Resolving Overheating Issues

I have started driving on the highway in 4th or even 5th gear instead of 3rd. This reduces the engine noise and transmission vibration so much that now I only hear the wind and other cars when I am cruising down the road at 70mph.  The only problem with driving at a lower RPM on the electric motor is now my previous fixes to the controller overheating issue are no longer sufficient. 

The controller has a fancy circuit which at low RPM acts like a DC transformer.  It takes a mere 100Amps from the battery and delivers 400 amps to the DC motor.

"Young lady, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" -- Homer Simpson

I assure you, no conservation of energy violations are going on here.  Just a practical application of Maxwell's equations being put to good use.
The DC transformer-like feature allows the motor to still provide plenty of torque without putting excessive strain on the battery pack. I assume this is also why I am getting extended range lately. 64-miles on one charge is my new distance record. 

I found an utterly massive heat-sink on eBay for a mere $64 delivered. Weighing in at 17 lbs, this aluminum behemoth would probably keep hell itself at a constant 74 degrees. 

After swapping out the 4 lb heat-sink for this much larger one, I have yet to hear one complaint out of the motor controller regarding temperature issues. With this improvement, the next weak link in my electric truck is the massive 11 inch diameter, 178 lb Kostov DC motor itself. It will get pretty warm after 20 minutes of extreme, hard driving.  I now consider the overheating issue resolved.

Battery Charger 2.0

I beefed up the wiring in my home-made battery charger and also added better capacitors that have a lower ESR (series resistance that robs power, making things get hot).  Before I made these changes, the charger could deliver up to 18 amps at 120 Volts and charge up the battery pack in 12-15 hours. Now it draws 30 amps at 240 volts and will charge up the battery pack in 5-7 hours.
Now I can come home after working late, plug in for an hour to add a quick 8 miles to the range of the truck, run a few errands in the evening, drive out to see a movie, come back home at 10PM, plug in all night and by 5AM, the truck has a full charge, ready to take me the 40 miles back and forth to work. Nice!

People of the world! Why aren’t we all driving electric cars? They are efficient, quiet, non-polluting, cheap to operate/maintain and super fun to drive.

Automakers of the World! Why aren’t you mass producing electric cars. Quit focusing on $45K - $100K custom cars and start cranking out the electrics as if you’re making Model T’s. If you build them we will buy them.

Oil Companies of the World! Your days in the fuel business are numbered. The only oil you’ll be selling will be for making molded, plastic seats.

OK, enough of the soap box!  Where was I?  Oh yeah!  Battery chargers.  

My capacitive battery charger is still not perfected but it's a whole lot better.  I have not as of yet added any overcharge protection because overcharging lead acid batteries occasionally, brings all cells back to the same level and equal playing field.  By using a capacitive, pulsating DC charger, the batteries are also desulfated and reconditioned.
Most of the time I can schedule it into my day to plug in and manually unplug before I leave, but yesterday was a weird exception where I plugged in later in the evening.  By the time I went to bed 4 hours later, the battery pack was only 70% charged.  I didn't want to leave it on all night because 10 hours would overcharge things too much, heating the batteries unnecessarily and waste power.  I plugged in to 120 volts for the rest of the night.  The battery pack ended up not getting a good enough charge and I almost didn't make it back home after driving 18 miles on the freeway with a 20mph headwind.
I still have some work to do before I will be satisfied with the charger, but it's not bad for a home-made charger. I am amazed at how simple the capacitive charging circuit really is.  2 components:  A capacitor (made of several caps actually) and a bridge rectifier.  It cost me about $50 for eight large surplus 50uF 440VAC capacitors at NPS and a couple bucks to my good man in Hong Kong for the 50 Amp bridge rectifier.  I am also using the hell-freezer heat-sink for the rectifier as well.
Update:  10/28/2011  Don't expect cheap semiconductors from Hong Kong to last more than a few days.  The 50Amp 1000 Volt bridge rectifier went off like a firecracker.  I am suspecting the 1000 Volt component was counterfeit and was more likely a 100 Volt one.  The 2nd one I bought as a backup only lasted about 30 seconds before it started making crackling noises and shorting out internally.  I replaced it with  my original, non-counterfeit rectifier.  It runs slightly warmer and less spectacularly. 

