Instead of a generator, I've wondered for long distance trips about fitting a a large battery in the diamond space in the frame. I think it should be possible to fit approx 200 cells and with high capacity cells, that should give 60 to 70Ah for a 36V pack. The low discharge rate of a big battery should mean you'll be able to get most of the rated capacity out of it and get a decent range.
Ebike charging using Street EV chargers for electric cars
- Thread starter vulcanears
- Start date
I thought about this, but the problem with this concept might be the limited charge options. You can't charge at Starbucks, can't charge at most hotels, can't charge at the pub when you're having dinner.
I went with 2 removable Reention dp-9 batteries with 90 cells each. One is in the frame triangle, one on the rear rack. Can take them into the hotel room at night, or put one of them into a backpack and charge at a coffee shop.
BTW, does anyone have any alternative ideas regarding the best way to carry a lot of battery capacity on a bike and still being able to remove them for charging?
I was thinking you could also have removable packs on panniers and take them off for charging. With some control electronics, you could even use them to top up your main pack fixed in the frame.
I've wondered about making a custom battery pack to go on the panniers which is thin but tall. They could be unclipped as needed and could be fitted under pannier bags.
Or, making cartridges of cells that plug together to make one big battery. Grin do their Ligo system, but it would be a lot cheaper to make your own and you could make it the shape you want.
Or putting the last phrase another way, until you told them it involved physical effort and exposure to all the worst British weather.
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These have fallen right out of favour where they've been tried. It seems they are very inefficient and have been completely dismissed for house top use, in favour of solar and ground source heat.
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'Real' wind turbine blades are not just large, they are huge. I'm not surprised the small ones don't do much.
On the other hand I remember seeing quite a lot of very mini water generators (typically using half a dozen or so baked bean cans to turn) in streams outside highlands cottages back in the 60s; they could generate just enough electricity for a light or two. It would have taken them a long time to charge an ebike battery.
On the other hand I remember seeing quite a lot of very mini water generators (typically using half a dozen or so baked bean cans to turn) in streams outside highlands cottages back in the 60s; they could generate just enough electricity for a light or two. It would have taken them a long time to charge an ebike battery.
Sometimes things happen despite lack of planning!I love your utopian vision @oyster but that would require a government capable of planning beyond the end of the next parliamentary term!
@vulcanears this is an interesting subject, and I really like the idea of being able to tour long distance on an ebike.
Are you in the UK? If so, you'll know that most EV charge points here are in urban environments, which doesn't sound like an ideal camping environment.
What about putting one of these....
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....in a trailer so you're totally independent of "the grid"?
The dominance of USB charging for small things has come about by exploiting a necessary feature of a connection invented/designed primarily for data. And USB can go up to 100W which is in the region of bike charging.
I like your pannier battery idea Wheezy but I still think we need more storage. Luckily, I have the answer....
This was for having on a trailer, so that when wild camping, you would unpack the turbine, have a telescopic pole and be generating power to recharge your batteries while you slept. I wasn't thinking about this for household use.
The weather in the Netherlands is just as bad, if not worse as it is here, but that doesn't put them off.
NL has about the lowest rate of obesity in the western world. However, on an e-bike you can put in zero to 100% effort.
At the end of the day, these are just excuses to avoid dealing with the problem.
You go to a typical town in NL and you won't see boarded up shops in high streets. Town centres and residential areas tend to be more people orientated, rather than car orientated. People on bikes stay longer in town centres, visit more often and spend more money than car drivers. Fewer cars meets less stress, less noise and less pollution. Children can often play in the streets and cycle miles by themselves without fear of being run over.
Contrast that with a typical car centric high street in the UK. Most look like complete sh*t holes and are unpleasant places to be. Noisy, dirty and dangerous. If you've got children, you can't relax and think about having a nice shopping experience, you are stressed, worrying about them running off into a congested road, running out from behind parked cars...etc
Then at home, we daren't let them go out and play, the roads are too dangerous, so we lock them up at home staring at screens...and we wonder why they grow up dysfunctional.
It doesn't have to be like this.
