Posted by David Sherman on Tuesday, November 23, 2004 at 2:49PM :
In Reply to: 24v and 12v help posted by dodgeboy on Tuesday, November 23, 2004 at 11:46AM :
The only solution that seems foolproof to me is two alternators and 3 batteries, with the 12V and 24V circuits separated. I might try two alternators on one 24 volt stack with the 12V alternator going to the tap between the batteries, but I would monitor the charge conditions closely and make sure that I put plenty of load on the lower 12V battery so that it wouldn't overcharge while the upper one was charging. If I was really ambitious I would design and build a voltage splitter using some sort of switching power supply circuit to force the battery tap to exactly half the voltage of the full 24V system, and would only use one alternator. I'm certain this could be made to work well, but it's a major engineering project. Better to keep the systems separate unless you want to buy lots of batteries.