Regenerative Brakes in Electric Golf Carts
What’s Regenerative braking?
Regenerative braking is a unique technique that is used in EVs to capture energy that the vehicle has due to its motion or, in other words, its kinetic energy that would have been wasted when the vehicle decelerates or comes to a standstill while braking.
How Regenerative Brakes Work?
Regenerative brakes work by reversing electric motors that propel a car. It works like a generator and feeds energy back into the hybrid or electric system to help replenish a little bit of range. These small boosts in battery range can accumulate and improve efficiency over time when used regularly.
Regenerative brakes are a great way to preserve the range of an EV and improve the efficiency of a hybrid. You can use them a lot to recapture a lot of energy, or you can let them work in the background without changing your driving habits.
- Regenerative Brakes in Electric Golf Carts
Both lead-acid and lithium batteries provide power for your golf carts. But they are significantly different, let us compare and contrast the features of a lead-acid battery vs a lithium-ion battery in the following aspects.
- Electric motors are reversible machines, they can function as motors or as generators. In fact, while your motor is operating, it is the generator effect that produces the Counter Electromotive Force (CEMF), which reduces the current into the motor. Without this effect, the currents in the motor would be too large to manage. An additional advantage of the CEMF is that it can be used to send energy back to the source. The typical situation is one of an electric vehicle rolling on a sharp downhill slope and forcing the motor to turn fast enough to engage the regenerative braking, which sends energy to the batteries. Regenerative braking is a way of taking the wasted energy from the process of slowing down a cart and using it to recharge the cart’s batteries.
- The advantages of regenerative braking is that can capture and reuse more energy from braking. Capturing braking energy and sending it right back to your EV’s battery pack can extend your driving range. Estimations show that regenerative braking can potentially add hundreds of miles of electric driving range throughout the year. That means less time spent charging and more time getting where you need to go.
- But your battery’s BMS isn’t built to handle regenerative currents when this occurs your battery will simply disconnect resulting in a sudden stop, which can be concerning. For example, if people living on a hill take his cart off the charger, and coast down a big hill immediately. The battery will have over current fault. In AC carts this can make magnetic brakes lock up or lose all brakes. It is very dangerous.
- Therefore, having a lithium battery with regenerative brakes in a golf cart is important and helpful. Good news is that our batteries can capture regenerative currents when they occur.
