Thank you for this! I've just bought a new 4 cell 200ah 12v Lifepo4 with a JBD bms. On the first test cycle the battery had a large imbalance on cell 2, over 400mv! The cell kept activating the JBD overvoltage cut off, so the remaining three cells wouldn't charge to more than 3.335v. It's taking forever, but using your technique it's slowly equalising using your 14v low current method. many many thanks!
Hi, I got 16 LifepO4 cells and I observed a 0.4V voltage difference between cells in the bottom. 10 cells were around 3.1V and the other 6 cells were 2.7V. I'm using 150-2A JK BMS. Because of this issue battery pack's usable capacity is very limited. Is there a way to balance the cells at around 2.7V using JK BMS without disassembling the pack?
Thank goodness someone finally said you don't need to balance cells before putting them in use. Those videos saying you do are like a scratched broken record. Over and over and over and over and over. Thank You Andy!
020622/1438h PST 🇺🇸….. 020722/0838h Brisbane 🇦🇺. This is the second time I’m watching this video to understand further. I have altered the configuration exactly, recommended by you. The result is fantastic. My reading is 14.15v and the battery charge capacity percentage shot up to 45.95 % which is phenomenal, Danke Schoen. The other major change I performed was to disengage “ Balance only when charging” I observed, even when the command was disengaged; JBD BMS still was balancing, while the change process was ON…. And all the cells remained balanced @3.536~3,542V range. Delta being .006 mV. That looks good. Inference: Input charge 14.15V. Balance only when charging disengaged. Result: All cells balanced. Cell voltage remained 3.536~3.542V Thank you again for advice. Have a good day und 73s…
I use a jbd bms 4s12v for a project I have.I love it,it works great.I now have to run out to the shop to find out if it works for my setup.will update. Update,the jbd bms does the same as here in the video,thank you Sir Andy,this helps alot
I'm pretty fortunate to have the garage and space as my playground. In the evening I just close the roller doors and can leave everything as it is just to continue in the morning again.
Andy I found that function on my BMS using the same App - I was frustrated by the low balance current - I guess it has to be like that so the "Headroom " of the balance load does not inadvertently impact on the cell voltage too much and thus the voltage sampling interlude can be kept minimal - My solution was to fit an additional set of balance leads with JTS connector and plug it into my ISDT T8 charger which has a 15 watt balance as it charges function - worked an absolute treat - brought all cells up to full charge from storage and top balanced lovely - none of this connect first in parallel then in series faffing about - and at up to 30A charge feathering off on the heal, bulk then constant voltage it was very efficient - the only down side is it needs a dc power supply as its design use id to charge radio controlled devices like aircraft in the field - I use a 24v server supply pack. Worth looking at reviews of this ISDT T8 charger.
Hello Andy, I had trouble with my JDB 8s 150A balancer with 2x 24v/ 400 Ah batteries I built with 16 x3.2v 105Ah EVE cells. It was running good for past 3 months and balancing well within 0.01 v variation. One of the cell voltage was going low to 2.20v when other cells were at around 2.5v. This was getting resolved after balancing. But last week the 24 v output through the balance dropped suddenly to 5.85v through the balancer. But checking the batteries directly it was showing 23.6 volts. This was due to fault in the balancer. So now I have removed the balancer and running the battery directly with the MPP solar charge controller and inverter for the past one week. The individual cell voltage is better than with the balancer with less than 0.007 v variation. So the balancer may not be required at all. I will continue to test for few more weeks.
Some have said it comes from the e-bike scene. Not sure though how this is an advantage for these battteries either. It just does not make sense to me at all.
@@Gartenruhe but normal passive balancing does not work like this. The balancer will only discharge the single cell, it cannot move power from 1 cell to the next. If you have a leaky cell, the voltage will drop on that cell and the balancer will turn off. As for active balancing well maybe but that is not what the video was discussing.
I'm glad it not just me that finds lithium cells a pain in the arse to keep balanced :-). I'm now run hybrid balancing on my systems. I use both passive and active to keep my cell voltages glued together right from top to bottom and back up again.
Hey Andy I run the JBD 100A 4S bms and I've played around with it alot what I do is I set my victron solar controller to do an absorption at 14.2V or 3.55V per cell and I set balance to start at 3.50V I don't charge balance its almost useless as these 105ah eve cells of mine charge quickly and it drops off and the app shows zero current. Also I leave the delta at 0.015V other wise the BMS is just on and off ALOT while balancing.
Thank you ! I have the 200amp version with 4x280 eve cells and I had this setting disabled by default and all my cells balanced but this morning I saw the setting and I decided to give it a try to test what it does and 7 hours later all my cells are now unbalanced till 0.29 voltage diff. Thanks god I saw your video and after disabling again this " charge balancing " as I had it previously the cells are right now quickly balancing ! Definitively this setting should be disabled forever.
I am also getting what others on here have posted, that turning off that setting only balances when it ISNT charging... only thing I can think of is a different firmware version in these JBD bms's. Mine shows version 32.0 if you look under battery state. I will let it charge to cutout while charge balancing on (3.45v in my case), and then I'll jump in and change the setting and it will carry on balancing for a bit. High cell voltages drop pretty quickly once charging has stopped anyway.
I bought a seven-dollar BMS for a small battery build and I could see the balancing happening continuously on my multimeter right after hooking it up. It balanced very quickly.
I like the idea of, every once in a while, leaving a charger on the pack to allow the BMS's balancer to run for a good long time. Just as long as one doesn't make a habit of it, since holding the cell voltage that high 24x7 will over-charge the pack. I'm talking maybe once every few months at the most. Its not good to hold LiFePO4 cells above their resting voltage for long periods of time (e.g. weeks+). But otherwise, the BMS defaults are the best configuration. Meaning, only top-balancing while charging, or while cells are being actively held >= 3.5V (in my book the same thing, even if the ingress current for the latter is very low), and then only with a low balancing current. As long as the pack is able to pull most of its capacity, it is perfectly ok for it to take 6 months for the BMS to balance it. The key here is for the BMS's balancer to make progress, it doesn't matter how slow the progress is. Healthy cells (even old ones) just don't go out of balance in any significant way, so there is really no need to use higher currents or other configurations. The reason the BMS should only balance while the cells are above 3.5V is because there is no point trying to balance the cells at lower voltages, and doubly so when there is no charging current. Without charging current, the cells will naturally drift down to their resting voltage. The voltage can easily be knocked around with very little current. So no actual balancing is happening at lower voltages. It might seem to be, but trying to actively balance at lower voltages literally doesn't work... it is more likely to take the cells out of balance, in fact. Even though the balancer is holding the voltages close to identical, at lower voltages it might actually be causing the pack to go out of balance. And the reason we only want a relatively low balancing current (and generally why I am against the use of active balancers, or high-current balancers), is again... once balanced, a healthy LiFepO4 cell will not naturally drift out of balance for many months, even years. Meaning that if a cell does, you want to know about it sooner rather than later so you can replace the cell while the pack is still working well and not have the failing cell be masked by an active balancer or masked by high balancing currents. Active balancers may *appear* to make packs work better, but all they really do is mask problems until the damaged cell(s) get so bad they fail entirely. We can also get into maintenance... the risk of fire (low) or electrolyte leakage or bloating damage (higher) in an aging pack. A brand new pack can take a lot of abuse. But with an aging pack it is far better to know which cells are starting to go bad and replace them before they actually start leaking or pose other dangers. -Matt
