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Shunt Regulator / LED Lighting / Available Watts / Total Watt output
Yes it is hard to grasp.First compare to a car alternator, that has a voltage regulator that outputs a small , say 15 watt into the rotating rotor, producing a magnetic field equal to what is needed to maintain your car electrics at say 13.6 to 14.2 VDC, the power going in is directly proportional to the electrical load or electrical demand. So if you were using your car for rally driving, daytime your alternator would be running what I call base load, lets say it is 400 watts, at night you are running rally lighting equal to say 346 watts, for a total of 746 watts. So at night your gas consumption will go up, generating electricity using a gas motor is about 50% efficient.1 horse power is equal to 746 watts. So at night you are using 1 HP however to get that at 50% efficiency you are using 2 HP to produce it, are you lost yet?
I am not going to calculate the daytime etc. , my point is during the day you will be using less gas.
Permanent magnet alternator
Which is what we have. Also we have a shunt regulator. I am going to explain a little different than I have ever done before, something to do with my Kubota 3500 watt generator and running at 60 HZ with a poor voltage regulator. So to get my generator to run at 60HZ there are two settings, on demand and ON, demand pulls in the throttle to increase speed when a load is introduced, something less than 50 watts won't do it, however at 100 watts it kicks into high, it is at 60 HZ but my VAC is like 135 VAC, so to bring the voltage down I hook my 2000 watt heat gun to it, which is a waste of energy, however if I was backing up my house I know I would have ample load and need not worry about over voltage. So that heat gun is equal to the shunt part of the regulator on the Versys, it waste energy to maintain voltage less than 15 volts DC, I have seen 15 volts DC for a good 5 seconds before the shunt kicked in using the OEM regulator, blow a headlight, notice fluctuation in lighting when going above 2000 RPM?
There have been at least 2 cases now on this forum where the stator / regulator took out the ECU and several fuses, not trying to scare anyone, let me say I was pissed that my 2015 650 ABS still had the square wheel stone age shunt regulator, no excuse other than it is cheap, my guess is it costs Kawasaki about $15, a Polaris 4012941 probably would cost them about $30, now that they are obsolete, the new 4016868 would probably be the same $30.
So the fact that the rotor is permanent magnet, the field is fixed, so two factors come into play, RPM which is = work done, the higher the RPM the greater the work done. The copper/ iron has what is called saturation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturation_(magnetic) briefly this is the point where a increase in speed or a increase in the strength of the magnetic field will make no difference in the wattage output. The Versys is roughly 24 amp at 336 Watts.Going further, if you are at 4000 RPM or 6000 RPM, you are at maximum output, increasing to 8000 RPM or higher will make no difference. Doing the Polaris 4016868 , I found at roughly 3500 RPM I was able to get max. out.
So adding led lighting / replacing incandescent lights with LED will reduce base load and make more power available. I stated my base load is 162 watts, say your base load is 200 watts, if changing to led lighting is possible , a good one is the city lights, a gain of almost 10 watts. So say you do the change and your bike now has a base load say 160 watts, you have freed up 40 watts for heated gear.
Confused? Keep in mind your total available watts no matter what regulator you are using is 336 watts at or above 3500 RPM.
Her we go, you have a 2015 650 ABS and so do I, you have the OEM regulator , I have my Polaris 4016868. we have identical base loads of 162 watts.We throw a amprobe on your dc output at 3500 RPM with a measured voltage for calculation purposes it is 14.2 VDC , your bike is producing a current of 23.6 amp DC. My bike measures 11.4 amp, or almost less than half, we go for a ride, identical weight and identical everything, guess what I get better gas mileage because your regulator is wasting 174 watts of energy that is produced in the form of heat. I have very detailed explanations in the How To Forum, every once in a while I think of another way of explaining things.
Yes it is hard to grasp.First compare to a car alternator, that has a voltage regulator that outputs a small , say 15 watt into the rotating rotor, producing a magnetic field equal to what is needed to maintain your car electrics at say 13.6 to 14.2 VDC, the power going in is directly proportional to the electrical load or electrical demand. So if you were using your car for rally driving, daytime your alternator would be running what I call base load, lets say it is 400 watts, at night you are running rally lighting equal to say 346 watts, for a total of 746 watts. So at night your gas consumption will go up, generating electricity using a gas motor is about 50% efficient.1 horse power is equal to 746 watts. So at night you are using 1 HP however to get that at 50% efficiency you are using 2 HP to produce it, are you lost yet?
I am not going to calculate the daytime etc. , my point is during the day you will be using less gas.
Permanent magnet alternator
Which is what we have. Also we have a shunt regulator. I am going to explain a little different than I have ever done before, something to do with my Kubota 3500 watt generator and running at 60 HZ with a poor voltage regulator. So to get my generator to run at 60HZ there are two settings, on demand and ON, demand pulls in the throttle to increase speed when a load is introduced, something less than 50 watts won't do it, however at 100 watts it kicks into high, it is at 60 HZ but my VAC is like 135 VAC, so to bring the voltage down I hook my 2000 watt heat gun to it, which is a waste of energy, however if I was backing up my house I know I would have ample load and need not worry about over voltage. So that heat gun is equal to the shunt part of the regulator on the Versys, it waste energy to maintain voltage less than 15 volts DC, I have seen 15 volts DC for a good 5 seconds before the shunt kicked in using the OEM regulator, blow a headlight, notice fluctuation in lighting when going above 2000 RPM?
There have been at least 2 cases now on this forum where the stator / regulator took out the ECU and several fuses, not trying to scare anyone, let me say I was pissed that my 2015 650 ABS still had the square wheel stone age shunt regulator, no excuse other than it is cheap, my guess is it costs Kawasaki about $15, a Polaris 4012941 probably would cost them about $30, now that they are obsolete, the new 4016868 would probably be the same $30.
So the fact that the rotor is permanent magnet, the field is fixed, so two factors come into play, RPM which is = work done, the higher the RPM the greater the work done. The copper/ iron has what is called saturation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturation_(magnetic) briefly this is the point where a increase in speed or a increase in the strength of the magnetic field will make no difference in the wattage output. The Versys is roughly 24 amp at 336 Watts.Going further, if you are at 4000 RPM or 6000 RPM, you are at maximum output, increasing to 8000 RPM or higher will make no difference. Doing the Polaris 4016868 , I found at roughly 3500 RPM I was able to get max. out.
So adding led lighting / replacing incandescent lights with LED will reduce base load and make more power available. I stated my base load is 162 watts, say your base load is 200 watts, if changing to led lighting is possible , a good one is the city lights, a gain of almost 10 watts. So say you do the change and your bike now has a base load say 160 watts, you have freed up 40 watts for heated gear.
Confused? Keep in mind your total available watts no matter what regulator you are using is 336 watts at or above 3500 RPM.
Her we go, you have a 2015 650 ABS and so do I, you have the OEM regulator , I have my Polaris 4016868. we have identical base loads of 162 watts.We throw a amprobe on your dc output at 3500 RPM with a measured voltage for calculation purposes it is 14.2 VDC , your bike is producing a current of 23.6 amp DC. My bike measures 11.4 amp, or almost less than half, we go for a ride, identical weight and identical everything, guess what I get better gas mileage because your regulator is wasting 174 watts of energy that is produced in the form of heat. I have very detailed explanations in the How To Forum, every once in a while I think of another way of explaining things.
