I have a peltier element rated at 15.4V, 6A, and 60 watts that I got from China and has no datasheet to be found. When I drive it with a 12 volt power supply, I can get up to about 5.5 amps giving a power output of over 60 watts. Is this an issue? Maybe the specs I have are misleading, but they don't make very much sense to me. is going over the rated power okay if I keep it cool? I have a heatsink on the hot side and it is not even noticeably warm. Is driving it over the rated power going to hurt it? It doesn't make sense to me that the given current and voltage levels would yield so much more power than it is rated for. It makes me think the 60 watts is just a suggestion. It says TEC1-12706 on it, but as far as I can tell, that is not unique to the particular product.
Electronic – Overpowering a peltier element
coolingpower
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My guess is your peltier are not enough to cool the whole suitcase (or not being applied current enough). Here is my reasoning:
1 - No heatsink on cold side + water: I guess this means when nothing is transfering heat from the suitcase to the peltier, the peltier gets cold enough to condense water.
2 - Heatsink on cold side + no water: since transfer of heat from the suitcase to the peltier is more effective now, the peltier doesnt get cold enough to condensate, hence no water is present in the morning.
So in conclusion, its either not powerful enough (by nature or lack of supply) and/or the suitcase is not well thermally insulated.
What is the current rating of your PSU? Did you wire the peltiers in series or parallel?
First of all, TMI of the useless sort, not enoughof the useful sort.
That converter is made to operate lights and DC motors. It probably has little to no filtering of the output, and may use only a half wave rectifier. It seems to be pretty old.
What that means is, is that it doesn't put out a nice, clean 12VDC, but rather a pulsating voltage that approximates DC.
The low points in the pulses are low enough to trigger the low voltage warning on your cooler.
Adding the (big) capacitors smooths the pulses and holds the average voltage high enough to stay above the low voltage alarm.
The peaks on the pulses may well be over 16VDC. You have no way to measure them, and I can't measure it from here.
So, no guarantees that it won't kill your (presumably) expensive capacitors.
Cheaper and more certain would be to use a modern switching power supply rated for 12VDC and 5A. Check the tags on the cooler, or look it up online to be sure about the voltage and current.
Or, just use a cooler made for 110VAC when you've got an outlet to connect to.
The recommended converter puts out 6A at 12V. The model number is in the cooler hand book. Buying one of those is probably cheaper than playing games with expensive capacitors, and safer besides. Have you considered what could happen if you short those big capacitors?
Best Answer
15.4V x 6A is over 90W, not 60. So 60W is not the "rated power" but the heat pumping capacity.
This is in line with other Peltier coolers I've seen - they take about 1.5W of electrical power to pump 1W of heat, whereas a compressor-based refrigerator would pump 3-4W of heat for the same 1.5W input power.
So you can use it at 12V, 5.5A (66W in) and it'll probably pump about 40W.
Add these together (106W) and add a safety margin : plan your heatsink/cooling to remove something like 120W from the hot side.