Thanks Matt. I start balancing at 3.45V which is also my absorption voltage. So the balancer will only cut off the overhead of any cell which is going higher than that. In a perfectly balanced pack, every cell has 3.45V. If you hold the pack at 3.45V for say 1h it gives the balancer the time it needs to do its job. But this only works if charge balance is turned off, otherwise the balancer does not do anything as the tests have shown. Unless you introduce an active balancer at this point. As I said many times, I would not recommend leaving it connected all the time. With LFP cells, it will exactly do the opposite and unbalance the pack. I made recently two videos about that to explain and show the results of leaving it connected for two weeks and only using it at a higher voltage once fully charged. As you said above leaving it connected masks the problems with any battery a sit always looks good, until you fully charge and the balancer cannot keep up any more. I can see another point which I have raised recently. The frequency of actually reaching the absorption voltage. The more frequent/often the pack gets to this voltage, the smaller the overall drift is and the less the balancer needs to work. If you only ever fully charge once or twice a year, the BMS has no chance and an active balancer is needed to re-balance the pack. Again, it should only be turned on at 3.4V or above, preferable 3.45V and above.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Makes sense. Another thing we should note is that the chosen target voltage being dependent on C-rate (e.g. 3.45V might be for 0.2C charging rates for 95%, but getting 95% at 0.6C would need a 3.60V target).... the guarantee you get at that voltage is 'at least X% SOC'. You don't get a guarantee of "X% SOC'. Only 'at least X% SOC'. It is a fine distinction but an important one. So what the balancer achieves is to bring any cells that didn't reach X% SOC up to 'at least X%' SOC. In fact, it might bring them up higher, because the charging rate going into the cell from the balancer itself is probably below 0.1C or even 0.01C... so actually achieving the target voltage, by definition, means that the SOC for that cell (if the target voltage is achieved through balancing) will be higher than X% because it was achieved at a lower C rate. This gives us our distinction between balancing WHILE charging, and balancing WITHOUT charging. If we are balancing while still charging, the cells that have to be brought up will be closer to the target SOC. If we are balancing after charging has stopped, the cells that have to be brought up will likely wind up overshooting the target SOC. Again due to the lower C-rate of the balancing current. So which is better for the BMS to default to? I think it depends on the charging profile and the use-case. Only balancing while charging is probably the best default configuration. It probably isn't a good idea to allow a balancer to charge a low cell for an indefinitely amount of time, at least not by default, because doing so may take the cell to 100% SOC or higher before it actually reaches the target voltage. (though personally I think this is unlikely with a target voltage of 3.45V... but for higher target voltages it is very likely). If you have a long absorb time, only balancing while charging is a good default. If you have a short absorb time, then perhaps allowing the balancer to operate after charging has stopped is a good default as long as you can limit the time that the BMS allows the balancer to run to something reasonable. -Matt
@@junkerzn7312 Thanks Matt. I made a video a while back exploring the different charging speeds and the effect on SOC (ruclips.net/video/qZg4Jxftw-c/видео.html). The consistent inconsistency, I called it 🤭 You can still reach ~100% at 3.45V if you allow absorption time, so no need to go for a higher voltage. It just takes a bit longer to get there. I agree, balance settings are definitely depending on individual systems and circumstances. I never had any positive outcome with charge balance though. It just did not make any difference. I found it far more efficient to get all cells to 3.45V first and then start balancing while in the absorption phase. The charging current will taper off and the balancer has better chance to get a result across all cells. The active balancer , if connected all the time, will create an imbalance in the flat area of the curve due to small voltage differences in the cells. That causes definitely problems when fully charging the next time again. So, I'm not a fan of this either. Some have reported it does not create an imbalance for them at all leaving it connected all the time. Maybe they have just very matched cells 🤷♂️ Thanks for all your insight Matt, much appreciated.
I'm having issues top balancing my 48V battery pack. Other cells reach 3.5V & 3 stays at 3.4V My charger is a 6A so If I keep it on Immediately Over voltage protection kicks in & charger is turned off. I don't have any other charger. How do I top balance my cells now? This problem started when these 2 cells went undervoltage now they don't even get to charge fully
Thanks for the video, fantastic. I do wonder why with the "balance only on charging" turned off you are reading 89.95ah useable out of 100ah? Mine reads the same, with the same setting, but with "balance on charge" turned on I get 100ah with 100ah useable capacity? Surely the off-charge balance option isn't using that much?
I have been running a lithium battery pack, 14kw for 2.5 years. I use the power down a max of 75% before the sun kicks in. I am use the 250amp BMS with an active balancer with a low to high of, low is .022 and at high .008. I am pushing some loads, a peck at 4000w. I have found its about testing your battery’s to see how they work together under loads. Im seeing your battery’s as a miss match. Why would would you see so much drift in balance? (Not hate this is a productive comment). Love you video keep up the good work.
Thanks man. As I said in the video. The test we did before with this battery was discharging all cells to 2.5V which basically bottom balanced the pack. Now, when fully charging it again we can see the drift and I wanted to check the BMS if it is capable to balance such a mismatched battery again. Turns out it can with the right settings of the BMS. Event the small 60mA balance current could perfectly balance the pack within one day.
Hi Andy, and thanks again for this video, Thank also you for highlighting this parameter. I had already tested charge and discharge cycles, with these different settings, but I had not noticed any significant difference, just that when balance charge is selected, the pack Battery takes longer to charge. I'm going to do some tests again and see if it has a real influence in my case? (because I have always noticed that in the discharge phase the Batteries are perfectly equal) 😉 👍
Hi, I got 16 LifepO4 cells and I observed a 0.4V voltage difference between cells in the bottom. 10 cells were around 3.1V and the other 6 cells were 2.7V. I'm using 150-2A JK BMS. Because of this issue battery pack's usable capacity is very limited. Is there a way to balance the cells at around 2.7V using JK BMS without disassembling the pack?
Watched the whole video just to find out later on in the description that "can use pretty much any BMS (except DALY) to auto top-balance your battery over night" That was not nice, but I still love your videos XD
I was thinking initially there was a glitch in the software, but I think it's working as it should. The little modification or change you made to the function setting allows the BMS to balance while it's not charging. I was curious if this turned it off while it was charging, but that's not the case it just extends the balancing to when the charge current is turned off. My cells are pretty well balanced so it continued to balance for maybe 15 or 20 minutes after I disconnected the charge current. Once it gets within the parameters It shuts off, as it should. I'm not sure why exactly you would not want to balance while it was not charging, and why the default is on. (No balancing while not charging). Anyway good find there it does help to fine tune.
Thanks for your comment. It depends entirely on the BMS and how it handles it. Some keep balancing after the BMS shows 0A, some don't. In my opinion, the balancing should start at the set voltage, regardless if charging, standby or discharging. That is for LiFePO4.
Hi Andy, I had this exact problem with the Xiaoxiang app on my 90Ah DIY LiFePo4 battery. When I first built the pack I used the Xiaoxiang "Admin" version of the app with adjustable parameters.......BUT could never get the cells to balance. I swapped over to what I call the "Blue & White" app ( which was obtained by scanning a QR code in the BMS instructions ) which did not have adjustable parameters and the cells all balanced perfectly, then recently the "Blue & White" failed while I was camping in my van but I was able to download the "Admin" app and swap over to it to over come the problem. Unfortunately the cells soon went out of balance again as they had done when the pack was first built, but then I saw this video and after turning off the Charge Balancing function the cells are balancing again. I think that the "Blue & White" app does not have the Charge Balancing function. Keep up the great work.
hallo sir. its great to watch your video cs i have proble with my 24S bms and only 1 cel i think that is not reach the top balance before packing the battery. i have question for you, i using Ant bms 100A, that i must plug the charge with tiny ampere or just let it balance with out plug the charge? please help me to solve this problem thankyou
OK, thanks. Then it is even weirder as I have only ever measured 60mA as the max balance current with this BMS in this battery. I checked my QUCC BMS a few times and could measure around 160mA balance current. The QUCC is stated with 200mA balance as well.
Now I have an idea on how to make a battery pick up for farmers without the very expensive full self driving and made it affordable and longer lasting. Again, why is this video not getting a million views drives me crazy!
Thanks for this video. I have same or similar bms on a 100AH Basen battery and I noticed the same problem with ballancing. Having in mind the low ballance current and the charge stage at which it starts to drift I've decided to set the ballance voltage to 3.4V, voltage difference to 0.005V and charge ballance of. In my use case the battery will rest in fully chage stage far longer then the last charging stage durration. This I hope will allow the bms to top ballance the battery eventually. Keep up the good work!
