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Project Journals => User Journals => Steve => Topic started by: MadScientist267 on August 25, 2014, 09:50:53 pm
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Construction has officially begun!
There's a lot of things in the works, but this one is the only one that's made it to the fabrication stage so far.
It's not much to look at yet, but represents a starting point. 80A links for the classic, grid, and alternator sources, and a 175A master. The disconnect is rated 300A.
Also to go on this board is a disconnect for the classic, as well as the shunt for the WhizBang Jr (on order).
The bus bar is 1/2" type L copper pipe beaten into submission, and the substrate is 1/2 Corian countertop. It was chosen because of an outstanding response to a propane torch. It very slowly erodes, doesn't emit any fumes, and is pretty strong.
There's an additional layer of Corian below the main layer with wells drilled to accept the heads of the bolts (which yes, are a bit on the long side, I wasn't sure if I was going to need to stand anything off more than it is... they will be replaced soon with more appropriate lengths.)
[attachimg=1]
This will be mounted on a board that holds the inverter, grid charger, and classic, as well as the microinverter that will be used to drive the main lighting.
More as it comes...
Steve
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Everything starts somewhere..... and at least your starting at the safety end....... something I sometimes forget until it is too late.
.................oztules
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Speaking of bus bars .....the ones at work were 3 parallel ones each ones 1-1/2 inch thick by 10 inches wide and 8 ft long each cell ( about 50 in series got about 6 volts
and 80? amps on occasion on a hot muggy day sweaty head band on cap and forehead accidentally bumped your head on one if you forgot to duck in your head was projected a dark cave with a bunch of fireflies as you sat on your butt and looked around .....and wondered wha hoppen ?
quiet an experience ! Happened to quiet a few
DC ...that is .
Norm
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Everything starts somewhere..... and at least your starting at the safety end....... something I sometimes forget until it is too late.
.................oztules
I'm guilty of it too. It's easy to do when you're working out how functionality needs to come together. Things just kinda end up "sticking". In the van, this was the case more often than not, and while I managed to get some of the more obvious points covered, I'm a bit skittish to look at what I pull back apart. I'm sure I'm going to find a few things I really don't want to know about. It's bad enough with the things I'm already aware of hahaha :-X
Steve
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The more-or-less completed ground bus and + distribution panels...
[attachimg=1]
There's still some bolt trimming to do, but next step is putting it up on the actual power board and making up the cables.
Till then...
Steve
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Neat, tidy, and robust. A gearhead question, if I may, What is the chassis
for the van? Frame looks 3 to 5 ton?
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Not sure of the specifics other than empty wt is ~5400lb, gross is rated ~11000... ?
Hopefully that tells you what you wanted to know hehe
Steve
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That will take anything you want to put in it for sure.
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Steve, Good luck.....have a ton of fun !
Norm.
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Yummy!
[attachimg=1]
The power board is mounted! It's kinda pseudo temporary, as the foam insulation still needs to go in between it and the wall, but all that really entails is loosening 7 nuts and sliding it in.
The battery box is only mocked up, checking the lengths of the runs and such making sure everything still fits... it does. It's a little tight but not to the point of causing any problems.
The blast valve also is not actually installed in the lid, it's just sitting in it's approximate final location.
The big gap between the inverter and classic is the space reserved for an SMPS type grid charger with suitable attributes... I've got a supply on the way, we'll see how it goes.
Above the board is some of the goodies that will make up the big picture.
Anyway, it finally is beginning to look like something in here! ;D
Till next time...
Steve
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Today's progress fits in a couple categories, but here is where I'm putting it....
Finished up the wall outlets, got the DC run at least *to* the power board, and the AC is all but connected (just have to make up the ground in the lower left box).
Added the 120 stuff to the board, did preliminary tests on the inverter, sleeps, hunts, changes over just like it should.
I'd call today a success. Tomorrow I hope to be totally rid of the extension cord octopus I've got going in here and be working off the "house" wiring. There will still be the one cord where it's temporarily sourced, but other than that all up.
The mandatory pic:
[attachimg=1]
Till next time,
Steve
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Little update...
Lighting and fan/light control box is in and tests out. Had a switching hash issue that worried me briefly under unloaded conditions, but connecting the lights killed it, and the stereo is quiet once again.
The lights are 2 different circuits, and everything is wirelessly controlled. The LEDs are powered by a 100W MSW microinverter (small grey box below the control box).
Pic of system overall included as there's been some progress there as well.
Uncharacteristically short on this post, details will come but it's been a long day and I'm over it...
