Regenerative breaking on MMM

So it uses the battery as a load, not really as a means to recover much energy. Maybe it would still be enough to make this usable. The idea is to simply avoid the complexity of a transmission and to have a hyper efficient power train once the diesel is at speed. 99% of the drive time would be at speed.

Originally Posted by TexasSP

The regenerative braking on the controllers is simply a done so as there is a place to put the energy created per Patrick. To keep things from over heating it goes into the batteries however as I understand it doesn't create a significant amount of energy.

[Pdelcast]

The braking is regenerative because it has to be -- can't dump that much energy anywhere but back into the battery. (The battery is used as a load, but using a battery as a load mean charging the battery...)

It is not, however, optimized.

Still gets fairly good efficiency up to about 35% braking power -- above that the conversion efficiency gets lower.

So at, say, 50% breaking, efficiency of regeneration is lessened?

Meaning 20% breaking is within the "optimal range" what ever that percentage of regeneration is. I don't need high efficiency here. I just need simplicity.

I want the control loop to be simple (adjust numbers as needed):

If voltage > 12, run at 0% parasitic drag break.
If 12 > voltage > 11.5 , run at 10% parasitic drag break.
If voltage < 11.5 , run at 20% parasitic drag break.

The idea is to float around 3ah out of 4ah of charge capacity in the battery giving me enough of a buffer before I over charge if I use the MMM as the breaking mechanisms instead of relying (completely) on mechanical breaking.

Think the MMM can run for 20 hours straight, at 12 volts, doing next to nothing? ;-)

Originally Posted by Pdelcast

The braking is regenerative because it has to be -- can't dump that much energy anywhere but back into the battery. (The battery is used as a load, but using a battery as a load mean charging the battery...)

It is not, however, optimized.

Still gets fairly good efficiency up to about 35% braking power -- above that the conversion efficiency gets lower.