Mechanical battery charger - pedal power!
I loved the whole process of researching and learning about solar battery charging and installing my own system on our camper. I'm also an absolute bicycle junkie. Rather than buy more panels, I thi...
Forum Discussion
For me living with my 50% to 90% battery charge states I know it takes a DC Power source for three hours providing 14.4VDC with the capacity of 17-20AMPS DC Current for each battery being re-charged.
I guess a bicycle type power generator can provide this much current... Sounds like a lot of work getting after it for a three hour continuous work effort.
Now if you are going to use this idea to fire up a lamp for a couple of hours then this would work perhaps...
I would want to store the resulting energy into my battery banks so I can use then anytime I need the battery power. Battery charging science dictates how much DC VOLTAGE and DC Current you need to re-charge the batteries.
Just replacing a few watts for a short duration would most definitely not work for our off-road operations... I will not even think about starting a day/night battery operation unless I start out with at least a 90% battery charge state.
My daily goal is to use the batteries for all the things we want to run and not reduce the battery bank charge below the 50% charge state by 8AM each morning where we can have means to re-charge back up to the 90% charge state before we lose our resources including generator run times restrictions to charge batteries.
I experimented with several ideas like this back in my tent camping days with one method being to running an alternator with a water wheel in the nearby creek but could never get enough RPMs to make it work very good... Our goal back them was just create some lights to keep the bag full of D CELLS from getting all used up right away.
Todays LED lights kinda makes that an easy thing to do using D-CELLS for several days of use.
We run all kinds of flicker type LED lights all over our trailer at night. Excellent night lights with minimal current required to operate them.
Roy Ken
I guess a bicycle type power generator can provide this much current... Sounds like a lot of work getting after it for a three hour continuous work effort.
Now if you are going to use this idea to fire up a lamp for a couple of hours then this would work perhaps...
I would want to store the resulting energy into my battery banks so I can use then anytime I need the battery power. Battery charging science dictates how much DC VOLTAGE and DC Current you need to re-charge the batteries.
Just replacing a few watts for a short duration would most definitely not work for our off-road operations... I will not even think about starting a day/night battery operation unless I start out with at least a 90% battery charge state.
My daily goal is to use the batteries for all the things we want to run and not reduce the battery bank charge below the 50% charge state by 8AM each morning where we can have means to re-charge back up to the 90% charge state before we lose our resources including generator run times restrictions to charge batteries.
I experimented with several ideas like this back in my tent camping days with one method being to running an alternator with a water wheel in the nearby creek but could never get enough RPMs to make it work very good... Our goal back them was just create some lights to keep the bag full of D CELLS from getting all used up right away.
Todays LED lights kinda makes that an easy thing to do using D-CELLS for several days of use.
We run all kinds of flicker type LED lights all over our trailer at night. Excellent night lights with minimal current required to operate them.
Roy Ken