[attachimg=1]
[attachimg=2]
[attachimg=3]
Till next time...
Steve
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Well, not long after the above, I did some stress testing on several aspects of the system, and in the process became rather impressed as well as very disappointed all at nearly the same moment involving the same piece of equipment... :o
The Chinese power supply was labeled at 40A, purported foldback overload handling, and with that, seemed the part. And then some. During load testing, I was hitting 50A with only 0.4V drop at the rails. Should have been a clue in itself. But then I added another small load and *blip*... it hiccuped.
Satisfied however that it would handle it, the next morning I went to let it push directly into the batteries, and started hearing switching chaos coming from the box, and current was a modest 23A or so... I disappeared to the garage to get my morning soda and by the time I got back, it had died. Completely.
[attachimg=1]
I opened the case and as I suspected, the internal fuse had blown. So I disconnected it from everything, applied power, and bypassed the fuse. Quickly following, one of the switching transistors let all the magic smoke out with a trite bang...
[attachimg=2]
So much for foldback. Chinese vendors really need to investigate the contents of the English dictionary if they're going to sell things to the English speaking public.
So I decided to go old school on it. Hard core old school. An old APC 900 BackUPS unit cleared out for the transformer was the basis, along with a couple of unipolar bridges from a triplite supply that had a bad transformer itself.
Oversize the heatsink for the bridges, and some caps to limit primary current, and I had the basics going for a robust charging solution.
It needed to be controlled however, as the caps make the transformer behave essentially as a current source, so they needed to be rearranged to change modes. A simple scratch up with a relay placed a set of three 40uF 370VAC oil caps and arrange them in series or all in parallel with each other.
[attachimg=3]
The two modes provide ~1.5A and ~12.5A, plenty for the double set of batteries. When I go to double up the lead, the caps are already in the charger to be placed in parallel with the existing set. A couple jumpers and all set.
[attachimg=4]
There's a manual high/manual low/auto switch that I put on the front of the unit in place of the old test/mute switch. "Auto" is a little deceptive, there are no brains inside the charger itself. It receives a relay control signal from the classic that tells it which mode to be in based on battery voltage.
All in all, I'm happier with it, and while PF isn't great (0.6 typ), the entire thing was built with parts I had on hand (I confess, only the relays and override switch were new), so it "cost" me absolutely nothing and does the job well.
That little set back slowed progress elsewhere, but things have resumed... more as it comes.
Steve
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Something to be said for the good ole transformer... and it is a bummer that most transformers are designed for reasonably tight magnetics, so you generally need a ballast of some sort to stop it from going into orbit when the batts are flat, and running out of puff when near full... cap and chokes do this nicely
Looks the part from here.... much harder to break than the switchmode unit.
The poor .6 PF will not bother you in any way with grid charging ( they only charge for power usage ), but will labor up a generator a bit more than a switchmode with a pfc stage in it.... surprised the pf is not better with the caps in series with the primary... would have thought that would bring you closer to unity than that....
........oztules
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I think with a cap in parallel across the primary it may have brought it closer to unity, but I figured then there'd be a divider thing going on there and the math would toy with the outcome...
However, in the process of writing the above, it hit me that a cap in front of everything across the line might be a possibility... but as you pointed out, from grid it won't mean much of anything. The other problem is there's no more room really in the case, so a power factor cap would have to be external. I may try it, I have a 35uF hanging around still, might lay it across just to see what effect it has... as yes, a generator is always a possibility, and there has been talk of one. If I get a chance I'll try it out and report back what I find, maybe even run the math and find the right one and fix it if it works hehe
Till next time...
Steve
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Series or parallel. makes no difference, except you need to solve for voltage in the parallel equations, and current for the series equations to get the uf..... I'm guessing you have about 200va to get rid off.... using current at 1.25a and voltage of 115v. or around 144watts active, and 230 watts apparent for .6pf
or.... VARS= sqrt ( apparent power sqrd- active power sqrd ) or sqrt ( 230^2 - 144^2) = sqrt(53084-20736) or 180 VARS... close I guess
Parallel you solve via voltage. and series you solve via current. Two different values for the same job. Some applications favor the parallel, and some the series solution.
My seat of the pants guess is you maybe even have already solved it with 120uf in series with the primary.
............oztules
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Oz - strangely enough, it has approximately the same PF regardless of the configuration the caps are in (mode)... High is currently 120uF, low is 13.3uF... I'll get the other values here soon and post, maybe some sense can be made of it :o
In the update department, there's been some progress... with the charger in place and operational, I wanted a protection mechanism just in case a contact sticks or something in the mode relay...
