PFC Charger testimonials

Some of the feedback we have seen about our chargers;

From Bruce EVangel Parmenter Sunday, May 05, 2002 10:45 AM

If you did not know, the PFC charger has a series of leds
that indicate different information.

When the charger goes into its second phase, a blue led
blinks.

I have the charger connected on the top of my rear battery pack
and visible through the rear Blazer window. So at night when
the charger is in its last stage, the blue leds is blinking.

It is a seriously bright led. I pointed the front of the charger
away from my neighbor so as to not bother them at night (the
'cheap motel with the neon sign blinking through the window'
syndrome).

So, I have had RV overnighters visiting the park, coming by
and asking me about my blue blinking light and where they
can get a cool car alarm like that (!?!)

Rod.Hower@ametek.com Wednesday, October 17, 2001 7:05 AM

It sounds like Rich has done a very nice job on the charger.
At $1500 you can't find anything close to this.
I think Rich is already giving a basement bargain price on this charger,
hopefully he has enough profit margin to continue working on EV electronics
for the good of everybody.
I'm considering buying one for the lab as a variable output power supply.
You would probably pay x3 or x4 for something comparable (like a Sorensson)
Congratulations Rich!!!

In a message dated 10/16/01 1:32:45 PM, RichSJ@aol.com writes:

<< Hi all,

Here is a short report on my experiences with the Manzanita Micro PFC-20
battery charger.

It is compact and light weight for the amount of power output it has. It
uses a two step, constant current/constant voltage charging profile. I
questioned this at first, since my old Zivan K2 used a three step algorythm.
The PFC-20's two step works well especially if you use regs with it and it
keeps the batteries from going too high if you don't have regulators.

The power factor correction works beautifully. I have drawn 14A from a 15A
circuit for long periods. Nothing gets hot. The wiring in my garage is
accessible and makes it easy to check.

Today I met with Bruce Parmenter at the Santa Clara, CA Costco. He plugged
his EAA, Avcon-to-NEMA 14-50 adapter box in to an EVI ICS-200. We hooked up
the charge cord to my Dualin'7's 144V pack of Hawkers. I turned the
charger's amp knob to zero and pluged the charger in to the 14-50 outlet. I
flipped the power switch and the green power LED came on. This was the first
time I had tried it on 240V AC. So far, so good. I turned the amp knob up and
stopped at 13 amps. Bruce started timing it at this point. He said the
ICS-200 unit usually stops after about a minute and a half if something is
wrong.

After a couple of minutes everything looked fine so we cranked the power up.
I had a clamp on DC amp meter on the charge cord. It read 25.5 amps at
160VDC. Thats just over 4000 W!! I can't tell you how satisfying it is to see
25 amps going into my pack from this relatively tiny box hooked up to a
public charging station.

We stayed and charged for about 15 minutes just to make sure the charging
station didn't reject the PFC-20. The PFC-20 was probably only sucking about
19 amps of AC power while providing over 25 amps at 160VDC. As the D'7
charged, the 25.5 amps climbed a little to 25.7 amps. We could hear the fans
cycling on and off.

I plan to start using it most of the time at 240VAC. It is really nice to
have 25 amps of charging power. (insert big EV type grin hear)

From Tony McCormick Monday, April 29, 2002 5:41 PM

Rich and EVlisters,
Just wanted to let you know that the PFC-20 #18 is fully installed
in my Renault and working quite well. I can charge my 102v system at
work in 4 hrs (1/2 the time, set at 13.5 amps) and even faster at home
(19+ amps). All from 110v, Yea!

Thanks for your support.

From Ralph Merwin Friday, February 01, 2002 12:14 AM

My green-case beta PFC20 charger arrived today. It's beautiful, inside
and out, and very clean for a beta unit. Nice job Rich, Joe and crew!

I ran a quick test of the PFC20 vs my Brusa NLG412, on both 110VAC and
220VAC, into a 120v pack. The PFC20 is the clear winner, putting out
a good, solid 20 amps per the E-Meter on 220VAC and 17.4 amps on 110.
The Brusa puts out 17.9 amps on 220VAC and a measly 6.9 amps on 110.

