New Computer Fund

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Battery Charger

I have a buddy with an electric golf cart.  During a minor storm surge of a couple of meters, his golf cart battery charger died a salty death.  I wanted to borrow his bright red and chrome golf cart for the day to hit on some near geriatric babes, but the batteries were nearly dead.  What's a guy to do?

The golf cart has a 48V bank of 8 6-Volts deep cycle batteries.  I have a 12 Volt - 20 amp charger and some time to kill.  Four hours later, after charging 4 12-Volt banks of 2 each 6 Volt batteries I have a fully charged bright 48V, red and chrome golf cart and a less than geriatric babe for company.  The "average" voltage of the charger never exceeded 14.7 Volts.

It is not the voltage but how you apply it.

I didn't have to discovery any new laws of physics to get a higher useful voltage than I had available, but I couldn't make the 48V bright red and chrome golf cart a souped up 96V bright red and chrome golf cart without lots of cash.  The capacity of the existing battery bank limits the soup upiness of the project.

It took me four hours to get the full charge.  One pair of batteries took nearly two hours of that time and I had to add water to fill a couple of cells in those batteries.  The other three banks took less time.  After my hot date.  My buddy plugs in his thought to be dead 48V battery charger and discovers that it was never dead.  Imagine that.

What does this have to do with physics or a Tale of Two Greenhouses?

No comments:

Post a Comment