Hello all, I am just finishing my charger controller for my electric vehicle. I want to power a 240VAC coil relay with the power of the pack (312VDC nominal). The resistance of the coil is 3600 ohms and is rated at 4.0VA. This is a P&B T92 relay and the datasheet says it can take 75-120% of the rated coil voltage.
What would be the DC voltage range in which I could drive this relay? Since I do not know how to convert a AC rating to DC, I am simply looking at the DC rated coils and guessing that the nominal value is
70VDC, for a range from 52V to 88VDC.
Given that my lowest pack voltage would be around 312VDC, and my highest pack voltage would be approx 380V (when charging at 4deg C in the winter), I think I can use a voltage divider circuit, but not sure if this is too wide of a range.
If the current of the relay at 70 V / 3600 Ohms = 0.020 A, then power
1.4W
The resistor I would need is (380V-70V) / 0.020 A = 15.5 k Ohms and a power of
Hi, Don. Not really. AC coils have lower resistance than DC for a given relay voltage, and are constructed differently. You'll probably smoke the coil.
There's a reason why HV DC relays are becoming rare. Most automation stuff has a lower DC or AC voltage for the control circuitry. It's a safety issue.
One thing you might want to do is making or buying a DC-DC converter to give you a 24VDC supply for the control circuitry. That will allow you to use the T92S11D22-24 , a 24VDC DPDT T92 series relay. They're great, I've used them many times for automation and lab projects.
I think your 70 V is a little high based on the following:
Rated VA = 4 Rated Voltage = 240 AC
So, the rated current is 4/240 or .0167 amps.
This means the coil is capable of dissipating .0167 * .0167 * 3600 = 1 W without overheating. The maximum voltage you should apply is sqrt(1 * 3600) or 60 VDC.
The coil might be able to take more than this, but we don't know that.
You may find that the armature will not pull in at that voltage but, if it does, the contact pressure may not be high enough. You can try it and see. I ran that test many years ago but I no longer remember the outcome.
Thanks for the help guys. Here is the situation. The charger I have for my electric vehicle has one major flaw. If no output is connected it will blow circuitry. I looked for other chargers but there are none, which can charge up to 400V at 30A which cost around $2000.
Considering that I have already purchased the charger, and I definitely want to protect it from blowing up, I would like to develop a sense circuit which will ensure that no input power can be supplied if it is not connected to a pack.
What comes to mind is the simple solution of a relay. But then again it does not sound so simple.
120 Volts DC. The coil works at four volt-amps which is very near the actual power assumed to be four watts. There is a slight error here because of the unknown phase angle but not much because the DC will not dissipate in the copper shorting ring as AC will. Four watts is not excessive for a small relay coil. V = sqr(3600 * 4) = 120 VDC. Bob
Actually, Bob, you are correct that the phase angle is unknown. But, if there is a phase angle, then the power in the coil is not equal to the specified VA of 4 since they are related by the cosine of the phase angle. That is, P(ower) = VA * cos(angle).
If the rated VA is 4 and the rated voltage is 240, then the rated current is I = VA/E which is 4/240 or 16.67 mA. The coil resistance is specified at
3600 ohms. This means that the rated coil dissipation is P = I * I * R which is .01667 * .01667 * 3600 or 1 watt.
Also, we know that applying 240 volts results in only 16.67 mA through the
3600 ohm resistor. Well, that's not enough resistance to limit the current to 16.67 mA so there must be additional impedance involved and we can guess that the coil has indctive reactance. How much?
We need an impedance of Z = E/I such that with 240 volts applied, the current is 16.67 mA. So Z = 240/.01667 or 14,400 ohms. We only have 3600 ohms of resistance so the rest is made up of inductance. The impedance of a series RL is Z = sqrt(X * X + R * R). We can find the X (hence the inductance) with algebra. X = sqrt(Z * Z - R * R). So X must be 13,943 ohms.