The E-Meter's reading was jumping around when I had the Brusa plugged
into 110VAC, which makes me think the Brusa output waveforms are very
rough. I didn't notice the E-Meter jumping around with the PFC20 on
either voltage. I'll look at the waveforms sometime soon (yes, I have
an isolated scope).

The PFC20 fans are much quieter than the Brusa as well. Noise a pet
peeve of mine - quiet is good. The PFC20 makes a slight buzzing
sound, but you can't hear it unless your ear is close to the charger.

I haven't had a chance to test the PFC20 with the Avcon wall unit
(the wall unit is on the shelf in preparation for moving). Maybe
I'll hook it up temporarily this weekend.

From Bruce EVangel Parmenter Sunday, May 05, 2002 1:41 AM

I popped over to a non-public San Jose location I still have
access to. I really like this place because it has a mcs-600.
A mcs-600 is an evi product that is no longer available. It
is a ritzy looking tall rectangular box on a square pole that
has two doors on either side. Each side gives either a 14-50
(208VAC 40amp) or a 120VAC 20amp outlets (not AVCON).

So, its time to pull out the cords and suck as much as I can
out of both 14-50's! (I can do three 14-50's if they had them).

I connected my zivan ng5 to one 14-50, and it put its normal
30amps DC into my 132V pack (at 150V). I made an adaptor to
split a 14-50 into two 120VAC 20amp connections and two 208VAC
20amp connections (you can't use them all on a 40amp circuit).

I connected two 120VAC zivan k2's each putting 10amps into my
pack (now the pack is getting 50amps into my pack which is at
150VDC). I still have 20 amps of 208VAC I can get out of the
second 14-50.

If I connect one of my 220VAC zivan k2's I will only get 15amps
into my pack. But, if I connect the PFC-20, I will get 22amps
into my pack. Of course, I connected the PFC-20.

I now was pumping 72amps into my pack, the amp hour reading on
my Cruising Control Emeter was decremeting very quickly from
73ah down (almost like watching the dates on the time machine
roll backwards).

Interestingly, I was competing with the building for power.
I was noticing the current flow dip every minute or so
for a couple of seconds. I put a meter movement on the
208VAC line, and it showed the AC voltage dipping
corresponding to the Emeter dips (I am competing with some
big pump or compressor in the building).

While my pack was sucking the juice, I saw a ics-200 next to
the mcs-600. I could use my EAA http://eaaev.org AVCON
adaptor and goose my charge current more.

I connected it up, and when I turned on the ics-200, it
tripped the mcs-600. I disconnected, reset and tried different
configurations, no good. I won't go into a long rant of how
many problems I have had with evi ics-200 AVCON head units,
but this is an example. Either the ics-200 errors out, or it
causes the other circuits to trip.

So, I left the ics-200 out of the configuration and I was
back to my high charge current. It had already been a
half hour dinking around with the ics-200, so the charge
current had rolled off to 45 amps with the pack voltage at
152VDC. The ah reading was already at 30hs.

Sheesh, this is great! I just cabled it up and pretty soon
I will be disconnecting it. The ah readings were decrementing
a slower at the now 40amp flow, but soon I would be at my 80%
point.

The charge current had rolled off to a point where not all the
chargers needed to be on. This is important to know when using
zivan in parallel. Sometimes the zivan is too smart for its
(or your) own good.

The charge current was about 30 amps at a pack voltage of
152.5VDC This is the same as having just the zivan ng5 on.
So, I turned off and disconnected the two 120VAC zivan k2s
and the PFC-20. Then I reset the ng5 to let it charge at
30amps.

You can not put more power into the pack if the zivan chargers
keep turning their current lower to match the amount of current
their circuits think the current flow should be. I could
crank the PFC-20 knob up but no more current will go into the
pack because the zivans will turn down.

So why fight it, and possibly hurt the pack. I just start
disconnecting chargers I do not need, and spend the time
coiling up the cords to stow away in the back seat. By the
time I am done, I am charging at less than 30amps on just the
ng5 the ah reading is about 20 ahs, the pack voltage is about
152.5VDC .

Now is the time to disconnect and hit the road. You do not
need to complete the charge to total recharge point, nor
have to do a finishing/over charge neither. I can do that
tonight. Total time to get 55ah back, 50 minutes.

