Lithiumseller said:
Heltec capacitor active equalizer is running abouttemperature like25c, active balancer benefit is to have equal cycle life for lithium cells and when discharging there is no cell block what gets empty before others.
Hmm it looks to me that this active balancer will basically hide an underperforming pack.
Now Lithiumseller please do not take this the wrong way as any thing to educate us and make our packs perform better is always a good discussion.
I on the other hand am struggling to see the advantages of this balancing unit.
So taking the scenario of a 4s batterywith "100Ah" and you have 1 pack at 80Ah one at 120Ah one at 100Ah and one at 90Ah. the 120Ah pack will be constantly giving up energy to maintain a "balance". Am I wrong here?
Also is there any reporting at all with this balancer? I do not see anything in the description. It would be nice to know how much "active balancing" is actually happening to determine if there is a pack in trouble.
If a battery is built with a properbalance of the packs to begin with as in 100AH 5Ah for each thenactive balancing really is not necessary as the individualpack voltagewhen getting close to DOD (3.5V) will be relatively close as in 0.05v 0.03v. As the Battery charges the packs will start to tighten up all by themselves and if any top balancing is needed it will be very little.
The weather has been dismal in the US north-east over the last couple of days but these charts will show you the point I am trying to make.
This was the solar curve of my 14s pack yesterday as you can see my battery this AM is depleted and idling at 14.5 SOC voltage are between 3.420 and 3.500.
During yesterday's brief encounter with the sun my system started to charge and the cells tighten up. Here is a closeup of the voltages between 14:00 hrs and 15:00 hrs as you can see 0.032 voltage difference with absolutely no balancing required.
As the system approaches 4.1V this self equalization just gets tighter with a full charge showing 0.010.01 difference again no balancing interaction required.
This trace was taken in august when I had plenty of sun.
Now if you have Frankenstein packs (ones with a multitude of cells from different manufactures)and the cells mAh results,IR andSOH are all over the place. Alsoif the packs where thrown together with minimalattention payed to sorting mAh and trying to equalisethen if you do go below ?3.4v there will be a seperation of voltage some of it rather dramatic. So yes there I can see the use of an active balancer but then again is it hiding something? I don't know.
Does the ANT BMS have any reporting so you can track the performance of the whole battery and the individual packs? If so do you have any data you can share?
Thanks for all your input and info so far. Nice start on a 14s100p X2 Battery.
Wolf