From PESWiki

<< Directory:Bedini SG

First Attempt at Supercharging a Battery

I am going through my first pass in supercharging a battery, in this case two 6V sealed lead acid batteries in series. I found the optimum base resistor value for my system.

This evening, when I came home from work, my batteries had charged up to 16V in less than 24 hours. However, I noticed the circuit was drawing more current than it had when I did my tests. It was now drawing about 220 mA, when I originally had it running down in the 140-150 mA range. The scope verified the cause, I was getting a double spike which happened when I used a higher value of base resistor.

It seems that the electrical characteristics of the charging battery change as it gets charged, and it affects the timing of the circuit.

I reduced the base resistor by 15 ohms to get the circuit back to the 140-150 mA range to eliminate the double spike (which it did), and the woltage of the battery immediately started dropping, down to 15.5V

I'm not sure if this was because I briefly slowed down my wheel to change resistors, and there was a surface charge that quickly dissipated, or if the change in resistors changed the way it was charging the battery such that it could not sustain the 16V level.

Update 11/22/2004

Due to a trip, I could not record charging voltage levels, but after 4 days on the charger, the battery charged from 12.74 V to 15.25 V. The battery leveled off at 15.25 V for an extended period of time (at least 2 days), which correlates with Stefan's supercharging results.

I deemed this battery sufficiently charged & began charging a 2nd battery.