Hi Void,
I would hope not given their electrical isolation spec!
In regards to your experiment, as you will probably appreciate it is very unlikely that even if you use the same battery, intervals between tests will alter results. This is why, if you recall, that JB best practice test guidelines were to always condition LA batteries over a number of cycles before doing a number of load tests (at least 10), then averaging the results on the number of load tests conducted. Comparing results with long time intervals between them, despite using identical test setups, when using LA batteries, especially SLABS, is not good science in my opinion.
Hi Hoppy. Thanks for the feedback. Regarding the SLA's, perhaps, but sometimes you just have to
be practical however. Little SLA batteries are very convenient for doing bench testing where you
want to try to feed back energy from the circuit being driven back to the supply battery. I have been
testing with these same SLA batteries for several years now and I know their characteristics quite well now
at different current draws. Even with very small current draws these small 5AH SLA batteries
will always drop from their rest voltage down to about 12.9V at least within about an hour or so, if not quicker,
depending on the exact current draw, and then continue to fall from there at a slower rate. I do know
for sure that the SLA battery I am testing with holding at 13.20V for over 12 hours now with a
measured current draw of just below 1.5 mA on an analog ammeter with a 10mA full scale, is at least out
of the ordinary for these batteries, and I have done a lot of testing over the last few years with these same batteries.
At any rate I am not attempting to draw any sort of conclusions at all yet, as I have mentioned. I am currently
looking for possible mundane sources of 'extra energy' into my test setup that uses opto isolated mosfets , so that is
why I was asking for opinions on the the opto isolators, for example.
Something else to keep in mind here about lead acid batteries is that their charge and discharge efficiencies
are apparently rated at around 50% to 90%, depending on the exact lead acid battery type and how new the
lead acid battery is, and the operating conditions, etc., so when current is drawn from a LA battery there
is energy loss in the internal resistance in the battery, and energy is also lost when charging a LA battery as well.
I think it is not overstepping too much to say that a 5AH lead acid battery holding at 13.20V after 12 hours with a
measured average current draw of about 1.5 mA isn't too bad, even if it has nothing to do with OU, which
the chances are. At any rate, it will be interesting to see if this current test setup continues to hold at 13.20V
for much longer, or if it starts to fall off soon.
Hi Belfior:
I have an open mind. I have actually considered and looked into many things over the last several years.
Don Smith was the first I personally came across to throw around ideas about drawing in energy from the ambient.
I have tested many different approaches over the years just to get a better understanding of how different
arrangements really perform in practice. Often, certain approaches outlined in forums like this don't work at all
as claimed when you actually test them and put them through their paces. The main problem is this, all circuit
components have losses. Batteries have internal resistance as well so batteries have losses just from drawing
current from a battery. Capacitors, diodes, and transformers and even air core coils and have losses, as well
as active devices like transistors as well. Loads connected to the secondary of a transformer reflect back to the
primary side for all intents and purposes, and thus increase the overall power consumption. This is why some people
have tried to build specially wound 'lenzless' transformer designs, but from what I have seen that approach
has not proven successful, at least from what I have seen. Lenz law describes why a coil or wire acts as a coil
or wire, so beating Lenz law seems to not make sense to me. To achieve OU, we have to overcome all sorts of
losses in our circuit setups, so the only way I can see that happening is to be able to draw in extra energy from
outside your test setup. This would have to be quite considerable to overcome all circuit losses in a typical scenario
I think. It is therefore not an easy task by any means, IMO.
P.S. An update on my test setup. Just measured the battery voltage and it has now finally dropped 0.01V
down to 13.19V. Not bad I think considering the battery's unloaded rest voltage after charging and then sitting for
a while was around 13.28V. This is the best results I have had with this type of setup so far, so I seem
to at least be making some small improvements in overall efficiency.

Based on these latest results I
think it is worth my putting in more effort to try to improve performance further and to try to scale it
up to higher power. I typically only have some time on weekends lately to work on it, so it will
move along slowly. It's a time consuming process... It can take a lot of thinking and work and testing, etc.
just to make tiny gains in efficiency. Not saying anything at all about OU, just working on trying to make
improvements to the overall efficiency.