Charging on the move

Good day to all fans Miev!
The problem of lack of infrastructure in Russia, gave me the idea of compensation flow battery using the on-board charger.
Task to circumvent the protection of the factory, does not allow to charge Miev activated.
I would be most grateful to all who help me in this subject.
Owning a little Russian can go to my home page
http://www.drive2.ru/r/mitsubishi/961201/

Denis, welcome to the forum. As you have discovered, the software protection of the closed system i-MiEV makes it very difficult to 'hack' (modify).

siai47 eloquently presented this situation: http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=20133#p20133

Most of us either don't have the time nor the smarts nor the in-depth knowledge of the i-miev code in order to reverse-engineer almost any parameter. Sad, really, as many of us would like to make some simple changes to the vehicle's operating characteristics; for example, I would like to alter the software to have zero regen in 'D', and even more regen in 'B'.

Wish you all the best.

For those interested in reading Denis' website (include a modified quote from Hamlet), just copy the URL and paste it into https://translate.google.com

Forum member siai47 was able to charge with the car in the "ready" position by connecting a dc charger to the quick charge cables and manually switching the quick charge relays located under the back seat. Using his method you could charge while driving, but you would need a power source to feed the dc charger. For instance, inside the car you could use batteries and an inverter to feed the charger. Outside the car on a trailer, you could mount a generator, or a battery/inverter combination, or a battery/inverter/solar panel combination.
http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2001&p=15358&hilit=manzanita#p15358

Thank U JoeS, RobertC! Will study materiel and links you provided.
My ultimate goal is to create a set allows to convert EV In FСEV.
http://www.drive2.ru/l/5420091/
If manufacturers create something like this, it will greatly increase the range of the EV.

For ease of reading there is an English version.
https://www.drive.net/l/5606750/?m=102222425&page=0#a102222425

RobertC said:

Forum member siai47 was able to charge with the car in the "ready" position by connecting a dc charger to the quick charge cables and manually switching the quick charge relays located under the back seat. Using his method you could charge while driving, but you would need a power source to feed the dc charger. For instance, inside the car you could use batteries and an inverter to feed the charger. Outside the car on a trailer, you could mount a generator, or a battery/inverter combination, or a battery/inverter/solar panel combination.
http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2001&p=15358&hilit=manzanita#p15358

Click to expand...

So you're saying that instead of setting or in parallel like charger,
http://emotorwerks.com/products/online-store/product/show/7-complete-smartcharge-12000-pfc-ev-charger-component-kit-no-enclosure/related_product-10
perhaps an external source to compensate for battery consumption EV while driving?

DenisTyumen said:

So you're saying that instead of setting or in parallel like charger,
http://emotorwerks.com/products/online-store/product/show/7-complete-smartcharge-12000-pfc-ev-charger-component-kit-no-enclosure/related_product-10
perhaps an external source to compensate for battery consumption EV while driving?

Click to expand...

Yes, often called a range extension pack or battery-based range trailer, this would operate like most plug-in Prius kits work, to just inject current into the high voltage DC bus whenever voltage falls past a certain point.

Since building a matched lithium pack is expensive, this approach often uses a lower voltage "range pack" with a high power DC-DC converter stepping up that voltage to match the car.

I've been watching the salvage auctions, but most wrecked i-MiEV are still selling for over $5k.
Yesterday I almost pulled the trigger on a crashed Spark EV that had a good pack and sold for $3150, but instead I purchased a 12 kWh pack of unused CALB cells from a local widow. Those will be much easier to work with than the funky GM battery modules. A LEAF pack is also quite easy to salvage, but those cars usually go for over $6k.

Thank U, jray3 ! I will try to implement the project in EV conversion FCEV.
The future is now!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK0GojbBfKI
We only need a little work
https://www.drive.net/l/5420091/

I just got this same idea as jray3 had here. I have some LiFePO4 cells kicking around, so why not assemble them into a 12V pack (say 6p4s), put a 3000W inverter on them and then order a 2500W Elcon from evassemble.com, which would charge the main pack while on the move. I'd tap into the inverter input, as siai47 has figured out.