I know, but that's worse, unless you have a near three storey mast!This was for having on a trailer, so that when wild camping, you would unpack the turbine, have a telescopic pole and be generating power to recharge your batteries while you slept. I wasn't thinking about this for household use.
Wind speed and strength is related to height from the ground. In your application the wind is slowed due to ground surface friction and also turned, creating turbulence whch deducts from it's strength as well as speed.
And I was also quoting from yachting knowledge where many long distance "Yotties" have used small wind turbines on board.
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The most obvious solution to the looming problem of home heating is setting up a programme of retrofitting insulation to our existing housing stock (Not like the crap that has been done in the past - eg Grenfell) and passing legislation that all new housing has to conform to "Passiv Haus" standards or better.
It will cost a lot, but it will be a lot cheaper than having to invest in a huge amount of new generating and distribution capacity, or trying to rely on complex unproven technolgy. Of course, all this was said back in the 70s and it still hasn't been done.
True to a point, but we are only looking at generating 50W or so, not the several kW needed for a house. Such tiny turbines are not that bothered by a bit of turbulence. It would be a worthwhile experiment to give it a go. If you are wild camping, the chances are you would be in a reasonably exposed place, so I think you would be able to get a reasonable output on most days of the year.
What do people on yachts think about them? I've seen a lot of house boats with them on the canals.
Are USB sockets able to go as high as 100W? That would be 20A...
I was thinking you could have banks of cells in parallel in cartridges of 3.6 V. Each one would have it's own mini charger, which would plug into a 5V USB port. Then the cartridges would all plug together to make a battery of 36V. The downside would be that you'd have to charge all the banks individually before you could use the battery, unless they could all be done in parallel.
Not 20A - they ramp up to 20V! As I understand, the charger and the device talk to each other at standard 5V then switch to 20V if both agree. This keeps the cable thickness within reason.
| Power Delivery 2.0/3.0 Type-C | 5 A[d] | 20 V | 100 W |
Ah I see! Excellent! Not a problem finding a DC/DC converter to get 42V from 20V
I'll have to think about building one. What does the port need to know to make it offer 20V instead of 5V? Is there a digital handshake of some sort?
Totally agree on all points and I've been closely following The Netherlands on this since the late 1960s so am very familiar.
The difference relates to the outcome of WW2. We were far less damaged and our economy and pay packets recovered quite quickly, so our ubiquitous cycling of the 1940s quickly gave way. First to the add-on cyclemotors into the 1950s when the new scooters like Vespa and Lambretta took over, following quickly by adoption of cars from the turn of that decade, all as people got better off.
The Netherlands had a far slower recovery for obvious reasons, so lagged behind us but were just as willingly following the same course. That lead to their government seeing the trend away from cycling early in the 1970s, so they were able to act to stop that happening. Their actions were to start the long term program of cycling facilities and make life less easy for car drivers.
That was still easy for them then since things hadn't gone too far, but here at that time it was already far too late with cars and driving dominant and needing every scrap of road space and more. Also it's far, far more difficult once people have switched to car use and experienced their undeniable huge personal benefits.
We can't undo what's been done without a vast fleet of bulldozers and countless trillions of pounds, plus punitive laws that would prevent any government being re-elected.
Even now the Dutch reckon they are only three quarters way through building their cycling infrastructure after fifty determined years at it. If we set out to match them now, no-one living today would see the full benefit of reaching what they have already. And as I've posted, the decision to integrate e-cars into the power delivery structure in the UK and many other European countries has rather scuppered the chances of getting most people out of cars.
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Ah I see! Excellent! Not a problem finding a DC/DC converter to get 42V from 20V
I'll have to think about building one. What does the port need to know to make it offer 20V instead of 5V? Is there a digital handshake of some sort?
Ok, I think this board would do it...but I need help deciphering the Chinglish translation!
They don't seem impressed, despite plenty of wind on the open oceans. Wind turbines need a large frontal area to capture all the wind's energy, small blades operating area allows far too many losses and too high a ratio of turbulence.
That said and ignoring efficiency, you may get some useful charge, if the wind is blowing!
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