Conversion To Electric Energy: The Motor As A Generator
Vehicles driven by electric motors use the motor as a generator when using regenerative braking: it is operated as a generator during braking and its output is supplied to an electrical load; the transfer of energy to the load provides the braking effect.
Regenerative braking is used on hybrid gas/electric automobiles to recoup some of the energy lost during stopping. This energy is saved in a storage battery and used later to power the motor whenever the car is in electric mode.
Early examples of this system were the front-wheel drive conversions of horse-drawn cabs by Louis Antoine Krieger (1868–1951). The Krieger electric landaulet had a drive motor in each front wheel with a second set of parallel windings (bifilar coil) for regenerative braking. In England, the Raworth system of "regenerative control" was introduced by tramway operators in the early 1900s, since it offered them economic and operational benefits as explained by A. Raworth of Leeds in some detail. These included tramway systems at Devonport (1903), Rawtenstall, Birmingham, Crystal Palace-Croydon (1906) and many others. Slowing down the speed of the cars or keeping it in hand on descending gradients, the motors worked as generators and braked the vehicles. The tram cars also had wheel brakes and track slipper brakes which could stop the tram should the electric braking systems fail. In several cases the tram car motors were shunt wound instead of series wound, and the systems on the Crystal Palace line utilized series-parallel controllers. Following a serious accident at Rawtenstall, an embargo was placed on this form of traction in 1911. Twenty years later, the regenerative braking system was reintroduced.
Regenerative braking has been in extensive use on railways for many decades. The Baku-Tbilisi-Batumi railway (Transcaucasus Railway or Georgian railway) started utilizing regenerative braking in the early 1930s. This was especially effective on the steep and dangerous Surami Pass. In Scandinavia the Kiruna to Narvik railway carries iron ore from the mines in Kiruna in the north of Sweden down to the port of Narvik in Norway to this day. The rail cars are full of thousands of tons of iron ore on the way down to Narvik, and these trains generate large amounts of electricity by their regenerative braking. From Riksgränsen on the national border to the Port of Narvik, the trains use only a fifth of the power they regenerate. The regenerated energy is sufficient to power the empty trains back up to the national border. Any excess energy from the railway is pumped into the power grid to supply homes and businesses in the region, and the railway is a net generator of electricity.
An Energy Regeneration Brake was developed in 1967 for the AMC Amitron. This was a completely battery powered urban concept car whose batteries were recharged by regenerative braking, thus increasing the range of the automobile.
Many modern hybrid and electric vehicles use this technique to extend the range of the battery pack. Examples include the Toyota Prius, Honda Insight, the Vectrix electric maxi-scooter, the Tesla Roadster, the Nissan Leaf, and the Chevrolet Volt.
Read more about this topic: Regenerative Brake
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