I will have multiple coils that generate alternate current. Those coils are placed around a wheel which has some magnets on it. My current plan is to make it look like this:
I was considering rectifying output of each and then putting the rectified voltage in both series and parallel. For example of four coils, two and two would make series to increase voltage and those pairs would go in parallel for greater maximum current. That would look like this:
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
I would probably add some capacitors to balance the voltage. But is this even possible?
Best Answer
That's fine with certain constraints:
The risk is that if the output voltage of one side is a little higher than the other then it will supply most of the current and may overheat.
Parallel connection of transformer secondaries wound on the same bobbin even has this problem. It is resolved by the internal impedance of the coil. As the coil current is increased the voltage droops a little due to the internal resistance. This tends to be enough to balance out the currents. In your application you could add a series low-value resistor on each leg. You could check the effect by measuring the voltage drop across each series resistor to calculate the current from each leg.