This gives us the impedance of the relay. It is 3600 + j13,943. In polar notation, the Z is therefore 14,400 at an angle of +75.523 degrees (arccos(3600/13943)). The current will lag the voltage by 75.523 degrees. Notice that the cosine of 75.523 degrees is .25 which brings us back to my original equation that the power in the power is p = .25 * 4 or 1 watt.
Hence, it is important to limit the DC value so that the dissipation of 1 watt is not exceeded. This will require a voltage of not more than E = sqrt(p * r) which is sqrt(1 * 3600) or 60 VDC.
Hi, Don. Back in days of yore (1980s), before Potter&Brumfield T92s ruled the earth, you would use a Potter&Brumfield PRD relay to switch that kind of current. They've got the same contacts, but are open frame relays with ugly black bakelite bodies. They still make 'em with
110VDC coils, and that could provide one possible solution to your problem -- an AC coil won't cut it here.
I'm guessing that your "battery charger" is a switching power supply with a series resistor and an in-line fuse. That would explain the "blow up on no load" phenomenon. But I'm not too sure about the 30 amp business. Let's see: 312V times 30 A = 9630 watts at 100% efficiency. Don't think that's something you're just going to plug into a 120VAC outlet, unless you've got an 80 amp service line somewhere. Or 240VAC times 40 amps, for that matter.
But I'm hearing you say you don't want to turn on the charger, even by accident, unless there's a battery installed in the go-cart. If your charger is a simple one that applies a higher voltage than the battery voltage, and then either senses current or uses a timer to determine end of charge, or just stays on trickle charge until you unplug it, you might want to try this circuit (view in fixed font or M$ Notepad):
I've made some assumptions here, which means that you can feel free to modify things as you choose. I've assumed your battery charger is a simple cheapie which applies a voltage higher than the battery voltage, and either has a timer or measures current to end charge, or turns into a trickle charger which can be left on until you're ready to use the go-cart. This won't work for a charger that uses battery voltage sensing. However, it shouldn't blow anything up, either. I've also assumed that, under normal circumstances, charging current can't exceed
20A or so. (Make sure to heat sink the diode -- figure 1 watt per amp of charging current. The specified diode is probably overkill.) Another assumption is that you can turn on your charger with the set of AUX contacts. That may mean leaving the charger ON/OFF switch in the ON position, and just turning it on by switching on line voltage to the charger. Either that or, possibly, you can finagle the wires from the ON/OFF switch out to the auxillary contacts. Your call. I'm assuming, of course, that you're using the appropriate HV safety precautions. A
312V battery can be fatal if handled improperly. If you don't know what you're doing, don't do it. If you don't understand what's going on here well enough to double-check the above and be confident it's right, don't do it, either.
You can see from the circuit action that you have to press pushbutton SW1 to start the charge cycle. If there's no battery, the relay won't turn on. If the relay doesn't turn on, your charger won't turn on. But when the charger does turn on, it also keeps the relay on, and it will stay on until the charger is unplugged or otherwise turned off. You have to keep the pushbutton depressed until the charger is up and running.
A simpler circuit might be possible at the cost of leaving the relay on after the charge cycle is complete, but that's a wasted 3.6 watts which will tend to discharge the battery. I would guess one big diode is worth it.
--
If you run the relay on DC, the losses in the shorting ring vanish
and, it seems to me, that in considering the _impedance_ of the coil
while considering P&B's _Volt-Ampere_ rating for the coil he was
right.
That's all very nice but I doubt that one watt would pull the relay in unless it is a very small relay. A check of the PB T92 series shows a power of about 1.7 watts which means both of us are wrong, me too high, you too low. My calulations were an off the cuff estimation and yours, while more exact, neglected the losses in the shorting ring, a feature of AC relays. This loss will shift the phase ange more resistive than you have it and increase the dissipation. I stand corrected, 78 vdc should do it. I think you said near that above. Bob
I did not bother to address your link, should I? Yes the DC losses vanish in the shorting ring, but the 1.7 watts is a DC rating, pure resistive for a 12 or 28 volt coil. The ring losses explain, sort of, the lower power rating calculated at one watt by phase angle and VA, they have nothing to do with the DC rating only explain why the power number is low.
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