Electricity 101

This page tries to explain the some of the basics of electricity needed for this project.

Terminology

Peak voltage - is the highest voltage that is reached when sine wave is viewed on oscilloscope (RMS voltage * 1.4)

RMS - (Root-Mean-Square) is the voltage you read when you use a meter to measure voltage, and is the effective value (peak voltage * .707)

There is a nice explaination of Peak voltage and RMS voltage here:

How to determine coil output:

We are building a 3-phase alternator here which can be to charge a bank of 4 batteries, with an cut-in voltage of 48 volts. (The assumption here is that you are using a meter to measure the coil output and not an oscilloscope)

For a 48v stator with cut in at 48v you need 48 / 1.4 v rms at the line terminals.

The phase voltage will be the line volts /1.73 rms. My stator contains 4 coils in series (star connection), so each coil will need to produce 1/4 of that .

Individual coil output calculation is therefore: 48 / 1.4 / 1.7/ 4 = 5V rms.

The voltage is proportional to the number of turns ( this assumes that they occupy the same space so it may change a bit if you mess with wire size and coil dimensions).

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