Smart Regulators For Car Alternators
Car alternators don’t typically make good battery chargers for off-grid homes. The deep cycle battery requires special charging to maintain a long life, as it gets discharged and recharged deeper, and more often than a car battery. There is hope, however, for the ubiquitous car alternator. By driving it with a small engine, and adding a smart regulator to vary it’s field coils, you now can build a high amperage portable battery charger, as we have outlined in our eBook at http://www.green-trust.org/ebooks/. The Smart Regulator of choice is the Ample Power SARV3. It includes the ability to also charge a starting battery, control two alternator fields connected to the same engine, and offers battery temperature compensation. We highly recommend it.
Professionally, I'm an IT Engineer (Executive Level) and Electronics Tech. Philosophically, I'm a Green Conservative, and probably would have been a hippie in the 60's if I had been old enough. I live off grid, with Solar (PV), Wind, and veggie oil fueled diesel generator power, and have been teaching and living sustainable technology for over 10 years.
