xm-3000 bank charger

Wow!

Schematic?

Thoughts to ponder ...

If the chargers are not connected are they drawing any current? That is, if the bike is parked with the chargers not plugged in will the chargers leak the battery charge to zero?

Are the chargers all calibrated to the same voltage? I know they're made by the same maker yadda yadda. But Andrew reported a couple months ago having bought 10(?) vector chargers and found their charge voltage varied widely.

Looks good.. but the smaller chargers will take longer to charge up. The nice thing will be having them on the bike for mobile charging.

Most 'smart' chargers have diodes & circuitry that will prevent any back flow current, so they should have zero current drain.. you could easily check them if in doubt.

The variance in voltages between the chargers should be pretty minor.. if it was much of a concern, you could just rotate the chargers every couple weeks..

I just got 5 vectors.. 2/6/10's. I'm pretty impressed with them, so far, though they haven't done any work on a 'big' scooter. My 3000 is coming monday!! I set up my little quazar with a bank charging circuit.. i'll post some pics in this forum.

scotty

Scotty,

I have some really newbie type questions. My first BEV gets here on Tuesday
(xm-3k). I'm excited, but also scared, not that I've read enough to know that the charger coming with the scooter is something to throw away. (or at most, mid-ride small chargeup).

So I know I want to bank charge, and I'm going to buy the 5 Vektron's or B&D.
But am I really going to mount them ON MY BIKE? It's heavy enough as it is! (not that the chargers are very heavy).

My commute is 10 miles, round-trip. So I can drive to work. Leave it partially uncharged for circa 10 hours, and drive back home to charge at night without a problem.

So what do I do to the bike?
Since it would be a little tedious to connect 2 connections per battery (10), I gather you guys take these 10 connections to some sort of connector that is permanently connected to the bike.

Then you take the 5 vektrons, and route them to a matching connector that will provide the juice.

Then to charge, you just connect the two connector's, and each battery is charged by each charger.

Does that sound right? Do you have any advise to get on building these two cables- maybe just what I've read, but it seems a little confusing.

Thanks,
Jerry

I re-read the "Simplified Battery Charger" thread.
I don't understand the 6 wire versus 10 wire discussion except my 5 batteries have
10 connectors and my 5 purchased (soon) chargers have 10 connectors.

So it seems like I:

buy 10 wires. Wire these 10 wires to my batteries to a terminal strip to a 10 port connector. that's the bike's modification.

connect the 10 wires coming out of the chargers to a terminal strip to a 10 port connector.

To charge, connect the two connectors. (I'm a software engineer, I don't do electricity).

thanks,
Jerry

Hi Jerry.
You could probably leave it uncharged for that distance.. i haven't gotten mine, yet, but the others are getting at least 30-40 miles out of them.

I think a vecter charger setup will probably want to be left at home, or wherever you do your main charging. My plan is to pack the included 60v string charger with the bike, so if i'm somewhere i can plug in, i will. As long as the batteries are good & balanced, the string charger shouldn't be a problem. I think i heard it was made by soneil.. but maybe that was the evt's.. but it's supposed to be a decent charger. I think it has been pretty much agreed on by the ev community that bank charging is a superior method that will give you the most longevity from your batteries.

It's probably easier to just do the 10 wire setup, but the 6 works just as well, & makes connecting easier. I'm setting up my charger so it can do either bike i have.. a 48v & the coming 60v. Here's a pic of my wiring on the battery side:

there is only one wire going to the charging plug between the batteries connected in series. Then there is the negative on one end of the string, & the positive on the other end, for a total of 6 wires (5 on my 48v batt bank). They only need to be 16-18 guage, because there is not that much current flowing from the chargers... probably no more than 6-8 amps ever, & 18 will handle 12-14 if not too distant. The single wire goes to the pos on one charger, & the neg on the other. Astar's thread has the diagram.. even though there was some people who were confused, it is a tried & true circuit that has been around for a long time. Electrical circuits share wires all the time. That's all that is going on here.

I'm using anderson powerpole connectors for my charger connector, so i can plug it into either bike. It will also let me add more, if i want to add a battery or overvolt the xm3k.

It's a simple circuit. nothing magical about it. Each charger has a pos & neg, & each goes to the respective poles on the battery. They just share a wire.

I thought about fusing each line, but the vectors have a fault protection circuit built in, so i don't think the fusing is necessary, but you need to make sure it's wired correctly. I'm also liking the vectors for the batt voltage feature.. i was thinking of getting a paktrakr, but i think i'll just watch the batteries on the vectors, for now.

i posted a short thread on my bank charger setup in 'batteries & chargers'. I'll be updating it when i get the xm3k.

also.. if you're going to be an ev pioneer, you'd better do electricity! Some basic wiring theory & practice is pretty much essential.. there aren't many ev shops you can take it to! That's why i think ev's have a ways to go... they aren't foolproof enough as of yet.. They aren't like a cell phone.. the batteries are more finicky.. & need to be pampered. And there are a lot of things that can go wrong.. a single battery.. a charger.. a bad connection.. these are things we that dabble in ev's have got to do ourselves. But it's not rocket science.. basic ev technology is very simple. Battery ---> controller ---> motor. You have a charger to charge the batteries, & a throttle pot to control the controller. After that, you're a motorcycle flying down the road.

Be sure & post your mods & experiments. That's how we all learn.. from our mistakes! :)

scotty

The Vector 1087B 10/6/2A charger can be stripped down so that it's almost the same size as those Vector 2A chargers:

I've mounted all 5 in the same space as LaThala has mounted his. I also made a common power cable for mine (John how did you do cable management with yours?) This picture isn't the final installation - it just shows the general layout (final installation isn't that different!):

The advantage of my approach is more charging power. The advantage of LaThala's approach is that there's no need to modify the chargers (an attractive proposition for most folks). I think I actually prefer LaThala's approach - it's more robust.