Gas/Electric Hybrid Project Question

Hello to everyone. I’m working on a project that i’ve Never seen attempted before and wanted some input from experts on whether you think this would work. I have very limited knowledge on electronics so here goes. I have a 36v electric golf cart that is currently running on 3 12v deep cycle batteries. I want to increase the range and also increase the power slightly. My plan is to add a small gas motor to drive a 48v 1000 watt generator motor. The generator would go to an 1800 watt boost converter to bring it down to about 40 to 42v at 20A. The boost converter would attach directly to the final battery leads to boost the batteries. The hope is to increase the range a lot and the power a little. Can you think of a reason electronically that this wouldn’t work?

by Mikeyman
August 19, 2019

You need some electrical engineering here before you think of electronics. Understand first that the "power" is set by the existing golf cart motor rating and there is nothing you can do about this except overload the motor and risk overheating it. Second, on a dc motor the speed is proportional to the voltage so any increase in voltage will only increase the top available speed. You would be better off to simply use your engine driven generator as a battery charger to keep the batteries up and so increase the range indefinitly. Are the generator field connections accessible? If so you can simply control the generated voltage through the field, connect the generator in parallel with the batteries and keep the batteries charged this way. This would require a well designed generator current regulator as a slightly too high voltage will cause A LOT of current into the batteries and a slightly too low voltage will allow the batteries to feed back through the generator and overspeed the engine. So you see you have not taken on a simple job.

by Foxx
August 20, 2019

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