Anyone considering going all electric propulsion in the salty ocean environment is being naive. The IC and computer components will corrode unless sealed circuit board tech, like in military, automotive ECUs and even in residential clothes dryers is used. That makes repair maintenance difficult....unless spare sealed circuit boards can be easily swapped out.
Oh man are you preaching to the choir here. I get so frustrated - we are doing what I feel is cutting edge stuff, and it requires components and tools that you simply cannot buy anywhere else. Perfect example that blew me away last week. We have a lead on making drop-in replacements for 8D batteries. We hadn't really planned to go this route, but why not? So I start looking for empty 8D battery cases (note - not an 8D battery BOX, of which you can find many, that is what the 8D case will go into for "protection").computer compenent
A bunch on ebay, but every single one is either from China or being distributed by someone who got it from China.
Do a web search - there simply aren't any US companies making these plastic boxes. Why the heck not? In the end I ordered some from appbattery.com, and will twiddle my thumbs for the next month until they get here.
Chargers, balancing circuits, cell protection circuits... ALL of this stuff, only from China.
It makes me think that we are way more dependent than most realize!
Great ideas below, by the way, we will noodle on them and make some comments :)
Jeff LaCoursieres/v Angels Quest
On 4/30/21 11:38 AM, Carsten via groups.io wrote:
Interesting, Jeff !12V sucked from 48V, without an inverter ! Thumbs up !
In your intended setup of your battery banks, do you use 1 common BMS, or 1 on each (48V) battery ?How about redundancy, if a common BMS fails ? (= no power at all.)
Another thing, how about making the motor wattage output adjustable, so it is possible to use eg. 96V for a burst mode ? Many 48V motors can be powered by 96V (or higher).
I assume that the wiring can handle that. Making two sets of banks 48V, to be serial connected to 96V.The short "event" should of course be managed by the BMS/power management system.
i'm wondering if this new Li-battery technology is becoming a little too advanced for sailing now...Safety first, when out on the water, right ? We can't just park the boat at the curb and call a cab when out on the blue.
To be true, things made in China is not my cup of tea, but in these days, unfortunately simply unavoidable !
I was a supervisor in China for several years, and know how they make things, and all of QC is not like in the West.Buy a ME1616 electromotor. Made in China, then sold in the West.
Buy yourself a german or US car. Half of the smaller parts in it are made in China by now.
Company supervisors are not in China now, because of the Made in China virus.Who wants to spend 2-4 weeks in quarantine to go for an inspection ??
Who's checking the quality now ?
However, I believe that new, checked, LiFePO4 batteries will last my sailing life out, but the electronics is another concern.Especially in a marine environment (humid and salty).Can you provide recommendations where to setup these (rather large) electronic regulators/inverters/BMS'es in the boat ?I guess IP rating is not relevant, if not encapsuled in IP-rated boxes.If put into boxes, then there's a cooling issue...
Working hard on the ultimate solution for my own EMS/Y system conversion design.
Cheers, guys
Carsten
Hint : EMS/Y = Electric Motor Sailing Yacht ;-)
On Friday, 30 April 2021, 02:46:25 GMT+8, Jeff LaCoursiere <jeff@stratustalk.com> wrote:
We haven't had any bad cells imported yet, knock wood. We *are* doing our best to burn down our offices with our BMS experiments though :) Also, our latest batch was all EVE 280AH cells, the Lishen 272AH are apparently "all gone".
Another cool idea we are kicking around... we want our 48v pack to have a 12v tap, so you can use it as your house battery as well as your traction battery. I'm disappointed in the available downconverters, mostly current limited to 30-60A. Maybe that would be enough for your house, but it wouldn't do it for mine.
So we want to try to cycle through internal banks of four cells, very quickly (like 10khz), connecting them in turn to the 12v tap. We believe that this way you will be able to pull the full 1C discharge of the 16 cell pack (280A), but at 12v! We hope to maintain balance in discharge by cycling very fast, but the BMS should pick up the slack.
Cheers,
Jeff LaCoursiere
s/v Angels Quest
www.aquasparc.com
On 4/29/21 11:34 AM, Carsten via groups.io wrote:
Hi, Jeff
Did you experience single/multiple cell dropouts from Lishen batteries so far ?
On Thursday, 29 April 2021, 23:22:13 GMT+8, Jeff LaCoursiere <jeff@stratustalk.com> wrote:
I wanted to comment on 1) below - we have that same concept in mind. We are working on a BMS design that will basically allow cells to be "dropped out" of series, the output run through a boost circuit to maintain steady voltage. There are of course limits to how many can drop out and we are very much at the experimental stage here, but there is some hope :)
Jeff LaCoursieres/v Angels Quest
On 4/29/21 10:06 AM, oreillygb@hotmail.com wrote:
First Draft of Schematic. Using Lishen 202Ah. I decided to go with the BMS only actively controlling the charge side of the circuit and opted for passive monitoring on the load side. Using a victron 712 for monitoring and hopefully can connect it to a relay to shut off charge circuit at predetermined voltage. Guys please tell me what I have missed.
Couple of points.
1) Passive Load monitoring. I have decided to go this route as i understand that the load BMS can turn off for 2 reasons, obviously first is if whole bank drops to a lower than 20%SOC and secondly if single cells fail. From my perspective if I have a single cell failure I would rather still be able to use the other 15 cells than have no power. If I let my bank drop to below SOC of 20% that's on me.
2) Want to keep house bank separate for now, mainly as if I have to shut off my 48v bank for low SOC I don't want to have to worry about all my electronics being offline.
3) I want a separate relay to shut off charge current so that I can set this manually. When I come back from a sail i want to be able to top bank up to about a 70% SOC for storage. Then on the day I want to sail I can top it off o 90%
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Jeff LaCoursiere
s/v Angels Quest
St Thomas USVI
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Jeff LaCoursiere
s/v Angels Quest
St Thomas USVI
-- Jeff LaCoursiere StratusTalk, Inc. 703 496 4990 x108 815 546 6599 cell
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Jeff LaCoursiere
s/v Angels Quest
St Thomas USVI
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