Hi happens that I find the piclist to be the community of the fittest electronic engineers that I know on the web, that's why I ask here and not on some of grid living list... I may have mentioned before that I use 10 pc. 12V car batteries at my of grid ranch, and that I charge those using a simple rectifier, either Bridge from 120V AC or 2 diodes using half of each of the 2 120V outlets around the center of my generators 240 V AC output (I do that to reduce the chance of any one of the automatic breakers of the 2 120V circuits from tripping). This seems to work quite good, but I just read that it is not advisable to charge Car batteries on pulse current, and since they would be charged only when the generators output voltage reaches above their current charge voltage, it definitely is pulse... So I have been toying with the idea to try a different circuit, and I would like some comments and hints on dimensioning the circuit! === here it goes === If I use a circuit like they use on computer power supplies that double the voltage using 2 diodes and 2 Capacitors, but hooked it up to the battery bank, the capacitors would have to discharge completely every cycle (maybe even reverse polarity, which I could prevent with another diode per cap), but since last half waves capacitor starts out with minimally the voltage of the bank, the new half wave charging the next capacitor would push up that voltage and therefore start discharging the Cap to the Battery starting from 0... I know it may be difficult to describe in words, but its a simple enough drawing! I wonder though would kind of capacitors would stand this type of abuse and how I would estimate the current that would be required? I figure there must be a possibility to develop a formula using the Coulombs at max voltage, and then average out this number of electrons over the cycle to get an estimate for the produced, now less 'uncontiniously' pulsing! Thanks for any hints or help to express this better so more responses are possible! -- Tobias Gogolin skype: moontogo messenger: usertogo@hotmail.com You develop Sustainable Ranch Technology at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SURA-TECH an Open Source Electric Motor/Alternator at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Performance_Axial_Flux and an Open Source Motor Controller at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GoBox -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist