Nerd Department Major Alternator Design Improvement

Wild Bill 888 wrote:
It is a good idea, but the wording is too vague for me. If the starting point was 70% efficiency, a 10% increase is no big deal.

10% IS a big deal when there basically have been no improvement in alternator efficiency in many, MANY years.

You would be surprised how much the auto companies are willing to spend to get 1/2 MPG !

It is a good idea, but the wording is too vague for me. If the starting point was 70% efficiency, a 10% increase is no big deal.

If they said the overall efficiency is over 96 % from 50 to 90% of Rated power, that would be impressive.

Sounds like a switching power supply. MOSFETS (we are scraping some cobwebs off here) share well, don’t go into thermal runaway and have lower voltage drop than rectifiers. Sensitive to spurious base voltages but I’m guessing they have gotten better since the mid 80s. ;)

Chris Bryant wrote:
A 10% increase in efficiency is pretty extraordinary. If I understand correctly, they are basically doing active rectification, rather than passive- turning it on for the positive wave and off for negative (and vice versa).

True, but this requires some IMHO "tricky" synchronization !

A 10% increase in efficiency is pretty extraordinary. If I understand correctly, they are basically doing active rectification, rather than passive- turning it on for the positive wave and off for negative (and vice versa).