The down side to the capacitive charge circuit is the power factor is not very good.  With a power factor of 1, it would be possible at 240 Volts and 30 Amps to draw 7200 Watts.  My circuit, with it's power factor of only 0.33, pulls nearly 30 amps at the beginning of the charge cycle but only delivers 2500 watts.  A far cry from 7200 watts the circuit is capable of providing.  Hmmmm.
Remember, even though I am pulling 7200 Volt-Amps from the power outlet, I am only paying for 2500 watts.  Even my solar panels only have to cough up 2500 watts.  We must be vigilant against the trickery of power factor.

Update:  10/30/2011: 

Warning!  Dangerous and Free Engineering Advice: 
If you are interested, here is the schematic to my simple charging circuit.   I didn't invent this.  A few months ago, I was about to spend $700 on a fancy commercial battery charger when a buddy of mine at Wilderness EV told me about this circuit.  USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! 

With the correct components, (and large enough wire and electrical infrastructure), you could potentially build a 6 minute battery charger.   How cool would that be? 

Make sure the capacitor(s) you end up choosing are bipolar.  Hint:  Most electrolytic ones are not bipolar and when connected up to AC will act more like an M-80 firecracker than capacitor.  The large silver capacitors that accompany motors are perfect for this application.  I have found that the larger the capacitor (physical size) the cooler it will operate and less likely it is to overheat.  Try not to use the big blue capacitors from Hong Kong with the wire pigtails.  They have too high of ESR and in this application, will over-heat, dry out and quit working in a couple weeks.
A crude rule-of-thumb is to use 25uF for each Amp of charging current you want to deliver to the battery pack. 
Monitor your battery voltage as it is charging and know ahead of time what voltage is considered a full charge.   
Rule of thumb for flooded lead acid batteries:  
80% charged is 2.38 volts per cell (142.8 Volts for a 120 Volt battery pack)
bubbling and gassing starts to occur at 80%.
100% charged is 2.58 volts per cell (154.8 Volts for a 120 Volt battery pack)
 vigorous bubbling and lots of gassing occurs at 100%.  

It would be advantageous to get yourself a lamp timer.  It will keep your batteries from boiling away when you forget to unplug them after they are charged.  A Kill-A-Watt meter is also a valuable tool as it will keep track of the energy that it takes to charge up your batteries.  From that you can calculate how efficient your electric vehicle is.  For example, a typical charge for me is about 13KWH.  I drive 40 miles each day (13,000/40) so I end up using 325 watt-hours/mile.  As Lord Kelvin once said, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it."  I highly recommend the Kill-A-Watt meter.

Electric Truck: Range is everything!

Well, I managed to repair my odometer and speedometer. I found a blown diode. After replacing it with another one I had on hand, the gauges came back to life. Yeah!

I completed my pizza pan hubcaps and they are working out well.

Over the weekend, I threw the hubcaps on my Honda Accord (same rim size as my truck's tires) for a 640 mile journey to Southern Utah and back. They worked great and contributed to a 46mpg average fuel mileage. Not bad for driving 70mph the whole way. I have found that I suffer from helium foot. I tried to maintain 75mph but am so used to only going 55mph back and forth to work, my speed kept dropping.

I almost drove the whole trip on one tank of gas. We were running late coming back so I drove a little faster, hurting my mileage a bit. I chickened out and got some more gasoline just 32 miles from my home.

Still, not bad for $48 worth of gas (~7.5 cents per mile).  What am I doing talking about gasoline?  Granted it's an amazing fuel but I am trying to quit the stuff?  I'm hooked. We all are!

Anyway, back to the Electric Truck.  The hubcaps along with the newly painted grill blocking metal sheet, contributed to my new distance record of 64 all electric miles on a single charge.

I actually made it home no problem with 59 miles on the odometer. 59 is a crappy number to end on so I kept driving around the city until I reached 64 miles.  Those last 3 miles were pretty rough though. 

I completed the modifications to my battery charger so it can charge a depleted battery in only 7 hours instead of 13-14 hours.  It now runs on 240 volts at 25-28Amps.  This required me to upgrade the internal wiring from 14AWG to 10AWG since it was getting very hot with all that current flowing. 
I put the battery charger to the test by driving 85 miles (spanning 2 quick charge cycles).  I drove 15 miles, climbing a steep grade up a 1000 foot hill to the Bountiful Temple. 

