12V to 24V Boost Groundside Converter

• Who

  • @Daniel Puratich idea

  • @Tim Gu looking into it

• What

  • Take in 12V and output 24V

  • For powering our 24V battery charger

    • would be massive help at comp and flight tests to be able to charge faster

  • Supply enough power for the charger

    • if the current is really high then this project is going to be waaay out of our skill range

• Why

  • We have 12V server PSUs that are CSA approved

  • We get more power capability out of the charger at 24V

  • we could also just buy this? not sure if it maths out.

Details

Battery charger: HotA F6 Quad Battery Charger (4 x 15 A)

Charger Datasheet

Open	Open

• 1000 W output power limit across the 4 channels, with max current 4 x 15 A.

PSU:

• Corsair CMPSU-600CX V2 (I believe this is the one we’re using?)

• At +12V, maximum load is 40 A, so this can supply 480 W of power.

  • If we want to charge as fast as possible we will need a convertor rated for 480 W

• Assuming our boost groundside convertor supplies steps up 12V to 24V, with a power limit of 480 W:

  • If we charge 4 batteries at once, the current will max out at 5 A per channel (each channel is 120 W / 24V)

  • Alternatively we could charge 2 batteries at once with 10 A each.

COTS options:

• AliExpress seems to have the most amount of options and is well priced (but might be a bit sketchy?

• I initially added higher power options here, but based on the maximum PSU load we may not need more than a 480 W convertor