You might want to verify the "only balances with 50 milliamps" number. I say that because it depends on which model of BMS you have. I am not sure why you have so many balance problems, I never have any (might be because the cells I purchased are matched?) My JBD uses 150 milliamps, BTW, the 50 milliamps is an older Daly model. A balancer "always working" will get your cells out of balance during the middle of the voltage range, and it is exacerbated by grade B cells. Amazing to me, I leave it set on 3.4v charge balance and never have any problems.
Andy didn't suggest that a balancer should 'always be working'. He said it should always be working above 3.4v whether charging discharging or doing nothing. This is something he made clear in one of his videos ages ago.
@@vonasi2 8:20 timestamp, "this is how a balancer should work, it should always balance". He emphasized "always" a bit, discharge, charge, etc. Please correct me if I heard wrong.
John, I don't have any balance problems... not sure what you referring to? I'm testing a BMS's balance capability here with an unbalanced battery pack. A balancer should only balances above the balance turn on voltage and if deviation is exceeding the set threshold. I mentioned this several times in this video. These are the two criteria for the balancer to turn on. Running a balancer the whole time would be stupid as we have tested this in a quite a few videos as last year here on the channel. And of course it will mess up your top balance as you said. Also 3.4V is a very low voltage to balance and may not show any deviation across the cells even they might be on a different SOC. The curve is just picking up at this point. If you charge to 3.55V from time to time it will show you if all cells are in balance and have (almost) the same SOC.
Hi, I just received and installed my JBD 48v 100A BMS but I can't connect with bluetooth to the app when my Victron charger is charging. I can only connect when not charging. Have you heard of this and why?
The passive balancing in some of a few brands of bms are not great. I have noticed some models will balance a linked pair of cells and not the two highest cells individually. I have found as many others have also come to find that an Active Capacitive balancer works far better and with new A+ cells you don't even need to top balance before you build the pack just allow the active balancer to do so. With a passive balancer its best to still top parallel balance and rest before you build the pack. It seems nearly every smart bms has its bugs. Daly are well known for issues. jbd are more reliable but the balance function is poor on some models. For most people a hardware based BMS is going to be the most reliable.
Thanks for this idea. I have a 4s battery in an RV and needs a top balance but have no bench power supply. I'm thinking about seeing if there's a way using the charge controller to in effect do the same. Will see😀
Hi, great video! I am about to order for my boat some batteries 200Ah from BASEN . I’m quite curious if I can use the app for top balancing as you did? I saw your video about BASEN you haven’t mentioned what BMS they are using. Overall would appreciate your advice about BASEN.
091722/0157h PST 🇺🇸 091722/1857h Brisbane… Danke scheoen . I’m watching this particular presentation for the 4th time. I found the similar condition to my 4s system. Default on JBD being “BALANCE ENABLED AND BALANCE ONLY WHEN CHARGING”
I purchased one of the JBD bms, with my 8 cells 24v system. However, when the sun goes down the bms disconnect my inverter and does the same thing when the pack is fully charge. Am not seen anyone else with this problem, so, what can I do to adjust the situation. The bms is jbd-ap20s006 .
Hi, i have a question about the access to a Jiabaida smart BMS, is there a way to name and apply a password to a BMS, because on a campground i detected 2 others BMS with the apps that i could take control....it is a real security issue.
Great information here. Thanks. One question on this. I have a totally balanced 412ah lifepo4 battery (difference of only .001 to .002). The 4 cells shown in my graphic are colored yellow instead of green. Why is that? Also, question on the score. My cell balance score is 44 and my resistance score is 99. My overall score is only 44. Can you explain that?
Thanks for the video never realized that option for my BMS. Is it fine to set the balancing to 0.01 or will that cause too much cycling? Using 18650 battery pack.
Can we use 16s 48volt bms for 4s battery. The battery is build up by 16 cells, 4cells connected in parallel individually and then in series to get 12v so total 16 cells. Can we use 16 s bms in this configuration
Yep, my Overkill Solar BMS (same as JBD) works just the same. Only balance while charging, or only balance while discharging. I also recently noticed for the first time that even if "charge balance" is off and it's within the normal balancing parameters, it won't balance while under load. That one I can understand, but I still find it to be stupid logic. I typically just leave charge balance off, with a threshold of 3.4v and very small "balancing precision", and I find that to work the best for my needs. My charger has a non-configurable profile with max charge voltage of 14.5, so once charging stops, the balancer will also help bring the cells back down to a more comfortable 3.4v quicker.
I like what he is saying, but keep in mind that the larger the cell capacity, the longer it will take for the BMS to balance the cells. As an example, If they are starting at a similar disparity in charge, the 300Ah cells for andy's power wall would require 3 times longer than in the AOLitium battery he demonstrated on. As with *any* type of top balancing, patience is required.
@@centerrightproudamerican5727 Yes. It's always balancing at a certain configurable voltage threshold. Balancing only while charging is useless, especially with these large cells even with a 2A balancing current. I often have 100A coming in to these 280Ah cells, so there would be almost no time between 3.4 and 3.5 to do anything, but plenty to do overnight.
Is it done for reasons of efficiency? As in the amount of drain on the battery? I imagine balancing only when charging is going to avoid phantom draining things.. For wide variation, sure: making it balance more, but charge balancing seems like it would be good enough vs the trade-off of burning more energy.
The energy is burned in any way through the balance resistor, regardless if charging or not. And balancing should only happen if voltage is higher and there is actually a difference across the cell voltages. If this is all within the set parameters, balancing should not turn on at all...
I have same issue. My pack balances only while three criteria are met: 1) Vcell > 3.375, 2) Charge > 1A, and 3) Vdelta > tbd V. Furthermore, the passive balance only discharges with something less than 1A. I know this because if I charge with 1.1A current limit, the imbalance is seen to work, but it doesn't hardly correct. I can see it turn on and then the Vcell drops by about 40mV, indicating it is being balanced. But it continues to charge until 3.7Vcell, at which point the BMS turns off the protection MOSFET. Basically, it is only working during from 99% capacity to 100% capacity at
Hello.. Thank you for this video. I have now for 3days tried to top balance my 12v lifepo4 100ah battery. but I stille stays at 1 - 3.373 2 - 3.392 3 - 3.961 4 - 3.394 Difference 0.033v I have no current at all on the battery 0.00A Can I discharge the voltages somehow, and the hope to charge it again and hope there will gen som Amp on the battery? Or maybe it is just dead. But It have only have 9 cycles The voltage is now 13.78V on the battery. Hope you can help me somehow. ;) Thank you for a very nice channel.
time to test that!!! oohhhh I forgot, I don't have that kind of bms, expensive, can't afford it. Loved the video Andy,, informative. watched it even I can't do it,, atleast you gave me something to think about.
so when u installed this bms, u said you are close to getting orion bms. what's the plan now. i'm using a Tesla battery pack for 2 years now and don't need balancing, very minimal deviation. looking to buy additional pack in parallel but won't do unless I settle on the BMS, waiting for your next one, seems the JBD bms still doesn't cut it
I never looked into an Orion BMS. Some of my viewers are using it though. I will use the JK-BMS with active balancer for my batteries. Are you going to mix LiFePO4 with Li-ion batteries?
With the new setting does the battery discharge faster? Might be why it was set to balance only when charging so it doesn't get discharged during shipping.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Perhaps the microcontroller that makes the balancing decisions has to stay on and monitoring all the time if Charge Balance is turned off? This might cause some drain when the battery is not in use. Maybe the microcontroller power is controlled by the Charge Balance setting and only powers up if there is a charge current (when the setting is on only). 100% a guess though.
