PD or Iota for my upgrade?
I'm thinking about a converter and battery upgrade. The batteries will be wet cell lead acid 6 volt Possible T-105s or the 230AH, EGC2 from Sam's club. I'll probably go for four. (Does nayone have...
Forum Discussion
Thanks for the comments and suggestions. The generator is a 4KW Onan. I'm going to get a DC current meter or a Trimetric or similar current monitor to check output.
I spent some time reviewing the circuit diagram of the PD from the patents. I was surprised at how closely the patent shows the PD. It's nearly identical to the design being sold, all the way down to resistor values.
The fundamental operation is relatively simple. There are lots of bells and whistles, but ignoring those, the system takes the AC voltage and runs it through a full wave bridge to produce 170VDC unregulated.
It takes that voltage and chops it, sending the chopped voltage through a center tapped transformer to produce lower voltage AC that is sent through another bridge circuit to rectify back to DC and supply the output.
The chopping is controlled by a Unitrode chip that has inputs from the output voltage and the output current. If the current gets too high, it cuts the output. If voltage gets too high, it does the same. It looks like it will be very easy to readjust the output voltage or the maximum output current to values that match the specs for my batteries.
That's why I'm thinking about the large PD9280, even if I decide to go with smaller batteries initially. I can just limit the current to whatever I want.
It sounds like the suggestions here match what I've been reading in the other posts from my research. The Iota may have an advantage for short cables, which I will be using, but I suspect that advantage comes mostly from the higher charging voltage it uses, and I can easily adjust the PD to that higher voltage if i want to. Increasing from 14.4 to 14.8, which is the highest I would go, is less than a 3% increase.
Again, thanks for the comments.
I spent some time reviewing the circuit diagram of the PD from the patents. I was surprised at how closely the patent shows the PD. It's nearly identical to the design being sold, all the way down to resistor values.
The fundamental operation is relatively simple. There are lots of bells and whistles, but ignoring those, the system takes the AC voltage and runs it through a full wave bridge to produce 170VDC unregulated.
It takes that voltage and chops it, sending the chopped voltage through a center tapped transformer to produce lower voltage AC that is sent through another bridge circuit to rectify back to DC and supply the output.
The chopping is controlled by a Unitrode chip that has inputs from the output voltage and the output current. If the current gets too high, it cuts the output. If voltage gets too high, it does the same. It looks like it will be very easy to readjust the output voltage or the maximum output current to values that match the specs for my batteries.
That's why I'm thinking about the large PD9280, even if I decide to go with smaller batteries initially. I can just limit the current to whatever I want.
It sounds like the suggestions here match what I've been reading in the other posts from my research. The Iota may have an advantage for short cables, which I will be using, but I suspect that advantage comes mostly from the higher charging voltage it uses, and I can easily adjust the PD to that higher voltage if i want to. Increasing from 14.4 to 14.8, which is the highest I would go, is less than a 3% increase.
Again, thanks for the comments.
