Manuals and battery charging

[Captain_Midnight]

I am new to list so sorry if this has already been addressed. I just purchased an almost new X2 and would like to download service manuals and wiring diagrams if available. I am in solar power business and plan to add solar charger to X2, but need more info on the on board batteries and charger.

Any help or re-direct would be appreciated

[Bob.Kerns]

I am new to list so sorry if this has already been addressed. I just purchased an almost new X2 and would like to download service manuals and wiring diagrams if available. I am in solar power business and plan to add solar charger to X2, but need more info on the on board batteries and charger.

Any help or re-direct would be appreciated

Well, good luck with the service manuals and wiring diagrams! Proprietary, only limited service through dealers, otherwise at factory...

To do solar charging, you will need an inverter, and output 110V. Generally it will draw less than 1A, but some margin would be advisable. You'll need about 1 KWhr for a full charge, as I recall, but depending on your application, a smaller amount of charge (i.e. a recharge for a predictable smaller amount of daily usage) may be acceptable.

There's no physical access to charge the batteries with your own DC charger while connected to the unit. To create one to do so off-board will be considerably more complicated than you might expect; you'd need to reverse-engineer the signalling as well as match the spec'd charging behavior for the underlying Li-Ion cells. Remember, we're talking a large amount of stored energy here, so the safety signalling and limits have to be respected.

To top it off -- I doubt you could get any significant energy efficiency savings, since you'll have to step up an control the voltage. Which means you'll need an inverter. I'm sure there'd be SOME energy savings to be had, but probably not worth all the engineering effort you'd go through -- especially as a one-off.

But the solar-cell, storage battery, inverter combination has been successfully done. I'd even term it practical in some cases -- generally, off grid, unattended charging.

In terms of environmental impact, I'm curious as whether you'd ever recoup the energy used to manufacture the panel and inverter, and how much usage it would take. As well as other environmental impacts.

(Don't get me wrong -- I'm a fan of solar, both now and as a potentially larger future contributor. I'm just wondering where the lower limit of the envelope lies).

[Joushou]

Well, there's a way to do it, but it's very dangerous, will void the warranty of your batteries, and if you screw up while doing it, it's your life you're putting at risk...

Switch-mode power-supplies are fairly efficient (I think 85% efficiency is common...)... You could step up the voltage to about 72-80v (You have to match the voltage of the cells... Too much, and you'll allow a fairly high current to flow, so make sure you can't supply more than what would be safe to charge the cells with), and supply it at the power-terminals (Use 2 insulated power-supplies, you do NOT wish to pair the batteries with each other!).

If you voltage is slightly higher than the batteries, it will load your supply to it's limit, and when you don't have anything to deliver, the batteries will offload the supply (Because of it's voltage drop). If the system isn't loaded, your supply will supply the battery-packs with voltage (Which is why your supply should be lower than the safety-limit, but not too low, as it wouldn't allow you to fully charge the cells. Just make sure you can't deliver too much current, or you'll end up charging them too fast.)

But, remember, you're working with huge amounts of power here, drop your tools inside the battery and it'll be the end of it all...
Also, the batteries aren't that fun to open with a hacksaw, but i managed to get Jason from MTOBATTERY to cut a few batteries up for me using his lasercutter, and it was pretty cheap considering how nicely it was done. If you're considering risking your life, and playing with the internals of the battery (Like me ;) ), i would recommend getting them opened by him.
He can also replace the cells when yours are worn out, and if i recall correctly, he can throw slightly higher rated cells in the pack... So it's a name worth remembering (Considering the price of a new set of batteries... Yikes)!