DIY Open Source EV Charger - Page 37 - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum

MPaulHolmes · 10-22-2011, 12:04 PM

It's beautiful.

jackbauer · 10-29-2011, 08:34 AM

Its alive!!! Alive I say! Had two small problems. Seems my secondhand 3 phase bridge rectifer had a shorted diode. Fortunatly , I powered up with a light bulb in series with the mains supply (old habits die hard!) so no damage was done. Moral of that story : don't use cheap second hand parts. Next the display told me my mains bus was at -900vdc. I missed out two pins on the arduino and pcb. Once they were fitted it ran up no problem with 300w of light bulb load. Now running a 240v 2500w electric oven element as per the photos. I'll have some video and more photos later if it doesn't explode

MPaulHolmes · 10-29-2011, 02:04 PM

You are unstoppable. Don't you ever have to debug anything for more than 3 seconds?! Do you have any idea what the power factor is going to be?

jackbauer · 10-29-2011, 05:06 PM

Paul , i guess i'm just lucky! most thing never work first time for me

Power factor won't be great on this version but i'm working on a boost pfc frontend that will bring it up near unity. I'm also considering running it on 3 phase where pf is not so much of a concern.

I took it up to about 3kw later on today then had a mishap! The battery sensing resistor got hot enough to burn through the insulation of the ground sense wire. Bang. And yes i got it on tape Took out the igbt , driver chip and dc dc converter. Vaporised the sense resistor. Got the bits swapped out and its now up and running again.

Here is some video from earlier tests :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-xeX9GZ19s

I have to say I'm very impressed so far. No temp rise at all , very stable. I would like to identify the weird noise I observed on the scope in the video. Any ideas?

jackbauer · 10-29-2011, 07:08 PM

The big bang

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZZOGMek0S0

MPaulHolmes · 10-30-2011, 12:33 AM

That was awesome. There's something really fun about feeling like you almost died. Maybe fun's not the right word.

jackbauer · 10-31-2011, 06:18 AM

Seems my mistake was not mouting the sense resistor to the heatsink! doh

jackbauer · 11-07-2011, 05:11 PM

Quick update. Finally received a box of 2500w electric oven elements. Wired up two and powered up. The charger kinda looked at em and said "Whats this? an led?"