This blog documents the restoration, and conversion, of a 1965 Humber (Singer) Vogue to a fully electric vehicle. The Vogue will be powered by an 11kW(modified), 3 phase industrial AC motor, controlled by an industry standard Variable Speed Drive (VSD) or Inverter. To be able to produce the 400 volts phase to phase the VSD will need about 600 VDC of batteries. A big thanks to the contributors on the AEVA forum: http://forums.aeva.asn.au/forums/

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Mains Charger Power and Sequencer

With the Vogue now running it's about time the mains inlet was finalised so it can be charged easily.
This is a bit more complex than just connecting the 240 VAC mains plug to the chargers.
The reason is that I have 12 chargers. Each one is specified as drawing 30 Amps peak inrush current when switched on. It follows that all 12 would draw over 300 Amps inrush and I do not want to become unpopular when I want to pick up a get-me-home charge by blowing someones circuit breaker.

So - I have a system that switches on the first 4 chargers, then waits 2 seconds and brings up the next 3, then 2 seconds and the next 3 then 2 seconds and the last 2 chargers switch on.
I call it the Charger Sequencer.
The box, circuit breaker and RCD in this picture were "skunged" when the airconditioning system was changed at work. Since I have them, I'll include them. (The box already has a mounting place in the Vogue as you can see in a previous post that included pictures of the boot/trunk.)
The cable gland on the bottom is for mains inlet while the two white ones at the top are for front and rear chargers.
Here is a closer look at the Charger Sequencer PCB. The power supply is an 800 mA, 5 VDC phone charger. The relays came from a dismantled piece of test gear at work too (old ATE)!
It should be mounted and wired by the end of the week ready to go back into the car. You can see I have already cut up the piece of aluminium to mount the board.

For those who want to know how it works.

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