After returning back home, I only had time to plug in for 90 minutes before driving in to work (20 miles).  After returning from work, (20 more miles), with a very depleted battery, I charged up for 3 hours before running a few evening errands (15 more miles).  I plugged the truck into the charger late that evening.  By 5AM the next morning, the battery was full and my truck was ready for me to take in to work again. Excellent! 

My last crucial hurdle will be to solve the overheating issue that still plagues the slightly undersized motor speed controller.

Electric Truck: How's it working for ya?

I have been driving my truck to work and back (40 miles) almost every day for the past 3 weeks. On some of those days I even made extra side trips, running errands along the way. I estimate my max range is now upwards of 50 miles. I have driven 46 miles on a single charge, (battery was down to 30%).

I got some fancy vinyl lettering to advertise my affinity for electron propulsion.

Now I get a lot of looks from other drivers on the road. I don’t want to give electric cars a bad rap so I tend to drive faster than I should so they can be impressed with my home-made wonder. This is a mistake though and I end up killing my range to where I am limping home the last 2 miles.

Work In Progress:
I am still having problems with excessive vibrations at high RPM. This is due to a slightly bent shaft on the transmission and a flywheel that keeps shifting on its key-way.  I removed the motor (a few times now) in order to re-seat the flywheel.  It fixes the problem initially but 120 miles later the vibration comes back.  I have found that by shifting into 4th gear on the highway, the RPM is lower and the truck runs quiet as can be. While driving 60mph, the loudest noise I hear is the wind and other cars on the road.  Most of the time I drive 50mph (while traveling on the 55mph Legacy Highway) to extend my range.

I added Volt and Amp Gauges to my instrument cluster. They provide valuable feedback to how my driving habits are affecting my battery pack and subsequent range.

While adding LED back-lights to the instrument cluster, I inadvertently shorted something out.  Now I keep blowing a fuse that feeds the speedometer and tachometer. Arggg!  I am still scratching my head on this one.  In the mean time, I borrowed my wife’s GPS so I can know how fast I am going. I would really like to know at a glance how far I have driven though. 
Even though my battery charger can deliver nearly 19 amps initially, as the battery pack charges, its internal resistance changes.  The current flowing in steadily drops until it is only delivering 7 amps at the end of the cycle. I work a 10-hour day with a 27 minute commute each way. Often times, I work later or run an errand on the way home. I rarely have more than 12 hours from the time I come home to when I have to leave for work again.

A 12 hour period is not enough time to fully charge a depleted battery. At the beginning of the week, (after the battery has had a good weekend charge), I drive to work and back with no problems. After charging all night, the battery is only at 90%. The next day I again drive the 40 mile round trip and back with no incidents. By the last day of the week, my battery is only 80% charged by morning. I make it in to work just fine but on the way home, I run out of energy about 2 miles short. I pull off to the side and wait a few minutes for the battery pack to recover before slowly rolling the rest of the way home. 

A lot of EV drivers will tell you that you can simply plug in and charge up anywhere there is an outlet.  That may be true but I liken this kind of behavior to running out of gasoline near someone's home so you take a cup of gas from their lawn mower to get you back on your way. Who's going to miss 25 cents worth of gas or 3 cents worth of electricity?  Instead of cheating my way home from work, I would rather work toward making my truck go farther, be more reliable, comfortable, convenient and simply take me the distance that I want it to go.

I am working on 2 options for a better battery charger. One that runs on 240V which will give me a full charge in under 5 hours and another that still runs on 120V but switches in more capacitors, increasing the current draw a couple hours into the charging cycle.

After driving at 55mph continuously on the highway for 15 miles with a 100+ amp draw, the motor speed controller starts to overheat. Even with the cooling fans I installed on it, I have to let off the throttle for about 5 seconds every couple miles to keep it from overheating. I added a plastic rain-gutter downspout as a duct directly to the heat-sink on the controller and it really helped a lot. I really need to mount the controller in a better location that it will receive more airflow and still be protected from the elements.

After covering up the grill with a piece of sheet metal. I took some crude measurements and my current draw (while driving sustained at 50mph) has dropped from 106 amps down to 100 amps.

Not much, but enough to justify investing more time into aerodynamic modifications. It just occurred to me that a 6 amp reduction is a 720 watt power savings. I could allocate that 720 watts towards cab heating during the winter time.