I bought the OVER KILL BMS 48V 100 AMP. after about 2 -3 weeks sit there charge and discharge about 2 times show on it. It was sit there not charge over a week because my inverter dead. so I disconnected. today I connect the bms back in with bluetooth. it went bad crazy: battery 7 show 4.753 volt. and it stay there. battery 6 show 0.045v. but the mutimeter show all 16 batteries at 3.2 ... V. WHAT /WHICH BMS do u guys recommend to be friendly easy use but last long? for 48v lipo7 302 catL battery.? thanks
So balancing turned off, balance turn on voltage set to 3.4, and deviation set to .015 initially. Does it balance below the 3.4 or only when above 3.4 Under discharge conditions
Andy. I have 6 banks of cells. Each 120ah What cheapish bms can I use that has a good balancing feature and strength as you mentioned (only need about 60 or 80 amp per bms. Cheapish cause I need 6 of them to balance this nicely. I have ant bms and Daly currently and the 3 different apps is annoying.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia its running as 16s. Each bms is running as follows. 2p16s, or is it 32 🤣( it's 6 15 am as I type this) then 3 banks of that in parallel Issue I'm having is on those cloudy raining few days (3 or 4 days constant rain) there's always the cells that gets to 2.65 when most of the others are still 3.1 (watching your videos I've learnt that there isn't much juice left below 3.1v but when they charge back up there is always that bit of imbalance and takes a few days to level out So want to affordably put a bms on 16 cells, so 6 bms total. Hopefully things would stay more balanced and handled better. When it's good sunny days, the cells balance out nicely, but then when it gets cloudy/rain for a few days it's goes all frogged up 😟, bulk is 55.4, and float is set at 54.4. Yesterday morning I woke up to a offline house due to the imbalance. When the system dies, the end voltage is usually the 49v range, with low cell protect set to 2.65v
Andy Have you tried to run to battery packs with Your Bms program. With Android the only way for me to switch bms signals was to put aluminumaround one of the bms receiver so my app could not connect to the other battery bank. . Thanks
Very interesting video, Endy. I have same thoughts about balancing. To set balencer stop voltage lower then 3,4**v to balance after charging ends. Maybe lower? To 2,999v ( Joking😊) Looks like balancer takes energy from cells, that runs up, and after charge thay goes down earlier and discarges quiker... I am a newcomer in Solar and Lifepo4 due to the Russian attack on our energetic in Ukraine last years, that led to blackouts last and this winter and the inconvenience of constantly working on a generator. So I was led into the fascinating world of alternative energy. I watched almost all your videos last year and made own Lifepo4 24v 8s Lishen 202Ah in Daly not smurt Bms 200A 200 mA balance current and Neey 4A smart active balancer in autumn. Internal resistance is around 0,19 mOm per cell, flexible copper busburs. So, no heating on loads around 80-100Amps. When charge and discharge bms and balancer do the job- bulk 28,2v Must PV18-3024 solar inverter, and Neey balancer do well to 0.005mv, that looks good)) But, I have 3 cells, which always lover in rest, or under 20-40 Amps load diff goes to 0.070mv and on load around 90A diff goes up to 0,180 Mv and becomes biger when voltage drops to 2,9**mv on them, meanwhile on other cells voltage is at 3,1**mv, and diff is higher above 0,200 mv(( When battery is on charge, the bms and balencer keep balanse at 0,020, but in few minutes after invertor stops charge to 28,2, I see that 3 same cells, that runs up on 0,020 mv over other cells during charge, momentally goes lower then others, and Neey balancer starts to push amps to them back, because while in charge, balencer takes energy from them)) Strange Looks like there is something with internal resistance in that 3 cells, they goes up, but balencer get them down, and after charging they stay in lower SOH than others. How should I set up Neey Smart balancer? What start balancing valtege (28,2:8=3,52 v maybe) ? What stop balancing valtege (maybe 3,345 or something) ? Thank you!
And another idea is to use equalization function, because my inverter doesn't have absorbsion function. In Aqualization mode I can set higer bulk voltage, and my Neey can be set to 3,6v Start voltage and time set to 20-50 minutes. I use sometimse Float setting (same voltage as bulk) for give time for Neey for balance cells for an hour. As I understand, without absorbsion time, only with bulk cc cv, balancer fails to calibrate cells without a time to do that without constant voltage with almost 0 Amps for a while. In this case my weakest 3 cell from higher voltage during charge, runs down quiker when bulk stops, and still lower then bothers durin rest and discharge under loads....
Andy here is an. Idea what can Yu do with a set of jumper cables. I use these to jump of battery packs to inverter. Charging with out. Changing cables might make a good video one way or the other
Ones I've used turn on balance charging at .5 amps. And yes I noticed. My cells are pretty even but when I first installed them I ended up plugging in an icharger for accurate top balancing. The jbd def doesn't balance at 2 amps. It's been maint free so far. For the price it's a good bms imo
Must be because you are in southern hemisphere. You are upside down. You turn charge balance 'OFF' to get it to balance. Makes perfect sense. Depends on how you happen to interpret what 'charge balance' means. You have to figure out it means 'balance only when charging', not state of charge balance. What happens if you have 'charge balance' ON and you get a cell overvoltage BMS shutdown. Does it bleed overvoltage cell so BMS resets?
That's a good idea I think I might start doing that every now and then just charge the battery my normal way and then instead of stop charging go in and change that setting and just let her run
odd. i keep turning off the charge balance feature but every time i return to that screen it's back on. granted i dont have a charge on it. wondering if that matters. are you finding this setting persists after taking it off the charger?
Hello sir ! Plz make a video about the difference between balance enable and charge balance ♎ or if u already make a video on this plz reply me a link 🔗 🙏🙏🙏
Dear Offgrid- Garage community, i had a problem and think if someone knows it - it will be in Andys Team👋! So - have a Jbd bms where the current sensor seems to be uncalibrated, when charged with 25A it shows around 18A. Its roughly 30% off, checked it several times. I played wuth this bms a lot, not as much as Andy but - a lot. And i could barely remember that with the "Bely Batterie App" i could calibrate voltages which would be measured wrong in another Bms. But how to adjust/calibrate the Ampere current in aby App? Any idea? Tganks a lot guys!😊
Yes i have the JK-B1A20S15P and what i have seen is the 1amp balance is not enough to balance the 16s pack ( high capacity cells , like 200ah and above ). it struggles to get it done. yours is a 2amp so i would think it might do the job quicker. If i was to recommend to other buyers i would say don't buy any of the 1 amp bms for 16s setup. i would say for the small amount diff for the JK-B2A24S15P which is a 2a it is worth it. if you had a 8s or lower it probably would be ok. hey jk why not just make a JK-B2A20S15P and a JK-B5A20S15P. that is the largest part of market share that we want. check it out ANDY could make a good video. use some high resistance cells in there to make the test real. 4 or 5 should make your job real hard. you will cry.
The BMS works the same with app or without. The problem is that the BMS does not balance unless there is a certain charge current flowing (charge balance). If the BMS for example turns off the battery due to a high voltage cell, it won't balance because there is no current it can measure. I would recommend turning off Charge Balance with these JBD BMSs.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia im off the Charge Balance but still the last cell of my setup first to reach 3.6v my other 7 cells just 3.3 all of them until the last cell reach 3.6v. i don't know what to do... i have no active balancer for the mean time just the JDM
Good find Andy, I have a couple of these BMS's but haven't experimented with all the settings just yet. It is very strange that there's no full time balance option, what an odd function. It would be great if JK made a 12v version of their BMS, and if they made one that was 12v 250A or more, then it'd sell so fast. But they wanted $16k to develop it and that's too much for me, especially because if I had one custom made, I'd find it for sale to everyone else anyway. Perhaps you can use your contacts to make suggestions ;)
Do you have any list on what the UI tells you about like when the grey outline on the battery series blinks or other stuff like that? just recently bought this BMS and havent found anything online except your videos. Thanks in advance if you have any list 😃
So the high voltage cell has its resistor on but it's voltage is still much higher so voltage times amps equals what? Is it still getting net more power than the others even with the balancer on?
This is not about the power a cell get. The amps are what actually charges your cell. The cell which are balanced are just getting 0.06A less than the others.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I get what you're saying but the net power has to be less with the resistor on or else it won't be able to allow the others to catch up without the high cell going critical first. In fact if the cell is full the power actually making it into the cell has to be near zero or it would shoot up to a critical voltage. This is why when I've had severely out of balance cells in series as approaching top balancing voltages I've had to freeze the voltage at 13.8 in order to reduce the incoming amperage to something about equal to the bleed off resistors amperage abilities.
