Elliot's Bicycle Service & Piano Bar

[Elliot]

Annnnnd...... The MOOP Map saaaaaays.... Solid Green. I am soooooooo fortunate to have wound up with such a fabulous crew!

[Ratty]

Congrats Elliott. That's not easy to do in a work space, on a heavy traffic corner. Take a bow.

[Elliot]

In the whole public area we lay down vinyl first, then rugs (to be replaced with canvas next year for less weight). And I have a magnetic sweeper. But it was the dedication of the other 23 camp members that really did it. No man is an island, even if he brazenly put his own name above the door.

[Molotov]

Elliot: Is it energy efficient to charge my 36 volt Lithium battery with the E-Bike supplied 110 volt charger connected to an inverter, which would be plugged into the 12 volt RV trailer battery? Sounds pretty lossy to me. The inverter is a modified sine wave output, so shouldn't cause any issue with charge voltage regulation.

So far I haven't been able to find a 12 volt battery charger with the same 36 volt+ output as the supplied charger so as to eliminate the middleman inverter.

My idea is to charge the trike battery overnight via the inverter-then recharge the RV battery during the day with a 100 watt solar panel.

My fallback to to just use my Honda generator like I did last year that worked just fine.

[Elliot]

Well, this is rather far outside my modest range of expertise. But I do know that any time you run electricity thru some sort of windings you will generate heat -- energy which began life as a portion of your precious electricity.

And I doubt we can benefit from the High Voltage Long Distance Power Transmission Lines phenomenon here.

So... at this point... I might want to investigate the quality of the 110VAC a bit further. You seem confident it will play nice -- let's hope so. I only know that the Honda EU-series puts out very correct sine wave AC.

There are people on this forum who are faaaaaar more knowledgeable in this field. Best of luck!

[Captain Goddammit]

Well you can't charge 36 volt batteries on a 12 volt source without stepping it up first, so your easiest solution is the inverter. Modified sine wave is pretty dirty AC, it'll probably work ok but pure sine wave is always better.
I don't like modified sine wave, too many things work poorly or not at all on it

[Popeye]

Regardless of the inverter and battery charger efficiency I doubt you can fully charge your 36V batteries from the 12V. Check the label on the batteries and it will give you their amp hour rating. On the 12V battery multiply the amp hour by 12 and on the 36V multiply the amp hour by 36. This will give you available power for each type of battery when new. I think you will need at least 160% and probably more of the available power of the 36V in the 12V battery to fully charge the 36V battery. That's a pretty big battery.
Is the 36V system one battery? or 3: 12V batteries in parallel?

Elliot: Is it energy efficient to charge my 36 volt Lithium battery with the E-Bike supplied 110 volt charger connected to an inverter, which would be plugged into the 12 volt RV trailer battery? Sounds pretty lossy to me. The inverter is a modified sine wave output, so shouldn't cause any issue with charge voltage regulation.

So far I haven't been able to find a 12 volt battery charger with the same 36 volt+ output as the supplied charger so as to eliminate the middleman inverter.

My idea is to charge the trike battery overnight via the inverter-then recharge the RV battery during the day with a 100 watt solar panel.

My fallback to to just use my Honda generator like I did last year that worked just fine.

[Molotov]

It's a sealed multicell battery from E-Bikes. Who knows what the internal landscape looks like.

I'm going to give the 12 volt to 110 volt output inverter to the e-bike battery charger to trike battery set-up this winter. If the concept is viable, if it recharges the trike battery at the same rate as connecting the e-bike charger directly to the generator, and if it doesn't drain my 12 volt battery to dangerously low voltages, I will look into a 100 watt solar panel before BRC 2016 to recharge the RV battery during daytime.

That's a lot of ifs-but won't know until I try it.

[Canoe]

"Modified Sine Wave" covers a lot of ground. As the Captain says, it can be pretty dirty. As in, fry your charger dirty. Read the inverters fine print...
A quality inverter should be both more robust and more efficient. And typically cost a lot more.

And you definitely want to use a matched charger with the lithium pack; you want to charge the "pack" without frying an individual cell. I'm hoping it has a good BMS in the pack managing charging, balancing and drawing.

[Elliot]

In other news, I have removed the link to our website from my signature. The website is simply defective. There is something terribly wrong with GoDaddy's Website Builder software that renders my text illegible against the background. So it looks like I will have to rebuild the site from scratch with WordPress. Don't know yet whether I will stay with GoDaddy as the host, since I don't know how difficult it would be to switch. But I can fiddle with this during winter.

[Molotov]

Thanks for all the advice on my proposed charger set-up. For now I think I will just stick with plugging the charger in my Honda gen set.

[Meat Hunter]

Sheik,

I have the same battery on my trike as you. For two years on the playa, I have no problem charging my battery from my Honda 2000i generator.

With a drained battery, I have plugged it in at 12:00 MN and by 8:00 AM it is fully charged, I am back on the road and good for another 28-30 miles.

[Captain Goddammit]

Thanks for all the advice on my proposed charger set-up. For now I think I will just stick with plugging the charger in my Honda gen set.

Really, that's hard to beat. Excellent way to go.

[Elliot]

Allrightythen.... That wraps up this thread -- the 2015 edition.

In a moment I will post the link to the 2016 thread right here. Please stand by.

Here is a link to the 2016 edition:
viewtopic.php?f=468&t=76519&p=1098486#p1098486
.

[Patsh]

Allrightythen.... That wraps up this thread -- the 2015 edition.
In a moment I will post the link to the 2016 thread right here. Please stand by.

Ha! Already found it, and am ready for any and all updates to this great thread and wonderful cause.

Thank you so much, Elliot, for All That You Do!!