Battery charging with intermittant power source

Scott Ronald · 2009-01-09T03:41:18+00:00

Hi I am wondering about the best way to charge lead acid batteries from a source that cannot be relied on for constant power such as wind, or solar. So far I am looking at 2 ways to do this:Cycle chargingFor this method I need a constant current, until the charge voltage is reached, then maintain the charge voltage for a time, or until the current drops to a minimum, after which I drop to a float voltage.The difficulty with this is that the charge cycle can be interrupted at any time, and might be restarted when the battery is partly or fully charged.FloatingFor this I would set the current limit to the maximum battery charging limit plus the battery's output current, and set the regulation voltage to the lead acid float voltage. From the reading I have done on this topic I believe that this will shorten the service life of the battery.Any suggestions as to how to do this?Scott

Jan 09, 2009 42 Replies

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Jan Panteltje 17 years ago

reference

comparator ----

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anyways.

And here is the opamp version without the discrete log tail pair. Did not have to change a thing :-) ftp://panteltje.com/pub/300_millivolt_ripple_opamp.gif

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