The converting, maintenance, and operation of a Suzuki Samurai conversion to Electric power.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Plumbing NiMH

Here you can see the "accessories" I was supplied. The headers would indicate that coolant should flow in parallel through the batteries, entering at one end and exiting at the other. There is a temp sensor in the next-to-bottom header. I am assuming that is used to monitor the temp and/or to control a bypass of whatever is used as a heat exchanger (radiator). (I am thinking that some finned tubing as is used in baseboard hot water heating system but have no idea how much cooling capacity will be needed.) Since it gets cold here, it might be a good idea to insulate the batteries and circulate coolant constantly to keep all batteries at the same temp. Thus they could be warmed in cold weather if the coolant bypassed the radiator. Some sort of manual or electrically controlled bypass valves have to be obtained. Ideas would be appreciated.

Looking at the size of the headers, it looks like a high flow rate is intended. So I will need to find a high volume, low pressure pump. The spec sheet says "5gpm, 1gpm" which is not too helpful. It also could be that the cooling is only required with high rates of charge which I don't have available. I can't see getting much more than 20 amps from the charger. Any info or leads would be appreciated.

There are thermistors supplied to go into slots in the battery. I know that it is mandatory that things be shut down if the battery overheats during charge or discharge. Obviously I need a thermostat that connects to these thermistors. Perhaps it would be sufficient to have a thermistor in each of the 2 blocks of batteries. It would seem that I would need a separate thermostat for each thermistor. Probably need a thermometer somewhere so as not to be surprised.

Since I will be going from 144v to 156v, there is a question as to whether my Iota dc/dc and the little dc/dc that supplies power to my Trimetric monitor will handle the higher voltage. I foresee havin to insure them being disconnected during charge for sure, but will they handle the resting voltage? Could I put some sort of resistor in their circuit?

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