Actually having a 12V booster pack opens up a couple of possibilities. In addition to charging it from mains with 15VDC power supply, one could easily charge it on solar or, no I'm not nuts, the DC/DC converter in the car.

Ok, now that you think I am crazy, let me explain. You could use the DC/DC converter in the car to charge the 12V booster pack while you were charging the car, either slow or fast. The DC/DC converter is always running whe you charge. So even at a CHAdeMO station, in 30 minutes, you could maybe put 500Wh into the booster pack, if I recall correctly that the DC/DC converter puts out about 80A. It wouldn't even slow the charge down, because CHAdeMO slows down very soon on i-MiEVs as the max voltage is reached. While charging slow you could of course get the whole booster pack charged while you charge the main pack as well. Obviously you'd have the DC/AC inverter disconnected while doing this.

It would be much more efficient to skip the DC/AC inverter and run the charger directly of the booster pack. I have a Elcon 2500W set for a lower charging voltage, so I think I might make a higher voltage pack of my cells and see if the Elcon would run off of 70-90 volts DC directly. Then I'd of course need to have another Elcon to charge the booster pack.

Edit: Small problem I realized with running an Elcon directly of the booster pack. If the input wires are 1,5mm2 then at most I could draw 810 watts off a 90 VDC pack ((1,5mm2*6A)*90V=810W). That's assuming it works in the first place. I think I'll need to ditch this idea and just go with the 12V plan.

The TCCH/Elcon chargers create an internal bus at 160-170VDC from the rectified 120vac mains, which it then pumps up thru a PWM switching boost stage to generate an AC voltage that then feeds thru a power transformer and rectifier stage to generate the battery pack voltage. The range of adjustment of the output voltage is constrained by the transformer turns ratio and the size and rating of the boost inductor. This is all very similar to how our miev charger works.

More information and schematics can be found on the diyelectriccar site here:
TCCH/Elcon schematics

TCCH/Elcon troubleshooting and repair

The specs on the Elcon chargers say 85-265 VAC input, but even 85 VAC is around 120 VDC rectified, I believe.

Does anybody know how picky the Elcon chargers are, will they work on any cheap 230 VAC inverter or does it need to a good one?

Honestly, the best solution would be a device that would take in 12 VDC and output 360 VDC, but does such a device exist?

I just did some testing on a TCCH-84-21 charger I have. It started happily charging on 82 VDC input voltage provided by 25 LiFePO4 cells. On 24 cells it wouldn't work anymore, complaining about low input voltage. So it seems that 80 VDC is the lower limit on at least this TCCH model. Surisingly low, but still quite a few cells needed. Especially since you'd need over 80 volts until the input battery is empty - so more like 30 cells. Also at 82 volts it would only charge the other battery pack at 15 amps, instead of the 21 it's capable of with 230 VAC input. Still the problem with the charger only having 1,5 mm2 input wires exists, which would limit the charger to only about 800W safely at 80 VDC input.

Another option I'm considering is putting 7-8 of HLG-320H-48A LED drivers in series. Ben Nelson has three (or more like 3s2p) of these charging his Vectrix (converted to Lithium). They would also work better in the sense that if you were able to run them off the battery pack, you'd have suitable input wires to each converter and thus not limited in power by their diameter. They put out 6A, so you'd be able to put over 2 kW into the C-Zero battery pack while on the road from a booster pack.

I found these as well:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MW-48V-7-25A-AC-DC-PSU-Switching-Power-Supply-Mean-Well-NES-350-48-350W-/111258083819?hash=item19e77fa1eb&autorefresh=true

Really cheap. Put 7 of those in a string and you have a 2+kW boost charger for less than four hundred moneys. Not bad. I might just have to go for this plan. If the car will allow up to ~5kW charging together with a boost charger and original charger I might be able to almost double the charging speed on the road for really cheap. It's worth a try, me thinks.

