Charging a 48 volt battery with a 12 volt solar panel.

[Shadow]

I thought I would run this by some of the electrical gurus here.

I have a friend nearby that built a circuit board that he uses to charge his battery bank of 48 volts using a 12 volt solar panel or a 12 volt wind turbine as a charging source.

He says it changes to a different battery ever 30 seconds.It has worked flawless for well over a year(16 months). He also said this is very good for battery life.

Now I'm not sure how its made but he told me to stop over and he would help me build one. I said shouldnt you patent this thing?  He said  You can if you want.

I'm thinking this could be a huge thing! Like mounting a 12 volt solar panel on a golf cart to charge the 36 or 48 volt battery systems.

I'm not sure how many amps its capable I imagine its not alot but maybe has potential.

[Bruce S]

Shadow;
 I'm sure he's very correct in what he's doing. It sounds as if he's quite possibly using a circuit as a protective device that allows him to isolate the batteries from each other within the charging circuit.
Something  of that sort would be a good for people who have invested money in 12V systems. Not sure how much money could be made from it. Ghurd could help you with that his dump controller works day in / day out. He's quickly about to be come the next dozenaire.
He has placed his circuit schematic on his website, so if anyone doesn't want to purchase the kit, and has the spare parts lying around they can certainly build one up.
DavidHK did his with SMDs
However, if you build one and have the time to place a schematic up here we would all have a chance to look at how nice it is.
OR build one up and let us know how it does.

Cheers;
Bruce S
 

[ghurd]

I am very curious how he keeps them isolated.

Seems like a lot of spots for operator error, even if the operator built it.
A malfunction or failure could result in some spectacular quantities of smoke.

I doubt there would be much demand.  Certainly not enough to justify considering a defendable patent.
I doubt it is patentable anyway.  Pretty basic circuit, electrically speaking.
All the basics of one are here (and about 10K other places) and there are many other ways to do it,
http://www.electro-tech-online.com/electronic-projects-design-ideas-reviews/89708-schematic-5-led-chaser-circuit-using-555-chip.html

More amps simply means more money in the parts that do the isolating/switching.
G-

[zander1976]

Would he be charging multiple capacitors then releasing the charge into the batteries?

[joestue]

He's probably using 8 spst relays.

[BrianSmith]

You can't patent something once its been disclosed to the public domain.  FYI.

However it is a really clever idea for utilizing a 12V charging source for a 48V battery bank.  Of course you're only charging one of the 4 batteries at a time, so in the limiting case you would only be able to charge the batteries 1/4 of what a 48V source could deliver (and extract 1/4 as much charge from the batteries as well.)

[Bruce S]

You can't patent something once its been disclosed to the public domain.  FYI.

However it is a really clever idea for utilizing a 12V charging source for a 48V battery bank.  Of course you're only charging one of the 4 batteries at a time, so in the limiting case you would only be able to charge the batteries 1/4 of what a 48V source could deliver (and extract 1/4 as much charge from the batteries as well.)

You certainly can patent anything you'd like public domain or not, you merely need to prove you made it better and made enough changes and had the money to hire a patent lawyer.

IF all he had was a 12V solar panel and did not want to disassemble the battery packs for safety or convenience, then this circuit would be just what the doctor ordered. A hand-off setup would also be less likely to over-charge a 12V and using meters (doc Watson) would then allow him to know the power available.

Hope this help clear some up.
Bruce S