If I were completely discharged the charge times are even
faster because you charge at a high rate longer before
rolling off.

By only spending the time when the charge current is fast,
you optimize the time you have spent. It would take another
two hours to do the finishing charge, plus more hours to
balance the pack (not needed right now).

My Emeter says I am 20ah down from a full charge. I know I
use 2ah for every mile at 55 mph on the highway. So I am
10 miles short of the full 50 mile range at 55 mph. That
is plenty for me to get back (this sialso why I state
charging points should be 40 miles apart).

The PFC-20 showed again its benefit as an efficient and
flexible charger. It had nothing to do with the ics-200
gitchiness (I tested it out of the circuit with the same
results).

It will be interesting to see how the PFC-50 I have on order
does in different configurations. This PFC-20 I am temporarily
using is rock solid.

From Bruce EVangel Parmenter Tuesday, April 30, 2002 11:22 AM

If you do not know, Rich let me use one of his PFC-20 while
I wait for a PFC-50 to be built. I am very pleased to say that
the pros are out standing:

-lightweight
-adjustable output
-runs off either 120VAC or 208-240VAC
-output is 20 amps (depends on your pack voltage)

I get 22 amps into my 132V wet cell US145 pack. The above
features are very useful to me.

The cons:
-unisolated, some rfi noise while charging

Unisolated is not a problem if you only have one charger,
or (like me) the rest of your chargers are isolated.
The pros out weigh the cons for the price.

From Ralph Merwin's web page May 7 ,2002

Since this picture was taken I've switched to a PFC-20 charger from Manzanita Micro. The Brusa charger kept giving my Avcon wall unit fits, probably due to the inrush current caused by the Brusa's filter caps.

The PFC-20 also puts out much more power than the Brusa, especially when connected to a 120v circuit. I tested the PFC-20 against the Brusa on the same pack from the same 120v and 240v outlets. On a 120v circuit, the Brusa was only able to put 9 amps into the pack while the PFC-20 could put 18.9 amps. On a 240v circuit the Brusa put out 18 amps vs. the PFC-20 at a solid 20 amps. Using the PFC-20 will allow me to recharge anywhere at almost the same rate.