@Travis Sanders that is the key. Keeping the total charge voltage lower than the voltage that will cause the highest cell voltage to pass critical. That will allow it to balance. Once it balances at that voltage, you can increase it slightly to get a higher top balance .
@@TheTimshady337 exactly. My BMS is supposed to communicate through the can bus to my charger so that it will control this exact process but my Tesla hybrid inverter doesn't speak the same can bus language as my BMS. I have 152 cells in series . Nothing is in parallel so nothing is forced to be the same voltage. It's a little harder to keep things balanced with this many cells in series but at the same time it's also easier on the other hand because it is scientifically impossible for different cells to experience different amperages. So far it's been working 2 years . I'm only charging up to 3.398 volts per cell which is just barely enough to do a little top balancing.
can I ask for an e-mail? I can't speak English, only through a translator, and I wanted to ask you how to balance a 60v 38ah battery, I would send you how it is set and screenshots, thank you
I dissagree charge while balancing is the most efficient way if energy conversation is to be considered a bad cell can pull the whole bank down very quickly
Thank you for this!
I've just bought a new 4 cell 200ah 12v Lifepo4 with a JBD bms. On the first test cycle the battery had a large imbalance on cell 2, over 400mv!
The cell kept activating the JBD overvoltage cut off, so the remaining three cells wouldn't charge to more than 3.335v. It's taking forever, but using your technique it's slowly equalising using your 14v low current method. many many thanks!
Hi, I got 16 LifepO4 cells and I observed a 0.4V voltage difference between cells in the bottom. 10 cells were around 3.1V and the other 6 cells were 2.7V. I'm using 150-2A JK BMS. Because of this issue battery pack's usable capacity is very limited. Is there a way to balance the cells at around 2.7V using JK BMS without disassembling the pack?
I have this same issue but cannot charge my pack with lower current as I don't have any other charger
Thank goodness someone finally said you don't need to balance cells before putting them in use. Those videos saying you do are like a scratched broken record. Over and over and over and over and over. Thank You Andy!
020622/1438h PST 🇺🇸….. 020722/0838h Brisbane 🇦🇺. This is the second time I’m watching this video to understand further. I have altered the configuration exactly, recommended by you. The result is fantastic. My reading is 14.15v and the battery charge capacity percentage shot up to 45.95 % which is phenomenal, Danke Schoen. The other major change I performed was to disengage “ Balance only when charging” I observed, even when the command was disengaged; JBD BMS still was balancing, while the change process
was ON…. And all the cells remained balanced @3.536~3,542V range. Delta being .006 mV. That looks good.
Inference: Input charge 14.15V. Balance only when charging disengaged.
Result: All cells balanced. Cell voltage remained 3.536~3.542V
Thank you again for advice. Have a good day und 73s…
I use a jbd bms 4s12v for a project I have.I love it,it works great.I now have to run out to the shop to find out if it works for my setup.will update.
Update,the jbd bms does the same as here in the video,thank you Sir Andy,this helps alot
You know, you have a perfect place to do tests. I'd love to have a building like yours.
I'm pretty fortunate to have the garage and space as my playground. In the evening I just close the roller doors and can leave everything as it is just to continue in the morning again.
Amen to that, Andy. I look upon you as my mentor, educationist, advisor….. bless you.
Dont say id love to, say im going to....
Had exactly this situation on the JBD 200a 4S SP04S034 today, your videos are always so helpful
i also have JBD bms and my cells are always unbalanced. thanks to you now all the cells are balanced.
That is great and good to hear. Glad the information helped.
Andy I found that function on my BMS using the same App - I was frustrated by the low balance current - I guess it has to be like that so the "Headroom " of the balance load does not inadvertently impact on the cell voltage too much and thus the voltage sampling interlude can be kept minimal - My solution was to fit an additional set of balance leads with JTS connector and plug it into my ISDT T8 charger which has a 15 watt balance as it charges function - worked an absolute treat - brought all cells up to full charge from storage and top balanced lovely - none of this connect first in parallel then in series faffing about - and at up to 30A charge feathering off on the heal, bulk then constant voltage it was very efficient - the only down side is it needs a dc power supply as its design use id to charge radio controlled devices like aircraft in the field - I use a 24v server supply pack. Worth looking at reviews of this ISDT T8 charger.
Hello Andy, I had trouble with my JDB 8s 150A balancer with 2x 24v/ 400 Ah batteries I built with 16 x3.2v 105Ah EVE cells. It was running good for past 3 months and balancing well within 0.01 v variation. One of the cell voltage was going low to 2.20v when other cells were at around 2.5v. This was getting resolved after balancing. But last week the 24 v output through the balance dropped suddenly to 5.85v through the balancer. But checking the batteries directly it was showing 23.6 volts. This was due to fault in the balancer. So now I have removed the balancer and running the battery directly with the MPP solar charge controller and inverter for the past one week. The individual cell voltage is better than with the balancer with less than 0.007 v variation. So the balancer may not be required at all. I will continue to test for few more weeks.
I don't know where this only balancing while charging comes from but it is crazy. So simple really.
Some have said it comes from the e-bike scene. Not sure though how this is an advantage for these battteries either. It just does not make sense to me at all.
@@Gartenruhe but normal passive balancing does not work like this. The balancer will only discharge the single cell, it cannot move power from 1 cell to the next. If you have a leaky cell, the voltage will drop on that cell and the balancer will turn off. As for active balancing well maybe but that is not what the video was discussing.
I'm glad it not just me that finds lithium cells a pain in the arse to keep balanced :-). I'm now run hybrid balancing on my systems. I use both passive and active to keep my cell voltages glued together right from top to bottom and back up again.
What BMS does this? Where can I learn how to set this up??
Hey Andy I run the JBD 100A 4S bms and I've played around with it alot what I do is I set my victron solar controller to do an absorption at 14.2V or 3.55V per cell and I set balance to start at 3.50V I don't charge balance its almost useless as these 105ah eve cells of mine charge quickly and it drops off and the app shows zero current. Also I leave the delta at 0.015V other wise the BMS is just on and off ALOT while balancing.
Thank you ! I have the 200amp version with 4x280 eve cells and I had this setting disabled by default and all my cells balanced but this morning I saw the setting and I decided to give it a try to test what it does and 7 hours later all my cells are now unbalanced till 0.29 voltage diff. Thanks god I saw your video and after disabling again this " charge balancing " as I had it previously the cells are right now quickly balancing ! Definitively this setting should be disabled forever.
I am also getting what others on here have posted, that turning off that setting only balances when it ISNT charging... only thing I can think of is a different firmware version in these JBD bms's. Mine shows version 32.0 if you look under battery state. I will let it charge to cutout while charge balancing on (3.45v in my case), and then I'll jump in and change the setting and it will carry on balancing for a bit. High cell voltages drop pretty quickly once charging has stopped anyway.
Hey Andy! I have a Daly BMS and i dont like the Daly app. Can i use other apps? Can i use the app that you’re using? I really like that one. Lg
I don't think you can. Daly only talks to the Daly app I believe.
I bought a seven-dollar BMS for a small battery build and I could see the balancing happening continuously on my multimeter right after hooking it up. It balanced very quickly.
Nice, if the voltage of your cells is high enough, it goes quickly and you can indeed watch it.
Thanks!!!! You saved my battery! I was desperate trying to find the issue! I owe you one!
I like the idea of, every once in a while, leaving a charger on the pack to allow the BMS's balancer to run for a good long time. Just as long as one doesn't make a habit of it, since holding the cell voltage that high 24x7 will over-charge the pack. I'm talking maybe once every few months at the most. Its not good to hold LiFePO4 cells above their resting voltage for long periods of time (e.g. weeks+).
