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Author Topic: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?  (Read 36288 times)

donx

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How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« on: December 14, 2011, 02:17:37 AM »
Hello Group, I've never taken an electronics course, I use to tinker with toys when my dad wouldn't buy the correct size batteries, and figured out electronics the old school way...

So I've seen videos of Joule thiefs and know how they work...

I am building an electric car, I will be buying Thundersky 100 amp hour cells, they are 3.2 volts each, and for my total pack I will purchase 90 units...   

90 x 3.2V @ 100 amp hour = 288V @ 100 ah,  28.8 kW battery pack...

Now here is the issue with using lithium batteries, if you ever drain them, they loose life, they are best used up until 40% is remaining... and then charge them back up.  This extends their life cycle 2000 cycles until 80%, and then 3000 cycles @ 70% then after that they become ... ?


I am going to spend thousands of dollars on these batteries has anyone ever made a joule thief that will for work for my application?  That is my question for you bright people... 

When I deplete my batteries to 50% can I turn on my joule thief circuit... or have it constantly on?  Can I charge with the joule thief connected? 

[if anybody would like to learn more about building Electric Vehicle simply go to EVTV.me, or youtube: GAVs EV]

I look forward to your responses,

Don

Magluvin

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Re: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2011, 02:34:44 AM »
Hey Don

Looks great.  Is that a 9in warp motor?  You should get good power with 288v.  ;]

Im doing an 85 fiero.  Im looking to use the warp9 also.

As for the JT, if there is an advantage to using it here, that would say that the JT is OU. Cant say that it is.

One advantage may be that you can use the power that the the batteries do hold, after a long life, to possibly get the car to perform as it did when the batteries were new, but for a shorter time than without the JT. As short of a time that it takes the batteries to reach the critical drain level.

What kind of performance do you think you will get from that motor at 288v?

Thanks for showing. ;]

Mags

donx

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Re: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2011, 06:22:45 AM »
To answer your question, yes that is a Warp 9, from a conversion that was recently finished.  I am using the Warp 11 HV with my conversion, waiting for the adapter plate to come.  My car weighs 5000 lbs and I am going to become the benchmark, nobody else I know has used one of those big boats that was created in 1985.

As per the JT, from wiki:

(Joule Thief) The circuit uses the self-oscillating properties of the blocking oscillator, to form an unregulated voltage boost converter. As with all power conversion technology, no energy is actually created by the circuit. Instead, the output voltage is increased at the expense of higher current draw on the input. As a result, the amount of power entering the circuit is the same as the amount leaving, minus the losses in the conversion process.

(Boost Converter)
Battery powered systems often stack cells in series to achieve higher voltage. However, sufficient stacking of cells is not possible in many high voltage applications due to lack of space. Boost converters can increase the voltage and reduce the number of cells. Two battery-powered applications that use boost converters are hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) and lighting systems.
The NHW20 model Toyota Prius HEV uses a 500 V motor. Without a boost converter, the Prius would need nearly 417 cells to power the motor. However, a Prius actually uses only 168 cells and boosts the battery voltage from 202 V to 500 V.

e2matrix

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Re: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2011, 12:14:01 AM »
I think your best idea would be to check in with Thane Heins who is a member here.  Here are a couple links to give you an idea of what he is doing.  Briefly he is manipulating magnetic fields so that instead of slowing down a generator (according to Lenz's law in physics) it speeds it up.  He already has plans for how this could be used in electric cars.  Take a look here:

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Perepiteia_Generator_by_Potential_Difference_Inc

and here:

http://www.overunity.com/7530/thane-heins-perepiteia-replications/ 

Here is one of his relevant videos - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3JVjbXOssQ

His member name here is CRANKYPants   

Moab

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Re: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2011, 01:50:31 AM »
for what its worth big JTs are dangerous, and wont give the amperage your going to need for your DC motors. the voltage would be there but when you start pushing the kind of amps your looking at you will likely find the JT lust wont handle it for ya and youll emd up with a bunch of smoldering copper,


but hey if ya got the cash give it a try.


thats my .02 

hartiberlin

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Re: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2011, 12:30:24 PM »
Better go with standard NiMH Batteries.
These you can use to charge up with a big sized Joule Thief.
Li-Ion batteries will overcharge and could blow up.
They don´t like the high voltage pulses.

