Charge Batteries Free While Powering A Load - Its Basic Electronics
Charge Batteries Free While Powering A Load - Its Basic Electronics
You can power a load with one set of batteries while charging up a second set of batteries for free. The electrons leaving the first set of batteries power the load. These same electrons leave the load unchanged and enter the second set of batteries in the opposite direction, causing them to charge.
Sounds impossible? Not really. It is just basic electronics.
This article continues the day after my first battery swapping article and video took place. In the previous video I showed how you can connect two batteries in series for 8 volts and another two in parallel for 4 volts with a load in between. While powering the load, the series batteries also charge up the second parallel set of batteries.
In my second video of the series I swapped the batteries around. The ones that were powering the load are now wired in parallel to be charged. The set that was charged up previously will now be in series and power the load. At the same time, the parallel set will again be charged.
By the way, I have over 5,000 Lithium Ion batteries in my lab now. I got them all from Battery Hookup. Click the banner above, use the discount code and save 5% on your next purchase of new or used batteries.
For a load I am using a boost inverter and a 5 Volt LED lamp which uses about 350 mA. The LED lamp sees the difference in voltage between the series batteries (8 Volts) and the parallel batteries (3 Volts) for a total of 5 Volts. This is perfect for the LED. But as the first set of batteries discharges and the second set of batteries charges up, the load sees an ever decreasing voltage.
This is why I am using a boost inverter which gives me a stable voltage of 5 Volts output at a range of 2.8 Volts to 5 Volts input.
I am only running my tests from a charged voltage of 4.0 Volts and I consider them discharged at 3.5 Volts. Of course they are not fully charged or discharged for real but for the purpose of my tests I have to keep a narrow band of voltage in order to finish each cycle faster.
It has already taken me 4 to 6 hours to cycle one time through the first set of batteries. The second cycle took about 2 to 3 hours. And then I ran yet a third cycle which I think took about an hour before the LED got dim.
This is not perpetual motion and there is nothing sneaky going on here. The batteries will eventually all run down after a few cycles. This is because batteries are not perfect and there are losses during every charge and discharge cycle.
But it is really cool to see that you can extend the run time of your load by letting the electrons simply recharge a second set of batteries.
After three cycles on my work bench I considered the test finished. The batteries running the load were actually at a lower voltage than the batteries being charged up. This in itself is unusual in conventional circuits.
I nearly doubled the run time of the load by swapping batteries around like this. In a normal circuit you would run the load until the batteries are drained and then shut it down and recharge the batteries. But in my circuit I can swap batteries and keep going for a few cycles.
Manually swapping batteries is tedious so I am going to put this all on a board with switches for next time.
You can watch the video here:
About the Author
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Troy Reid |