But otherwise, the BMS defaults are the best configuration. Meaning, only top-balancing while charging, or while cells are being actively held >= 3.5V (in my book the same thing, even if the ingress current for the latter is very low), and then only with a low balancing current. As long as the pack is able to pull most of its capacity, it is perfectly ok for it to take 6 months for the BMS to balance it. The key here is for the BMS's balancer to make progress, it doesn't matter how slow the progress is. Healthy cells (even old ones) just don't go out of balance in any significant way, so there is really no need to use higher currents or other configurations.
The reason the BMS should only balance while the cells are above 3.5V is because there is no point trying to balance the cells at lower voltages, and doubly so when there is no charging current. Without charging current, the cells will naturally drift down to their resting voltage. The voltage can easily be knocked around with very little current. So no actual balancing is happening at lower voltages. It might seem to be, but trying to actively balance at lower voltages literally doesn't work... it is more likely to take the cells out of balance, in fact. Even though the balancer is holding the voltages close to identical, at lower voltages it might actually be causing the pack to go out of balance.
And the reason we only want a relatively low balancing current (and generally why I am against the use of active balancers, or high-current balancers), is again... once balanced, a healthy LiFepO4 cell will not naturally drift out of balance for many months, even years. Meaning that if a cell does, you want to know about it sooner rather than later so you can replace the cell while the pack is still working well and not have the failing cell be masked by an active balancer or masked by high balancing currents. Active balancers may *appear* to make packs work better, but all they really do is mask problems until the damaged cell(s) get so bad they fail entirely.
We can also get into maintenance... the risk of fire (low) or electrolyte leakage or bloating damage (higher) in an aging pack. A brand new pack can take a lot of abuse. But with an aging pack it is far better to know which cells are starting to go bad and replace them before they actually start leaking or pose other dangers.
-Matt
Thanks Matt. I start balancing at 3.45V which is also my absorption voltage. So the balancer will only cut off the overhead of any cell which is going higher than that. In a perfectly balanced pack, every cell has 3.45V. If you hold the pack at 3.45V for say 1h it gives the balancer the time it needs to do its job. But this only works if charge balance is turned off, otherwise the balancer does not do anything as the tests have shown. Unless you introduce an active balancer at this point.
As I said many times, I would not recommend leaving it connected all the time. With LFP cells, it will exactly do the opposite and unbalance the pack. I made recently two videos about that to explain and show the results of leaving it connected for two weeks and only using it at a higher voltage once fully charged. As you said above leaving it connected masks the problems with any battery a sit always looks good, until you fully charge and the balancer cannot keep up any more.
I can see another point which I have raised recently. The frequency of actually reaching the absorption voltage. The more frequent/often the pack gets to this voltage, the smaller the overall drift is and the less the balancer needs to work. If you only ever fully charge once or twice a year, the BMS has no chance and an active balancer is needed to re-balance the pack. Again, it should only be turned on at 3.4V or above, preferable 3.45V and above.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Makes sense. Another thing we should note is that the chosen target voltage being dependent on C-rate (e.g. 3.45V might be for 0.2C charging rates for 95%, but getting 95% at 0.6C would need a 3.60V target).... the guarantee you get at that voltage is 'at least X% SOC'. You don't get a guarantee of "X% SOC'. Only 'at least X% SOC'. It is a fine distinction but an important one.
So what the balancer achieves is to bring any cells that didn't reach X% SOC up to 'at least X%' SOC. In fact, it might bring them up higher, because the charging rate going into the cell from the balancer itself is probably below 0.1C or even 0.01C... so actually achieving the target voltage, by definition, means that the SOC for that cell (if the target voltage is achieved through balancing) will be higher than X% because it was achieved at a lower C rate.
This gives us our distinction between balancing WHILE charging, and balancing WITHOUT charging. If we are balancing while still charging, the cells that have to be brought up will be closer to the target SOC. If we are balancing after charging has stopped, the cells that have to be brought up will likely wind up overshooting the target SOC. Again due to the lower C-rate of the balancing current.
So which is better for the BMS to default to? I think it depends on the charging profile and the use-case. Only balancing while charging is probably the best default configuration. It probably isn't a good idea to allow a balancer to charge a low cell for an indefinitely amount of time, at least not by default, because doing so may take the cell to 100% SOC or higher before it actually reaches the target voltage. (though personally I think this is unlikely with a target voltage of 3.45V... but for higher target voltages it is very likely).
If you have a long absorb time, only balancing while charging is a good default. If you have a short absorb time, then perhaps allowing the balancer to operate after charging has stopped is a good default as long as you can limit the time that the BMS allows the balancer to run to something reasonable.
-Matt
@@junkerzn7312 Thanks Matt. I made a video a while back exploring the different charging speeds and the effect on SOC (ruclips.net/video/qZg4Jxftw-c/видео.html). The consistent inconsistency, I called it 🤭
You can still reach ~100% at 3.45V if you allow absorption time, so no need to go for a higher voltage. It just takes a bit longer to get there.
I agree, balance settings are definitely depending on individual systems and circumstances. I never had any positive outcome with charge balance though. It just did not make any difference. I found it far more efficient to get all cells to 3.45V first and then start balancing while in the absorption phase. The charging current will taper off and the balancer has better chance to get a result across all cells.
The active balancer , if connected all the time, will create an imbalance in the flat area of the curve due to small voltage differences in the cells. That causes definitely problems when fully charging the next time again. So, I'm not a fan of this either. Some have reported it does not create an imbalance for them at all leaving it connected all the time. Maybe they have just very matched cells 🤷♂️
Thanks for all your insight Matt, much appreciated.
I'm having issues top balancing my 48V battery pack. Other cells reach 3.5V & 3 stays at 3.4V
My charger is a 6A so If I keep it on Immediately Over voltage protection kicks in & charger is turned off. I don't have any other charger. How do I top balance my cells now? This problem started when these 2 cells went undervoltage now they don't even get to charge fully
Thanks for the video, fantastic. I do wonder why with the "balance only on charging" turned off you are reading 89.95ah useable out of 100ah? Mine reads the same, with the same setting, but with "balance on charge" turned on I get 100ah with 100ah useable capacity? Surely the off-charge balance option isn't using that much?
Thanks Andy! Great insight and great video production, better than TV
I have been running a lithium battery pack, 14kw for 2.5 years. I use the power down a max of 75% before the sun kicks in. I am use the 250amp BMS with an active balancer with a low to high of, low is .022 and at high .008. I am pushing some loads, a peck at 4000w. I have found its about testing your battery’s to see how they work together under loads. Im seeing your battery’s as a miss match. Why would would you see so much drift in balance? (Not hate this is a productive comment). Love you video keep up the good work.
Thanks man. As I said in the video. The test we did before with this battery was discharging all cells to 2.5V which basically bottom balanced the pack. Now, when fully charging it again we can see the drift and I wanted to check the BMS if it is capable to balance such a mismatched battery again. Turns out it can with the right settings of the BMS. Event the small 60mA balance current could perfectly balance the pack within one day.
Hi Andy, and thanks again for this video, Thank also you for highlighting this parameter. I had already tested charge and discharge cycles, with these different settings, but I had not noticed any significant difference, just that when balance charge is selected, the pack Battery takes longer to charge. I'm going to do some tests again and see if it has a real influence in my case? (because I have always noticed that in the discharge phase the Batteries are perfectly equal) 😉 👍
Hi, I got 16 LifepO4 cells and I observed a 0.4V voltage difference between cells in the bottom. 10 cells were around 3.1V and the other 6 cells were 2.7V. I'm using 150-2A JK BMS. Because of this issue battery pack's usable capacity is very limited. Is there a way to balance the cells at around 2.7V using JK BMS without disassembling the pack?
Watched the whole video just to find out later on in the description that "can use pretty much any BMS (except DALY) to auto top-balance your battery over night"
That was not nice, but I still love your videos XD
I was thinking initially there was a glitch in the software, but I think it's working as it should. The little modification or change you made to the function setting allows the BMS to balance while it's not charging. I was curious if this turned it off while it was charging, but that's not the case it just extends the balancing to when the charge current is turned off. My cells are pretty well balanced so it continued to balance for maybe 15 or 20 minutes after I disconnected the charge current. Once it gets within the parameters It shuts off, as it should. I'm not sure why exactly you would not want to balance while it was not charging, and why the default is on. (No balancing while not charging). Anyway good find there it does help to fine tune.
