1000 Watt inverter to charge E-bike

[steveo]

Hey everyone,

I just picked up an inverter of a member from the forums, it is a 1000 watts inverter but could take up to 1200watts continous.. I tested it with a hairdryer at full power & heat pulling over 100amps!!!

However i'm having an issue! , When i hook it up to my chargers which are rated at 7.5amps each & are in series for 89v drawing i would say in the 700watts range the inverter tries to power everything to charge the bike which i've seen kick in for about 5 seconds .. however it goes into fault mode and cutts to power to the chargers.

Is there anything i'm missing here ? .. i'm not nearly maxing out the inverter .. however it cuts out ! .. At full load over 100amps .. I have about half volt loss in the wires .. the cut off of the inverter is 11.5v .. which i made sure i'm not hitting.


Here are a few photos! ..

any suggestions or help to make this work would be much appreciated

Yes, I've adjusted the pot .. but i noticed no difference.. I think the pot might be broken also.. I have to figure out the ohms or kohms rating to change it out! ..

-steveo

 

[fechter]

Try running just one charger off it and see what happens.

It might be that the chargers' input capacitors are causing current spikes high enough to trip the inverter.

You might try putting a long extension cord between the inverter and the chargers to add some resistance and see if that helps.

 

[karma]

steveo i never got around to it with all the projects on the go try replacing the pot. if you really look it over you will see the pot is defective its coming apart. i was going to add a external one. the pot adjusts the overload.


i got your controller thanks a few cut wires


cheers :wink:

 

[steveo]

steveo i never got around to it with all the projects on the go try replacing the pot. if you really look it over you will see the pot is defective its coming apart. i was going to add a external one. the pot adjusts the overload.


i got your controller thanks a few cut wires


cheers :wink:

Hey

do you have any idea what the value of the pot is? ... i hope i could get it to work and give me some reading ..

Try running just one charger off it and see what happens.

It might be that the chargers' input capacitors are causing current spikes high enough to trip the inverter.

You might try putting a long extension cord between the inverter and the chargers to add some resistance and see if that helps.

will try this tommorw!

-steveo

 

[jag]

Putting a switched power supply charger after a switched inverter usually works, but some things to pay attention to:

One or both of the inverter and charger may run hotter than usual.

The max power on the inverter might have to be de-rated. This max power is usually optimistic and will at best be achievable with simple resistive loads (e.g. incandesent lightbulbs, heaters, toaster etc)

Another thing to note: Most inverters output a modified sine with about 120V p-p, while landline is 120V rms true sine, which gives 170V p-p. Now any device which starts with a rectifier and capacitors is going to have a lower DC voltage to run off, hence a switched power supply or charger will have a higher duty cycle at any given load.

The neatest way to use an inverter to charge batteries would be to modify the inverter to be a charger. Add a charge control circuit to drive the inverter control and if needed modify the transformer with a tap after a suitable number of windings.

Now I already blew a 1000W Xantrex inverter fiddling with it so this project is on the backburner.

 

[steveo]

Hey everyone!

I removed the broken pot and ran 2 wires outside the inverter .. I left the wires disconnected where the pot was..

Fetchers idea with the extention cord worked!!!

now i have to figure out what resistance the pot was .. Its broken so i have no idea .... :S

-steveo

 

[karma]

the value should be printed on the top :wink:

or bottom.

 

[steveo]

the value should be printed on the top :wink:

or bottom.

i think is says 103 on the top of the pot... but i don't think it means anything...

-steveo

 

[PhoenixOSU]

You could just try testing it with an ohm meter? If that doesn't give sensible results just get a 5K pot, that should work ok, if not try something else like 10K or 1K, I doubt you will see under 1K and over 10K unless the circuit has a high input current (which would mean a smaller pot), or the system is trying to be uber efficient (meaning a higher value one).

 

[fechter]

103 means 10K.

 

[steveo]

103 means 10K.

Thanks Fechter..

by the way... how did you know that ?

-steveo

 

[SAM-Pilot]

The first two digits are the first two significant digits of the value and the third digit is the power of ten (the number of zeroes).
For example:
334 = 33 × 10,000 ohms = 330 kilohms
222 = 22 × 100 ohms = 2.2 kilohms
473 = 47 × 1,000 ohms = 47 kilohms
105 = 10 × 100,000 ohms = 1.0 megaohm

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistor#SMT_resistors

 

[paultrafalgar]

SAM-Pilot, tell us about your avatar. Is that your vehicle? Surely, it should be SSM (Surface-to-SurfaceMissile) not SAM (Surface-Air-Missile)