Found some even cheaper and put 8 on order (extra one for backup):

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/31-Types-Switch-Power-Supply-Driver-5-12-24-48V-1-2-3-10-15-20-30-40-50-60-70A-/311001005100?var=610293600576

Hoping to use these to nearly halve slow charging time and possibly also boost the range while on the move from an aux boost pack.

Quick question.

Are these power supplies fully isolated ?

Can you stack them in series to increase voltage ?

I would check before putting two together.

Don.....

Yeah, they should be and you should be able to stack them, but you never really know until you try.

Yeah, well, I got two power supplies yesterday. Pretty fast shipping for free. Tried them in my DIY conversion car. It didn't quite work out. I put two in series and got them to output up to around 101 volts. Unfortunately trying to charge the battery with them resulted in them trying to push 19 amps into the pack, instead of the 7 amps they're capable. One of the two went dark pretty fast. End of experiment.

Jsantala, sorry to hear you might have fried one of your Elcons. Perhaps having any old external series string of small cells (a larger number so they don't get charged much) with each Elcon attached at the appropriate spots to equalize the two voltages might have mitigated that? Or maybe a couple of identical resistors in series as a pre-load to balance the voltage?

I just picked up an Elcon SE-1000-48 (20A) this week and had second thoughts just before I plugged it into my 4P16S Headway (12Ah cells) LiFePO4 pack that I use for my electric outboard, Elcon charging voltage set to 55.2v or 3.45v per cell. The Elcon has a nice voltage trimpot but, as noted, no ability to adjust the current. My concerns are twofold:

1. Can the Elcon power supply take the application of voltage on its output terminals with its power turned off?
2. How to modulate the output current?

To mitigate -

1. So, this morning I'll be putting together a Schottky power diode on a heatsink and a couple of Anderson connectors so I can just plug it in in series with the current monitoring 100mv/100A shunt I also have in that line. Need to adjust the voltage trimpot on the Elcon to compensate.

2. For now I'll just stick a power resistor in series; inefficient, I know, but, like you, I'm concerned with stuffing too much current into the pack, although the Headways should be able to easily take the roughly C/2.4.

Good luck to you … I really should get ambitious and try to repair those Enginer units, as their voltage output is just right for the i-MiEV.

Related to this, last weekend I had a talk with eMotorworks.com and they are evidently actively shipping their high power charger, CHAdeMO controller, and CHAdeMO cable set. Just the thing for anyone contemplating a cross-country trip in the i-MiEV, for about $4K :roll:

JoeS, I didn't use a proper ElCon charger. I tried some really cheap generic 48V power supplies. They weren't up to the task.

I'm sure ElCon/TCCH chargers will work fine in single or parallel use. I don't know if they can be put in series.

jsantala said:

JoeS, I didn't use a proper ElCon charger. I tried some really cheap generic 48V power supplies. They weren't up to the task.

Click to expand...

jsantala, I understand and also am talking about power supplies and not battery chargers, which is why my concern with applying a voltage to the output terminals without a blocking diode. Did my single power supply test successfully yesterday - after starting up with it in, I took out the resistor but left the power diode in place but the current never went above 7A (it's a 20A supply) as the battery voltage was already close to the output when I started. Current just kept dropping as the battery charged. I don't have a second power supply to try them in series.

You mentioned that yours died when it tried to put out too much current - all modern power supplies should have active overcurrent protection, or, at the very least, a fuse. I'd be inclined to pull the cover off and poke around inside as that power supply might still be salvageable...

As far as using the power supplies in series, the more I think about it the more I'm inclined to bring out a voltage sensing wire from the battery so that each supply 'sees' its required voltage and is not 'floating'. For this reason, it may be inappropriate to try charging the i-MiEV with a series string of power supplies...