Thanks for your comment. It depends entirely on the BMS and how it handles it. Some keep balancing after the BMS shows 0A, some don't.
In my opinion, the balancing should start at the set voltage, regardless if charging, standby or discharging. That is for LiFePO4.
Hi Andy, I had this exact problem with the Xiaoxiang app on my 90Ah DIY LiFePo4 battery.
When I first built the pack I used the Xiaoxiang "Admin" version of the app with adjustable parameters.......BUT could never get the cells to balance.
I swapped over to what I call the "Blue & White" app ( which was obtained by scanning a QR code in the BMS instructions ) which did not have adjustable parameters and the cells all balanced perfectly, then recently the "Blue & White" failed while I was camping in my van but I was able to download the "Admin" app and swap over to it to over come the problem.
Unfortunately the cells soon went out of balance again as they had done when the pack was first built, but then I saw this video and after turning off the Charge Balancing function the cells are balancing again.
I think that the "Blue & White" app does not have the Charge Balancing function.
Keep up the great work.
hallo sir. its great to watch your video cs i have proble with my 24S bms and only 1 cel i think that is not reach the top balance before packing the battery. i have question for you, i using Ant bms 100A, that i must plug the charge with tiny ampere or just let it balance with out plug the charge? please help me to solve this problem thankyou
Andy,
This BMS has 150ma balance current according to the JBD Data sheet I have for the JBD-SP04S034-L4S-200A-200A-BU model.
OK, thanks. Then it is even weirder as I have only ever measured 60mA as the max balance current with this BMS in this battery. I checked my QUCC BMS a few times and could measure around 160mA balance current. The QUCC is stated with 200mA balance as well.
Now I have an idea on how to make a battery pick up for farmers without the very expensive full self driving and made it affordable and longer lasting. Again, why is this video not getting a million views drives me crazy!
Thank you. It will get a million views, just needs a million years 😂
Thanks for this video. I have same or similar bms on a 100AH Basen battery and I noticed the same problem with ballancing. Having in mind the low ballance current and the charge stage at which it starts to drift I've decided to set the ballance voltage to 3.4V, voltage difference to 0.005V and charge ballance of. In my use case the battery will rest in fully chage stage far longer then the last charging stage durration. This I hope will allow the bms to top ballance the battery eventually. Keep up the good work!
Thank you very much! But is there a wattmeter in this application? I didn't find it in my app (same as in your video).
You might want to verify the "only balances with 50 milliamps" number. I say that because it depends on which model of BMS you have. I am not sure why you have so many balance problems, I never have any (might be because the cells I purchased are matched?) My JBD uses 150 milliamps, BTW, the 50 milliamps is an older Daly model. A balancer "always working" will get your cells out of balance during the middle of the voltage range, and it is exacerbated by grade B cells. Amazing to me, I leave it set on 3.4v charge balance and never have any problems.
Andy didn't suggest that a balancer should 'always be working'. He said it should always be working above 3.4v whether charging discharging or doing nothing. This is something he made clear in one of his videos ages ago.
@@vonasi2 8:20 timestamp, "this is how a balancer should work, it should always balance". He emphasized "always" a bit, discharge, charge, etc. Please correct me if I heard wrong.
John, I don't have any balance problems... not sure what you referring to? I'm testing a BMS's balance capability here with an unbalanced battery pack.
A balancer should only balances above the balance turn on voltage and if deviation is exceeding the set threshold. I mentioned this several times in this video. These are the two criteria for the balancer to turn on. Running a balancer the whole time would be stupid as we have tested this in a quite a few videos as last year here on the channel. And of course it will mess up your top balance as you said.
Also 3.4V is a very low voltage to balance and may not show any deviation across the cells even they might be on a different SOC. The curve is just picking up at this point. If you charge to 3.55V from time to time it will show you if all cells are in balance and have (almost) the same SOC.
@@john_in_phoenix You heard right but interpreted wrong. He also said in the video to set the start balancing level to 3.4v.
Hi, I just received and installed my JBD 48v 100A BMS but I can't connect with bluetooth to the app when my Victron charger is charging. I can only connect when not charging. Have you heard of this and why?
The passive balancing in some of a few brands of bms are not great. I have noticed some models will balance a linked pair of cells and not the two highest cells individually. I have found as many others have also come to find that an Active Capacitive balancer works far better and with new A+ cells you don't even need to top balance before you build the pack just allow the active balancer to do so. With a passive balancer its best to still top parallel balance and rest before you build the pack. It seems nearly every smart bms has its bugs. Daly are well known for issues. jbd are more reliable but the balance function is poor on some models. For most people a hardware based BMS is going to be the most reliable.
What do you mean by a hardware-based BMS? Do you mean a non-"smart" one?
@@BenGrabham Yeh non smart bms
This explains my past 24 hours since using my first smart BMS. Thanks mate, subscribed. I'm making a video on this too.
Thanks for the sub!
Thanks for this idea. I have a 4s battery in an RV and needs a top balance but have no bench power supply. I'm thinking about seeing if there's a way using the charge controller to in effect do the same. Will see😀
Hi, great video! I am about to order for my boat some batteries 200Ah from BASEN . I’m quite curious if I can use the app for top balancing as you did? I saw your video about BASEN you haven’t mentioned what BMS they are using. Overall would appreciate your advice about BASEN.
091722/0157h PST 🇺🇸 091722/1857h Brisbane… Danke scheoen . I’m watching this particular presentation for the 4th time. I found the similar condition to my 4s system. Default on JBD being
“BALANCE ENABLED AND BALANCE ONLY WHEN CHARGING”
Thanks for the explanation!! I was missing this understand and hence my JDB BMS was not balancing.
I purchased one of the JBD bms, with my 8 cells 24v system. However, when the sun goes down the bms disconnect my inverter and does the same thing when the pack is fully charge. Am not seen anyone else with this problem, so, what can I do to adjust the situation. The bms is jbd-ap20s006 .
Hi, i have a question about the access to a Jiabaida smart BMS, is there a way to name and apply a password to a BMS, because on a campground i detected 2 others BMS with the apps that i could take control....it is a real security issue.
Yes, you can use the XiaoXiang app to set name and password for this BMS.
Hmm Wondering if I could replace a GelCell in a UPS with one of these... What do you think?? would actually need 2 as the UPS is 24v
Great information here. Thanks. One question on this. I have a totally balanced 412ah lifepo4 battery (difference of only .001 to .002). The 4 cells shown in my graphic are colored yellow instead of green. Why is that? Also, question on the score. My cell balance score is 44 and my resistance score is 99. My overall score is only 44. Can you explain that?
Thanks for the video never realized that option for my BMS. Is it fine to set the balancing to 0.01 or will that cause too much cycling? Using 18650 battery pack.
hm i dont have this indeed not on the daly... i have my 16s 120Ah pack connected to my hyd5000ep.
how about doing a vid on all the bms app settings,as nothing seems to be published explaining all the bt app settings.
Can we use 16s 48volt bms for 4s battery. The battery is build up by 16 cells, 4cells connected in parallel individually and then in series to get 12v so total 16 cells. Can we use 16 s bms in this configuration
Yep, my Overkill Solar BMS (same as JBD) works just the same. Only balance while charging, or only balance while discharging. I also recently noticed for the first time that even if "charge balance" is off and it's within the normal balancing parameters, it won't balance while under load. That one I can understand, but I still find it to be stupid logic.
I typically just leave charge balance off, with a threshold of 3.4v and very small "balancing precision", and I find that to work the best for my needs. My charger has a non-configurable profile with max charge voltage of 14.5, so once charging stops, the balancer will also help bring the cells back down to a more comfortable 3.4v quicker.
I like what he is saying, but keep in mind that the larger the cell capacity, the longer it will take for the BMS to balance the cells. As an example, If they are starting at a similar disparity in charge, the 300Ah cells for andy's power wall would require 3 times longer than in the AOLitium battery he demonstrated on. As with *any* type of top balancing, patience is required.
