we could see all the controllers graphed on the same graph then a comparison, a fair one, can be made.
> 
> id like to see a video when the motors are blown up mythbuster style!


Firstly, we purposefully AVOID blowing up motors; it just happens sometimes. Secondly, no motor manufacturer has seen fit to honor the warranty in these cases (not that I blame them, really, as we were abusing the hell out of the motors). This does get to be awfully pricey awfully quickly, however.


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## michaeljayclark (Apr 3, 2008)

as far as a dyno, I mean the vehicle goes on a dyno and shows real world (almost) comparisons of the controllers in the same vehicle.

pricey, sure but mythbusters has a big enough budget to allow for such fun. they blew up a cement truck, pricey, YES!


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

michaeljayclark said:


> as far as a dyno, I mean the vehicle goes on a dyno and shows real world (almost) comparisons of the controllers in the same vehicle.


If you have the same vehicle, pack and motor the only thing that will differ is how much current the controllers can provide. We've been very open about exactly how much power there is in Soliton 1 and Junior, if you can get the same numbers from the other controllers you can do a fair comparison without having to fit them in a car and on a dyno.

It really isn't that much rocket science when comparing the controllers.


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## michaeljayclark (Apr 3, 2008)

we are planning to put the truck with a curtis on the dyno, show power curves etc.. then put a soliton jr in and do the comparison.

I have no doubt the s-10 truck will do MUCH better than a curtis, but seeing it on paper is more convincing.


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## GerhardRP (Nov 17, 2009)

michaeljayclark said:


> we are planning to put the truck with a curtis on the dyno, show power curves etc.. then put a soliton jr in and do the comparison.
> 
> I have no doubt the s-10 truck will do MUCH better than a curtis, but seeing it on paper is more convincing.


I hope you have good instrumentation. For a complete analysis I would like to see:

Battery voltage [also resting before and after run]
Battery current
Motor RPM
Motor voltage
Motor current
Wheel power

Gerhard


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## DavidDymaxion (Dec 1, 2008)

Nah, Tesseract, you are thinking too 2000's -- big silicon and big volts, big inductors, buck converting... I was thinking more old school.

Why do you need 144V? You could do 100 hp with 72 to 96 Volts. If you control the automatic to rev the motor between about 3000 and 5000 rpm then you have regen for all the upper gears. If you wanted a mellower idle speed and regen down to about 10 mph instead of 20 mph you could do voltage switching 96V to 48V when you shift to first gear.

Anyway, I'm not claiming elegant here, just cheap with regen!


Tesseract said:


> Right, so if you have a 144V battery pack you need to spin the motor at (144V/48V) * 1600 RPM = 4800 RPM to get any regenerative braking out of it without zorching the armature UNLESS you have a fully-controlled half-bridge for the armature controller and additional inductance to boot (ie - so the armature controller can be operated in boost mode).
> 
> Boost converters are inherently unstable, but that can be counteracted relatively easily in this application with good field current control. What can't be ignored, however, is that if there is a gross mismatch between battery pack voltage and "native" armature voltage then you need a boost converter, and, more than likely, won't be able to rely on the armature's inductance alone for it to work properly. This is strictly a gut-instinct assessment of the engineering problem, not the result of a worked-out analysis, so I could very well be completely wrong. I doubt that I am too far off the mark, however.
> 
> ...


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