As some of you already know ibedonc and I have been working on a Wind and Solar Booster kit, the W-S Booster. I have tested it enough to pass on some information.
Well, as often happens to me, anyway I ran into some test equipment problems as well as my personal life getting in the way of my hobby. I did, however, manage to get some testing of the circuit done.
Conversion efficiency is consistently above 70% and I have seen as high as 92%. I will call it 70% to be on the safe side. Our intent is to provide solid, reproducible results. We would much rather have you find that this device performs better than expected rather than the other way around.
In one series of battery charging tests an average input voltage of 6.8 VDC at 2.8 amps input [19.1 watts] I was getting 12.9 VDC and 1.1 amps out which works out to 74% efficient plus a bit charging batteries from a DC power supply. I saw similar results charging from my Tape Drive Motor wind mill when it could make 8 VDC and between 8 and 15 watts out of the mill. Somewhat silly low power but I was getting some charging from a source that could not do it alone.
In another test while driving a 25 watt Compact Floro Light I had 12.16 volts and 2.75 amps for 33.44 watts input with an output of 102.8 VDC at .3 amps for 30.84 watts with 92% efficiency which was the highest efficiency I saw from driving CFL lights. I am sure that the higher your output voltage is set the better the efficiency you will see because the logic supply is using the same half watt or so regardless of the output.
Just wanted to get this posted before i forgot the information and to let folks know that the project is still moving forward and will probably be offering the kits soon. Maybe Don will post a comment to let folks know when they can get these kits if they want one.
All in all I think it is a pretty solid design and can be quite useful up to around 600 watts of throughput.
Possible uses:
Charge your high voltage battery bank from lower voltage sources.
Charge your low voltage battery bank from a higher voltage source.
Drive DC motors from any DC voltage source regardless of the voltages.
Drive common 120 VAC CFL lights from any DC source.
And probably many others I have not thought of.
Cheers.
TomW