This page maintained by Joe Smalley

Last changed on 8 May 2002

	Some of the feedback we have seen about our chargers; From Bruce EVangel Parmenter Sunday, May 05, 2002 10:45 AM If you did not know, the PFC charger has a series of leds that indicate different information. When the charger goes into its second phase, a blue led blinks. I have the charger connected on the top of my rear battery pack and visible through the rear Blazer window. So at night when the charger is in its last stage, the blue leds is blinking. It is a seriously bright led. I pointed the front of the charger away from my neighbor so as to not bother them at night (the 'cheap motel with the neon sign blinking through the window' syndrome). So, I have had RV overnighters visiting the park, coming by and asking me about my blue blinking light and where they can get a cool car alarm like that (!?!)
	Rod.Hower@ametek.com Wednesday, October 17, 2001 7:05 AM It sounds like Rich has done a very nice job on the charger. At $1500 you can't find anything close to this. I think Rich is already giving a basement bargain price on this charger, hopefully he has enough profit margin to continue working on EV electronics for the good of everybody. I'm considering buying one for the lab as a variable output power supply. You would probably pay x3 or x4 for something comparable (like a Sorensson) Congratulations Rich!!!
	In a message dated 10/16/01 1:32:45 PM, RichSJ@aol.com writes: << Hi all, Here is a short report on my experiences with the Manzanita Micro PFC-20 battery charger. It is compact and light weight for the amount of power output it has. It uses a two step, constant current/constant voltage charging profile. I questioned this at first, since my old Zivan K2 used a three step algorythm. The PFC-20's two step works well especially if you use regs with it and it keeps the batteries from going too high if you don't have regulators. The power factor correction works beautifully. I have drawn 14A from a 15A circuit for long periods. Nothing gets hot. The wiring in my garage is accessible and makes it easy to check. Today I met with Bruce Parmenter at the Santa Clara, CA Costco. He plugged his EAA, Avcon-to-NEMA 14-50 adapter box in to an EVI ICS-200. We hooked up the charge cord to my Dualin'7's 144V pack of Hawkers. I turned the charger's amp knob to zero and pluged the charger in to the 14-50 outlet. I flipped the power switch and the green power LED came on. This was the first time I had tried it on 240V AC. So far, so good. I turned the amp knob up and stopped at 13 amps. Bruce started timing it at this point. He said the ICS-200 unit usually stops after about a minute and a half if something is wrong. After a couple of minutes everything looked fine so we cranked the power up. I had a clamp on DC amp meter on the charge cord. It read 25.5 amps at 160VDC. Thats just over 4000 W!! I can't tell you how satisfying it is to see 25 amps going into my pack from this relatively tiny box hooked up to a public charging station. We stayed and charged for about 15 minutes just to make sure the charging station didn't reject the PFC-20. The PFC-20 was probably only sucking about 19 amps of AC power while providing over 25 amps at 160VDC. As the D'7 charged, the 25.5 amps climbed a little to 25.7 amps. We could hear the fans cycling on and off. I plan to start using it most of the time at 240VAC. It is really nice to have 25 amps of charging power. (insert big EV type grin hear)
	From Tony McCormick Monday, April 29, 2002 5:41 PM Rich and EVlisters, Just wanted to let you know that the PFC-20 #18 is fully installed in my Renault and working quite well. I can charge my 102v system at work in 4 hrs (1/2 the time, set at 13.5 amps) and even faster at home (19+ amps). All from 110v, Yea! Thanks for your support.
	From Ralph Merwin Friday, February 01, 2002 12:14 AM My green-case beta PFC20 charger arrived today. It's beautiful, inside and out, and very clean for a beta unit. Nice job Rich, Joe and crew! I ran a quick test of the PFC20 vs my Brusa NLG412, on both 110VAC and 220VAC, into a 120v pack. The PFC20 is the clear winner, putting out a good, solid 20 amps per the E-Meter on 220VAC and 17.4 amps on 110. The Brusa puts out 17.9 amps on 220VAC and a measly 6.9 amps on 110. The E-Meter's reading was jumping around when I had the Brusa plugged into 110VAC, which makes me think the Brusa output waveforms are very rough. I didn't notice the E-Meter jumping around with the PFC20 on either voltage. I'll look at the waveforms sometime soon (yes, I have an isolated scope). The PFC20 fans are much quieter than the Brusa as well. Noise a pet peeve of mine - quiet is good. The PFC20 makes a slight buzzing sound, but you can't hear it unless your ear is close to the charger. I haven't had a chance to test the PFC20 with the Avcon wall unit (the wall unit is on the shelf in preparation for moving). Maybe I'll hook it up temporarily this weekend.
