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Are there any balancers for sale At the moment?
Yes. I ordered a batch of 400pcs...and we still have plenty left.
Hey sid, idea on a new thing a small relay switch that triggers when the balancer is active have tow soldering pads or two pins and I cand take and use the pin out to a relay that is set for the voltage of my battery bank to turn on the fan when the relay on the balancer kicks on. that will get rid of having to use a tempture controller.
That'd have to be a separate MCU that processes the resulting datastream to determine if any are active. Far easier to just use a thermal fan controller. At 24v, there should be plenty of readily available options; it's just at 48v that the pickings get a bit slim.
Might want to have sean reword the web site, the balancers are not well shunts, well they can be, but really thats not the main funtion of them, they not going to tell you how many amps your pulling, so really they not shunts lol. Unless he put that there for a unreleased GS Product. . .
Just bought 4 Lip4 balancers 😛 Going to use them to balance cells that are over charging. seems like my head way battery likes to over charge one modual even if I balance the whole thing. it just keeps going out of balance. mainly one of them, so going to use gator clips on the ends to be able to move it to any of the moduals that are being a pain.
52 minutes ago, The Blind Wolf said:Just bought 4 Lip4 balancers 😛 Going to use them to balance cells that are over charging. seems like my head way battery likes to over charge one modual even if I balance the whole thing. it just keeps going out of balance. mainly one of them, so going to use gator clips on the ends to be able to move it to any of the moduals that are being a pain.
You'll want to use some heavy gauge clips, as the voltage drop in thin wire will greatly reduce the balance current.
You'll want to use some heavy gauge clips, as the voltage drop in thin wire will greatly reduce the balance current.
Yep got some copper clips that I use.
working on my one battery and keep noticeing its not outputing any amprage even thou it showing that its got voltage of 26.9v. but when I go into the bms app its not giving or taking any power, could that bms be fried due to over amping the two times it smoked up the connectors on it? it won't even cut off when I give it the ocmmand makes me think there is a short in it.
its showing the battery cell voltage and total volts and stuff, but just not working as fare as amps. weird. I only got one more bms and that was for one more battery, guess I'll plug it into the other battery and see if that works and if so will just have to order another bms *sigh*
Also just order what they call mega bolt on fuses. 150a five of those and 1 400a 36v one as well. finally getting around of building my copper bus bars, and going to use those mega fuse coming off of the buss bar for each connections.
I order Balancers on Sunday, I've not got them yet, and or a shipping notification.
I like to keep charging current under 30A / battery and use the Victron's ability to dynamically adjust it's output such that the current into any single battery is in my happy zone. The batteries can accommodate much higher charge rates but 30A is the recommended place for lifespan.
Finally got a round tuit and put my current monitoring together.
Each battery has a hall sensor on it monitored by a single arduino uno board. Nothing is calibrated, but it has been zeroed. The figures reported by the monitor don't need to be accurate, just reasonably proportional. The total battery current as measured by a Victron shunt is proportionally assigned based on those readings. The highest single battery current is found and if > 25A (arbitrary where I like to sit my battery current) the limiter value is recalculated so that no battery is > 25A. That value is then used to reduce the current provided by the Victron charger to steer the system to where I want it. The reverse applies too, if the highest current into a battery is < 25A, the system will try to raise it up, within the limits of the position in the charge cycle vis voltage etc. This allows me to limit battery charge current while at the same time being able to provide any excess solar power to offset inverter draw.
Given how hap-hazardly it has all been done it works surprisingly well. If I had accessible smart BMSes the hall sensors, arduino and even the Victron shunt could be avoided since the BMSes would provide the amp figure as is.
Hey sid, okay, just solder wires onto the balancers, and I need to know, when I check the contanuity, it beeps on one wire with the prob on that wire and the heat sink area, is that the negative or postive? as the other side don't do anything.
Hey sid, okay, just solder wires onto the balancers, and I need to know, when I check the contanuity, it beeps on one wire with the prob on that wire and the heat sink area, is that the negative or postive? as the other side don't do anything.
The one side it beeps continuity to the heatsink area, that's the balancer positive. Non continuity side is negative.
Now that I've had time to play with my balancers, I've come up with a few questions.
Sid:
1.) If you have a switch on the Amperage adjustment side, can it be used while the unit is powered to switch between 2.5 and 5 Amps?
2.) If you have two ( or more ) of them on the same cell, do they really need isolated from each other if on the same heatsink?
3.) If you have 3 on the same cell and heatsink as in 2 above, do they all have to be at the same Amperage setting or can they be a 2.5 on one, 5 on two for 12.5 Amps? Or combinations thereof to get 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, & 15A of discharge?
The reason I'm asking is because I wired mine for a maximum of 15A per wire to the terminal strip and reached 15.4 Amps for short periods into the battery from the MSB controller. I was waiting for the 15A fuse to blow but it didn't. And I would need to possibly dump all the amperage from one cell if a set got really badly out of balance.
On a different subject but still the same batteries. I ran a test the other night where I was drawing 70A out of the cells. At that rate it was burning 1AH per minute and managed to get 27AH out of 32AH available before the UPower inverter shutdown for low Voltage.
Now that I've had time to play with my balancers, I've come up with a few questions.
1) More or less...yes. Worth noting, however, that the "current limit" on the balancers have a strong temperature coefficient--the hotter they are, the more amperage they'll run. The 2.5 / 5.0A may not even be what they actually do...more of a "high / low" actually.
2) Multiple balancers on the same cell do not necessarily need electrically isolated from each other...though as the (conductive) backs of the transistors are after the overheat protection devices, an single unit overheat will trigger a chain reaction overheat of all units involved.
3) Doesn't matter ;-). The units' goal is to regulate a specified voltage, that's it. As such, if paralleling them, you may find that one unit does more power than the others simply due to manufacturing parts tolerances.
You don't necessarily need heaps of balance current to keep a bank in line. The initial few charge (balance) cycles will run things pretty hard (often good to do this with lower amperage so the balancers don't trip), but after that, "keeping the cells in line" shouldn't be impossibly difficult. I have the very first basic 3A prototypes on my bank with over 200A of charge capability--and they barely even light up at full charge. (First few days ran them hard, though!) Sean has some 5A units on his ~350Ah Li-Ion bank...and the balancers run hot and hard every time the battery reaches full charge--but so far that's been quite sufficient.
When 5A isn't enough, I wonder how in the world people think the Daly BMS is the "GOAT"...when it's good for barely 0.05A....IIRC.
Sid, I checked mine a while ago and they were running about .5A on any cell that was being balanced without any charge going into them. I do have one set in the test battery that likes to go high on the charge if not reined in. The cells are rated at 4.2V but this one will charge to over 4.3 on the 4 cells. This is where the balancer is going to get its workout. The battery is currently undergoing a load test to see how many AH it will actually put out before the inverter ( UPower, not GS ) will shutdown. Starting Voltage under a 16A load was at 28.5.
25.5V after an hour and at 17AH.
24.9V at 72 minutes and 20AH .
24.1V, 17A load at 1.5 hours and 25AH.
23.1V at shutdown at 1:40:00 and 28.4AH.
615Wh out of about 715Wh in. About 86% efficient.
but this one will charge to over 4.3 on the 4 cells.
Likely indicates either a lower capacity, and/or different SOC (state of charge) from the other cells. Once the cells are all fully top-balanced, this should (!) even out.
What is the best way to ask about an order of balancers. I ordered 4 more on Jan 8th, may have fallen through the cracks. I sent a message from the site, but I figure I may be better off asking here. There may be a better way to check or a specific email to use.