[attachimg=1]
It's a simple zener based analog OV protect scheme with a lockout relay and [muted] piezo alarm that is set to trip at ~15.3V. It disconnects power to the charger, flashes the red LED above the red switch (next to the GFI), along with annoying the crap out of anyone nearby. It must be manually reset if triggered. Equalization in the classic is set at 15.1, so it theoretically should never go off, but is there just in case.
Then there's the volt meter... I like an at-a-glance from anywhere in the room indicator of basic vitals... I omitted the ammeter since the classic can display almost anything I need to know and like the van, eventually I'll "just know" what things are using.
[attachimg=2]
The front set of lights have been "installed" (they'll have to come down temporarily when the foam goes up). I did this now because I couldn't deal with trying to aim and use the single 10W spot anymore for working at night. The shadows made things impossible at best, and this is definitely much better. The rear set won't go up until the door has been reworked, same with the fan. Slated for today are doing the runs tho so that the wiring is ready.
[attachimg=3]
The cherry on top for this post is the 26" TV my parents gave to me from the den in the house. It's a little hungry on power and puts a nice ding in the juice budget, but makes a very nice addition for those times when the power is there and a small screen just won't do. It's mounted on a full axis swing arm, and next step is to work out the restraint system. Bungee is looking appetizing if I can figure out a simple way to equalize stress on it. That's still a little up in the air but I've got a solid idea I want to at least try.
[attachimg=4]
And what better than a Pink Floyd concert to demo it for the camera ;D
Until next time...
Steve
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Been a while...
Got a couple of pics to throw out here... Things on and around the power board had progressed to this...
[attachimg=1]
Total chaos... and it was getting to the point that paranoia may not have been paranoia any longer. With all of the basic concepts worked out to control things with the Raspberry Pi, it was time to clean it all up and make it permanent...
[attachimg=2]
I'm not nearly as nervous about a few things anymore :)
Till next time...
Steve
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Progress! I like progress.
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Me too Dave, me too. I'm not out of the woods yet, but at least the trees aren't so scary looking anymore :o
Steve
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Steve---when you clean up, you don't fool around. Looks
good.
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Hehe Thanks... I am bound and determined to have this come out looking a bit better than the van did... which, let's face it, isn't hard to do LOL It's mostly a problem of motivation at times ::)
Steve
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Little update... it's been like this for a while, but came up in IRC and I realized it's pretty far out of date... So here's a (rather messy but current) new pic. (Click for higher res)
[attach=1]
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Wiring is all tied down, (good practice in a vehicle). I am actually a bit jealous.
Maybe I should post a shop pic so you can see how much worse can it can be. :)
Or, maybe I shouldn't. ::)
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Hi Steve from the reading on your voltmeter it appears that you are using 12 volt batteries. I am wondering why you are then using an inverter to run the lights?
I used to use downlights until I came across strip LED's. They are so much better in my view.
I run, 12 volt DC for lights in my house, have done now for over 30 years. The LED's have been a wonderful boon, in light output plus reduced power consumption.
Your board definitely does look like something a mad scientist would cook up. I have also used the flattened pipe busbar technique. Works great as battery jumpers when paralleling banks.
Do you plan on travelling around the country in that truck powering small towns during blackouts or are you just living up to your moniker.
Cheerio
Good to see what you are up to
Pete
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Hehe Thanks BJ
Pete - There's actually 3 lighting systems in here, but none of them run off the main inverter. The "AC" lighting system is the closest, but runs on a dedicated 100W MSW that has near nil idle current, and is on 24/7. The lights are controlled via the raspberry pi and a radio scheme that operates small relays to turn them on and off.
The MSW scheme was used so that I could use both off the shelf LED lights, as well as run much thinner wire up and around to tie them in.
The other 2 systems are driven more directly by 12V, and the bench set is manual control only as a just-in-case.
As for driving around the country, well, that was the original plan, but it didn't play out that way, so I shuffle slightly up and down the VA coast more or less, in the general tidewater area.
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To chicken to give that rig a real test up here in Mn aka frozen hell?
(http://gallery.anotherpower.com/main.php/d/33466-1/chainsmokeingchicken.gif)
No seriously, it would be an interesting test of that heating system.. Or might have some means of giving it an umm.. boost..
Click image to see larger.
NOTE: These temps are in Fahrenheit
(http://gallery.anotherpower.com/main.php/d/33468-1/386173.jpg)