	From Bruce EVangel Parmenter Sunday, May 05, 2002 1:41 AM I popped over to a non-public San Jose location I still have access to. I really like this place because it has a mcs-600. A mcs-600 is an evi product that is no longer available. It is a ritzy looking tall rectangular box on a square pole that has two doors on either side. Each side gives either a 14-50 (208VAC 40amp) or a 120VAC 20amp outlets (not AVCON). So, its time to pull out the cords and suck as much as I can out of both 14-50's! (I can do three 14-50's if they had them). I connected my zivan ng5 to one 14-50, and it put its normal 30amps DC into my 132V pack (at 150V). I made an adaptor to split a 14-50 into two 120VAC 20amp connections and two 208VAC 20amp connections (you can't use them all on a 40amp circuit). I connected two 120VAC zivan k2's each putting 10amps into my pack (now the pack is getting 50amps into my pack which is at 150VDC). I still have 20 amps of 208VAC I can get out of the second 14-50. If I connect one of my 220VAC zivan k2's I will only get 15amps into my pack. But, if I connect the PFC-20, I will get 22amps into my pack. Of course, I connected the PFC-20. I now was pumping 72amps into my pack, the amp hour reading on my Cruising Control Emeter was decremeting very quickly from 73ah down (almost like watching the dates on the time machine roll backwards). Interestingly, I was competing with the building for power. I was noticing the current flow dip every minute or so for a couple of seconds. I put a meter movement on the 208VAC line, and it showed the AC voltage dipping corresponding to the Emeter dips (I am competing with some big pump or compressor in the building). While my pack was sucking the juice, I saw a ics-200 next to the mcs-600. I could use my EAA http://eaaev.org AVCON adaptor and goose my charge current more. I connected it up, and when I turned on the ics-200, it tripped the mcs-600. I disconnected, reset and tried different configurations, no good. I won't go into a long rant of how many problems I have had with evi ics-200 AVCON head units, but this is an example. Either the ics-200 errors out, or it causes the other circuits to trip. So, I left the ics-200 out of the configuration and I was back to my high charge current. It had already been a half hour dinking around with the ics-200, so the charge current had rolled off to 45 amps with the pack voltage at 152VDC. The ah reading was already at 30hs. Sheesh, this is great! I just cabled it up and pretty soon I will be disconnecting it. The ah readings were decrementing a slower at the now 40amp flow, but soon I would be at my 80% point. The charge current had rolled off to a point where not all the chargers needed to be on. This is important to know when using zivan in parallel. Sometimes the zivan is too smart for its (or your) own good. The charge current was about 30 amps at a pack voltage of 152.5VDC This is the same as having just the zivan ng5 on. So, I turned off and disconnected the two 120VAC zivan k2s and the PFC-20. Then I reset the ng5 to let it charge at 30amps. You can not put more power into the pack if the zivan chargers keep turning their current lower to match the amount of current their circuits think the current flow should be. I could crank the PFC-20 knob up but no more current will go into the pack because the zivans will turn down. So why fight it, and possibly hurt the pack. I just start disconnecting chargers I do not need, and spend the time coiling up the cords to stow away in the back seat. By the time I am done, I am charging at less than 30amps on just the ng5 the ah reading is about 20 ahs, the pack voltage is about 152.5VDC . Now is the time to disconnect and hit the road. You do not need to complete the charge to total recharge point, nor have to do a finishing/over charge neither. I can do that tonight. Total time to get 55ah back, 50 minutes. If I were completely discharged the charge times are even faster because you charge at a high rate longer before rolling off. By only spending the time when the charge current is fast, you optimize the time you have spent. It would take another two hours to do the finishing charge, plus more hours to balance the pack (not needed right now). My Emeter says I am 20ah down from a full charge. I know I use 2ah for every mile at 55 mph on the highway. So I am 10 miles short of the full 50 mile range at 55 mph. That is plenty for me to get back (this sialso why I state charging points should be 40 miles apart). The PFC-20 showed again its benefit as an efficient and flexible charger. It had nothing to do with the ics-200 gitchiness (I tested it out of the circuit with the same results). It will be interesting to see how the PFC-50 I have on order does in different configurations. This PFC-20 I am temporarily using is rock solid.
	From Bruce EVangel Parmenter Tuesday, April 30, 2002 11:22 AM If you do not know, Rich let me use one of his PFC-20 while I wait for a PFC-50 to be built. I am very pleased to say that the pros are out standing: -lightweight -adjustable output -runs off either 120VAC or 208-240VAC -output is 20 amps (depends on your pack voltage) I get 22 amps into my 132V wet cell US145 pack. The above features are very useful to me. The cons: -unisolated, some rfi noise while charging Unisolated is not a problem if you only have one charger, or (like me) the rest of your chargers are isolated. The pros out weigh the cons for the price.
	From Ralph Merwin's web page May 7 ,2002 Since this picture was taken I've switched to a PFC-20 charger from Manzanita Micro. The Brusa charger kept giving my Avcon wall unit fits, probably due to the inrush current caused by the Brusa's filter caps. The PFC-20 also puts out much more power than the Brusa, especially when connected to a 120v circuit. I tested the PFC-20 against the Brusa on the same pack from the same 120v and 240v outlets. On a 120v circuit, the Brusa was only able to put 9 amps into the pack while the PFC-20 could put 18.9 amps. On a 240v circuit the Brusa put out 18 amps vs. the PFC-20 at a solid 20 amps. Using the PFC-20 will allow me to recharge anywhere at almost the same rate.
	This page maintained by Joe Smalley Last changed on 8 May 2002