DIY Volt Hybrid - Open ReVolt style

[bennelson]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

Ben, no one else even stood a chance.

Paul, your unwavering faith and confidence in my ability has made my day!

[Daox]

Woohoo, congrats Ben! Nicely done.

[todayican]

Good for you Ben! Well deserved :-D

[jackbauer]

Well done indeed

[The Rooster]

That's an awesome car. How powerful of a generator do you think you would need to actually be able to drive the car directly?

[bennelson]

I think a 7k generator would do it.

[ConnClark]

OMFG!!! Ford Pinto effect on steroids. Fuel does not belong in a passenger compartment. Please consider a roof rack. Also cars have engines behind firewalls for a reason ( and its not just to protect against fire).

[bennelson]

Yea!

Just won another contest with the same project!

Ok, not nearly as big, just a runner up.....
Still, I get a T-Shirt! Yea! Can never have enough t-shirts with logos on them!

Also, the prize includes a $50 gift certificate at Personal Factory (tm) - design, make & build your own custom products
What should I do with that? Make clean transportation related keychains? Laser cut the Open ReVolt logo into the controller cover!?!?

What ideas do you have!?

[todayican]

Lets start a home built hybrid club :-D

[bennelson]

This project hasn't been at the top of my list lately.

I sort of didn't do anything more on it since that contest, but being up at the MREA fair a couple weeks ago, I was throwing around a few ideas with other people.

The main problem is that there's a 15 amp outlet on this generator, yet it has a 30 AMP main output. That means that I am only getting half of what I potentially could out of it!

I looked on the web and found that 30 amp bridge rectifiers (to change AC output to DC) are cheap - like $10 or so!

Running 115v AC out to DC should give me somewhere in the neighborhood of 160V DC! That's MORE than enough voltage to charge my battery pack! In fact, I would have to figure out how to LOWER that voltage. (How about a 30 amp Open Revolt with the throttle PWM set so that my battery pack "sees" an appropriate voltage? That way it would be adjustable in case I change the number of batteries)

Hmmm.... Wait, how's the math work?
AC volts times 1.41 (bridge rectifiction) = DC volts, right?
115v AC x 1.41 = 162.15VDC (minus, what, a volt? for the bridge rectifier?) Call it 160VDC. 160V / 12 batteries = 13.33V per battery.

Could it be that simple? Run a generator through a bridge rectifier to a 144V battery pack for a simple hybrid?

Not sure how many amps I would pull while crusing at 144V, but I only need the AVERAGE to be 30 amps to be able to drive indefinately on the LP generator!?

I was also talking to an electronics friend. He said that the generator has an internal sensor that regulates the output voltage. If I was able to change that, I could send something OTHER than 115V AC out of the generator.

I think somebody mentioned doing something like that a while back, but I really didn't want to mess with the generator, and STILL don't know much about electronics.

I'm sort of liking the idea of a 144V Hybrid car though...