I'm a bit of a newbie to convertors so this might be a daft question.
I have two different unregulated but rectified voltage sources (permanent magnet generators) 3 to 20+ vdc and I would like to tie them in parallel in order to charge a battery or provide lighting. I thought that providing a voltage regulator on each would help. However, as the output voltage on each may not be exactly the same I could end up with regulator shutdown and/or one potentially never charging the battery. Diodes and/or balancing resistors might help, but I'm not sure if this is the way to go as each have losses.
Alternatively, given that the voltage on one could be lower for some considerable time I could either have to store/release it somehow or lose the available energy. Given that the project is to harvest as much power from each source as possible, this is an issue of efficiency.
I also thought about using a charge pump on each paralleled generator after each regulator to deliberately 'pump' output alternately as the others voltage reduced. But again, I'm not sure of the issues involved.
Please can you provide some guidance as the best approach?
Thanks for your help.