After many weeks of working on wiring, we are finally at the point where we can attempt to charge the batteries. So, Sunday night we plugged it in (after preliminary electrical checks) and the battery pack was charging!
EV Display showing initial charging current and voltage
This photo shows the rear battery packs as they were being assembled. The one on the left is complete. The one on the right is 3 cells deep and has two more to go. You can see the threaded rod that we used to run between cells. This is used to bolt down straps across the ends of the cells to compress them together.
Partially assembled rear battery pack
This photo shows the rear battery packs, more or less completely assembled (not including wiring). You can see the steel straps we put across the end plates. Those aluminum end plates came with the cells, so we decided to keep using them to compress the cells, but instead of the straps that came with them, we made our own and use the threaded rod to tighten them down. They not only keep the cells in compression, but also tie together the 3 stacks of 5 cells into one 15-cell unit.
Rear battery packs, assembled
Here are the rear packs after we strapped them down to the frame and installed the inter-cell jumpers. We are now ready to start wiring up the battery monitor boards. You can see the charger in the lower right of the photo.
Rear battery packs, ready to wire
This next photo shows the complete battery pack voltage (front and rear) after being connected, just before we attempted to charge for the first time.
Traction pack voltage, prior to first charging attempt
This how the charger gets power from the wall. We installed an L6-30 receptacle where the old fuel tank filler used to be. See this post about my selection of the charging receptacle. In this photo you can also see the remote status indicator for my Elcon PFC 3000 charger.
Charging receptacle and remote charger indicator
Finally, I will leave you with a brief video that I made shortly after we started charging for the first time.
Comments
Tom
Posted on Tue 16 August 2011
Congrats on the first charge, that is awesome!
joe
Posted on Tue 23 August 2011
@Tom thanks for the comment. Since I made this post, we have completely charged the pack. After the first charge we switched over to 240V from the wall and it works much better. The pack charging current is 16.7A and the cord from the wall doesn’t get so hot.