But with NiMH it is no problem.
Looking forward to see your implementation.

Regards, Stefan.

acmefixer

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Re: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« Reply #6 on: December 26, 2011, 10:42:33 PM »
Hello Group, I've never taken an electronics course, I use to tinker with toys when my dad wouldn't buy the correct size batteries, and figured out electronics the old school way...

So I've seen videos of Joule thiefs and know how they work...

I am building an electric car, I will be buying Thundersky 100 amp hour cells, they are 3.2 volts each, and for my total pack I will purchase 90 units...   

90 x 3.2V @ 100 amp hour = 288V @ 100 ah,  28.8 kW battery pack...

Now here is the issue with using lithium batteries, if you ever drain them, they loose life, they are best used up until 40% is remaining... and then charge them back up.  This extends their life cycle 2000 cycles until 80%, and then 3000 cycles @ 70% then after that they become ... ?


I am going to spend thousands of dollars on these batteries has anyone ever made a joule thief that will for work for my application?  That is my question for you bright people... 

When I deplete my batteries to 50% can I turn on my joule thief circuit... or have it constantly on?  Can I charge with the joule thief connected? 

[if anybody would like to learn more about building Electric Vehicle simply go to EVTV.me, or youtube: GAVs EV]

I look forward to your responses,

Don

This kind of power demands a controller made for that purpose.  I've seen the insides of a hybrid controller, and they use copper bus bars the width of 2 to 3 cm and thickness of 1 cm, so we are talking about huge currents.  You would have to have a thousand transistors to get a Joule Thief to handle that much current.  The Joule Thief is for AA cells, so you can forget about using that.

acmefixer

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Re: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« Reply #7 on: December 26, 2011, 10:57:36 PM »
The Wikipedia article on Joule Thief is a mish-mash of errors, changes, attempts at corrections, but it's a mess.  Many others have added their "view" and it's just like the blind men and the elephant: one blind guy feels the tail and says this elephant is like a rope, another feels the trunk and says it's like a snake, another feels the leg and says it's a tree, etc. If you want to find out how bad it is, click on the discussion tab and read as much as you can stomach.  Better yet, just forget it.

Also, the conventional Joule Thief is lucky if it gets 67 percent efficient, usually it's somewhere between 50 and 70 percent.  The boost converters used in high power applications have a bank of IGBTs or high current MOSFETs and are designed to handle very high currents.  You need to have huge copper bus bars to handle that kind of power.  Remember that 1 horsepower is 0.746 kW, so if you have a 50 HP motor, that's 37 thousand watts!! 


To answer your question, yes that is a Warp 9, from a conversion that was recently finished.  I am using the Warp 11 HV with my conversion, waiting for the adapter plate to come.  My car weighs 5000 lbs and I am going to become the benchmark, nobody else I know has used one of those big boats that was created in 1985.

As per the JT, from wiki:

(Joule Thief) The circuit uses the self-oscillating properties of the blocking oscillator, to form an unregulated voltage boost converter. As with all power conversion technology, no energy is actually created by the circuit. Instead, the output voltage is increased at the expense of higher current draw on the input. As a result, the amount of power entering the circuit is the same as the amount leaving, minus the losses in the conversion process.

(Boost Converter)
Battery powered systems often stack cells in series to achieve higher voltage. However, sufficient stacking of cells is not possible in many high voltage applications due to lack of space. Boost converters can increase the voltage and reduce the number of cells. Two battery-powered applications that use boost converters are hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) and lighting systems.
The NHW20 model Toyota Prius HEV uses a 500 V motor. Without a boost converter, the Prius would need nearly 417 cells to power the motor. However, a Prius actually uses only 168 cells and boosts the battery voltage from 202 V to 500 V.

