Hello All,
I hope this helps someone! Please let me know if you think this is going to cause me problems/issues?
The background, I had to change my gas bottle the other days and noticed that my gas solenoid was very hot. We are liveaboards so we use are
oven a lot (bread, cakes, roasts, etc), so it normal for us to have the
stove on for over a hour at a time every other day. I also noticed the gas solenoid consumes about 2 amps which is what the solenoid is rated at, I believe. The tag on it says 2w 12v.
So I would like to reduce both the heat generated and drop the
power consumption if possible!
After some
internet searches I found that these issues are not uncommon with any type of magnetic solenoid. It also highlighted that the solenoids only required the full voltage/amps to activate , once activated the voltage can be reduced and in turn it will reduce the amps and heat generation.
There are off the shelf solenoid which do this but they are expensive! The
internet also provided examples of
electrical circuits which would do the same thing but I'm not good at building circuits and I'm currently in a place where I can't get components.
So my
cheap easy solution is to use a combination of a delay off relay and a DC-DC stepdown module, both
cheap items from eBay/Amazon.
Delay off relay example;
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ORLAZ..._t1_B00OPO40US
Voltage stepdown module example;
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Valefod-Eff...onverter&psc=1
Here is my setup,
The 12v positive supply goes to relay, both to provide
power and to the NO (normally open) terminals and to the input on the stepdown module. The output from the stepdown module connects to the NC (normally close) terminal on the relay.
The common terminal on the relay then provides power to the solenoid. The trigger terminal on the relay is NOT connected to anything. As the relay activates for the set time when power to initially supplied.
I have my stepdown module output set to 6.5v.
I hope that all makes sense!
So the process goes, when I switch my gas on, the solenoid receives the full voltage for 30sec until the relay pops and the voltage goes to 6.5v. Even thou it's a mechanical relay the solenoid does not deactivate during the switch over. I can see from my amp meter the down from 2amps to very little, I have not had the
oven on long enough to tell about the heat
generator.
I will update in a day or so.
Has anyone else come up with a different solution?