Pirate88179

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Re: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« Reply #8 on: December 27, 2011, 12:21:45 AM »
The Wikipedia article on Joule Thief is a mish-mash of errors, changes, attempts at corrections, but it's a mess.  Many others have added their "view" and it's just like the blind men and the elephant: one blind guy feels the tail and says this elephant is like a rope, another feels the trunk and says it's like a snake, another feels the leg and says it's a tree, etc. If you want to find out how bad it is, click on the discussion tab and read as much as you can stomach.  Better yet, just forget it.

Also, the conventional Joule Thief is lucky if it gets 67 percent efficient, usually it's somewhere between 50 and 70 percent.  The boost converters used in high power applications have a bank of IGBTs or high current MOSFETs and are designed to handle very high currents.  You need to have huge copper bus bars to handle that kind of power.  Remember that 1 horsepower is 0.746 kW, so if you have a 50 HP motor, that's 37 thousand watts!!

I agree with most of what you say except for the efficiency of the JT.  We have seen many at well over 90% and some the data is still being collected (Like Dr. Jones's  8 times more out than in JT circuit)  Gadgetmall's circuit was tested at about 99%.  Most of my circuits are very efficient as well.  The problem with the catch all term joule thief, is that it now encompasses many similar but different circuits.  To me, it has always been much more than a simple blocking oscillator.

Bill

acmefixer

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Re: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« Reply #9 on: December 27, 2011, 01:32:01 AM »
I agree with most of what you say except for the efficiency of the JT.  We have seen many at well over 90% and some the data is still being collected (Like Dr. Jones's  8 times more out than in JT circuit)  Gadgetmall's circuit was tested at about 99%.  Most of my circuits are very efficient as well.  The problem with the catch all term joule thief, is that it now encompasses many similar but different circuits.  To me, it has always been much more than a simple blocking oscillator.

Bill

I was following Jones' experiments a the early stage, but I gave up after awhile, there was just too much noise (other comments, etc.) to make any sense. I don't know what the final outcome was.  All I know is that the circuit he showed early on was not a JT in that it used the emitter for driving the load.  I have had efficiencies in the low 90's with my Supercharged JT, but never anything higher than 70s with a conventional JT. This link is to an "apples to apples" comparison using a luxmeter for measuring actual light output.

BTW, I have my doubts when I measure the LED current using a "CSR" resistor.  That is why I bought and used the luxmeter.  If I can measure for example 1000 lux for 20 mA pure DC through the LED, then if I measure 20 mA pulsed DC and get 1000 lux, I know that the pulsed current measured by the meter is accurate.  I tried this and I didn't get what I thought I would.  The meter measured higher with the pulsed DC.  Even so, the pulsed DC measurement is still a good relative measurement.

saintsnick

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Re: How to build a GIGANTIC Joule theif for 288 V DC electric car?
« Reply #10 on: December 27, 2012, 04:39:38 AM »
Copied my own text from a diferent thread... What your talking about has been done and is proven. Look up Bob Boyce. He used a programable mosfet module running on a 12v battery, programed to get high frequency narrow 12v pulses of curent through the module FET's to a hand wound LARGE torroid ferrite transformer. The narrow switched pulses flow through the primay winding, magnetizing the whole torroid. When the pulse switches off, the magnetism collapses, inducing a HV spike (back EMF), which he rectifies with diodes and  sends right back into the batttery. The cycle repeates.  A volt meter shows the large batery voltage rising as you watch the video. The battery powered a small toy electric jeep which his daughter was photographed driving around. Interestingly, the programable FET module is probably not needed.  Joule ringer primary... ie... 2n2955 self oscillating with the JR primary is probably all you need to do the exact same thing, without a module, nor any programing. I believe it might work because JT self oscillation is fairly fast, and fast = narow. Seems to me, the bigger the ferrite core, the bigger the output. Dont be confused by Bob. Bob Boyce used 3 parallel paths of current. Joule ringer only has one path, but works the same way. Then again, more parallel paths, more output? What ever works best, you would probably need one Joule Ringer for each Battery in the electric car. But they're cheap enough to build. 
 
-Saintsnick