The JK BMS many people use for larger cells has a 2A balancing current. It's definitely an option to do this.
Yes, that is correct, it will take longer with the large prismatic batteries we're using. But it will still work eventually😊
@@upnorthandpersonal I just installed a JK with 2A balancing and I do not see a control that allows for 'always balance'
Correction: It looks like it is always balancing... there is no setting for balancing on charge only.
@@centerrightproudamerican5727 Yes. It's always balancing at a certain configurable voltage threshold. Balancing only while charging is useless, especially with these large cells even with a 2A balancing current. I often have 100A coming in to these 280Ah cells, so there would be almost no time between 3.4 and 3.5 to do anything, but plenty to do overnight.
Is it done for reasons of efficiency? As in the amount of drain on the battery? I imagine balancing only when charging is going to avoid phantom draining things.. For wide variation, sure: making it balance more, but charge balancing seems like it would be good enough vs the trade-off of burning more energy.
The energy is burned in any way through the balance resistor, regardless if charging or not. And balancing should only happen if voltage is higher and there is actually a difference across the cell voltages. If this is all within the set parameters, balancing should not turn on at all...
I have same issue. My pack balances only while three criteria are met: 1) Vcell > 3.375, 2) Charge > 1A, and 3) Vdelta > tbd V. Furthermore, the passive balance only discharges with something less than 1A. I know this because if I charge with 1.1A current limit, the imbalance is seen to work, but it doesn't hardly correct. I can see it turn on and then the Vcell drops by about 40mV, indicating it is being balanced. But it continues to charge until 3.7Vcell, at which point the BMS turns off the protection MOSFET. Basically, it is only working during from 99% capacity to 100% capacity at
Thanks for more great info Andy, and a lot of great comments have come up here too.
Hi Andy! Very nice movie , but for some reason it doesn't work with me... Which version of the BMS software you are using?
Hi how do you balance without charge balancing? I dont see any auto balance option on my ant bms android app
Hello.. Thank you for this video. I have now for 3days tried to top balance my 12v lifepo4 100ah battery. but I stille stays at 1 - 3.373 2 - 3.392 3 - 3.961 4 - 3.394 Difference 0.033v I have no current at all on the battery 0.00A
Can I discharge the voltages somehow, and the hope to charge it again and hope there will gen som Amp on the battery?
Or maybe it is just dead. But It have only have 9 cycles The voltage is now 13.78V on the battery.
Hope you can help me somehow. ;) Thank you for a very nice channel.
time to test that!!! oohhhh I forgot, I don't have that kind of bms, expensive, can't afford it. Loved the video Andy,, informative. watched it even I can't do it,, atleast you gave me something to think about.
what is BMS turn on settings after top ballance finish?
so when u installed this bms, u said you are close to getting orion bms. what's the plan now. i'm using a Tesla battery pack for 2 years now and don't need balancing, very minimal deviation. looking to buy additional pack in parallel but won't do unless I settle on the BMS, waiting for your next one, seems the JBD bms still doesn't cut it
I never looked into an Orion BMS. Some of my viewers are using it though.
I will use the JK-BMS with active balancer for my batteries.
Are you going to mix LiFePO4 with Li-ion batteries?
Thank you for this video because that’s happened to me. My bms is Daly and after trying it locked. I need to reactive it how can I do it? Do you know?
What do you mean with it is locked?
With the new setting does the battery discharge faster? Might be why it was set to balance only when charging so it doesn't get discharged during shipping.
Why should it discharge faster? The balancer turns off if the cells go under 3.4V or are within 15mV.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Perhaps the microcontroller that makes the balancing decisions has to stay on and monitoring all the time if Charge Balance is turned off? This might cause some drain when the battery is not in use. Maybe the microcontroller power is controlled by the Charge Balance setting and only powers up if there is a charge current (when the setting is on only). 100% a guess though.
I bought the OVER KILL BMS 48V 100 AMP. after about 2 -3 weeks sit there charge and discharge about 2 times show on it. It was sit there not charge over a week because my inverter dead. so I disconnected. today I connect the bms back in with bluetooth. it went bad crazy: battery 7 show 4.753 volt. and it stay there. battery 6 show 0.045v. but the mutimeter show all 16 batteries at 3.2 ... V. WHAT /WHICH BMS do u guys recommend to be friendly easy use but last long? for 48v lipo7 302 catL battery.? thanks
So balancing turned off, balance turn on voltage set to 3.4, and deviation set to .015 initially. Does it balance below the 3.4 or only when above 3.4
Under discharge conditions
Andy. I have 6 banks of cells. Each 120ah
What cheapish bms can I use that has a good balancing feature and strength as you mentioned (only need about 60 or 80 amp per bms. Cheapish cause I need 6 of them to balance this nicely. I have ant bms and Daly currently and the 3 different apps is annoying.
What voltages does each bank have?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia its running as 16s. Each bms is running as follows.
2p16s, or is it 32 🤣( it's 6 15 am as I type this) then 3 banks of that in parallel
Issue I'm having is on those cloudy raining few days (3 or 4 days constant rain) there's always the cells that gets to 2.65 when most of the others are still 3.1 (watching your videos I've learnt that there isn't much juice left below 3.1v but when they charge back up there is always that bit of imbalance and takes a few days to level out
So want to affordably put a bms on 16 cells, so 6 bms total.
Hopefully things would stay more balanced and handled better.
When it's good sunny days, the cells balance out nicely, but then when it gets cloudy/rain for a few days it's goes all frogged up 😟, bulk is 55.4, and float is set at 54.4.
Yesterday morning I woke up to a offline house due to the imbalance.
When the system dies, the end voltage is usually the 49v range, with low cell protect set to 2.65v
The end voltage when the battery is low is 49.8 v on average per bank
Andy Have you tried to run to battery packs with Your Bms program. With Android the only way for me to switch bms signals was to put aluminumaround one of the bms receiver so my app could not connect to the other battery bank. . Thanks
If we turn on power supply on overnight but app show no current 0% it will balance?
Exactly how I top balanced my new 304 cells
It works quite well, doesn't it?
Very interesting video, Endy.
I have same thoughts about balancing. To set balencer stop voltage lower then 3,4**v to balance after charging ends. Maybe lower? To 2,999v ( Joking😊) Looks like balancer takes energy from cells, that runs up, and after charge thay goes down earlier and discarges quiker...
I am a newcomer in Solar and Lifepo4 due to the Russian attack on our energetic in Ukraine last years, that led to blackouts last and this winter and the inconvenience of constantly working on a generator. So I was led into the fascinating world of alternative energy. I watched almost all your videos last year and made own Lifepo4 24v 8s Lishen 202Ah in Daly not smurt Bms 200A 200 mA balance current and Neey 4A smart active balancer in autumn.
Internal resistance is around 0,19 mOm per cell, flexible copper busburs. So, no heating on loads around 80-100Amps.
When charge and discharge bms and balancer do the job- bulk 28,2v Must PV18-3024 solar inverter, and Neey balancer do well to 0.005mv, that looks good))
But, I have 3 cells, which always lover in rest, or under 20-40 Amps load diff goes to 0.070mv and on load around 90A diff goes up to 0,180 Mv and becomes biger when voltage drops to 2,9**mv on them, meanwhile on other cells voltage is at 3,1**mv, and diff is higher above 0,200 mv((
When battery is on charge, the bms and balencer keep balanse at 0,020, but in few minutes after invertor stops charge to 28,2, I see that 3 same cells, that runs up on 0,020 mv over other cells during charge, momentally goes lower then others, and Neey balancer starts to push amps to them back, because while in charge, balencer takes energy from them)) Strange
Looks like there is something with internal resistance in that 3 cells, they goes up, but balencer get them down, and after charging they stay in lower SOH than others.
How should I set up Neey Smart balancer? What start balancing valtege (28,2:8=3,52 v maybe) ? What stop balancing valtege (maybe 3,345 or something) ?
Thank you!
And another idea is to use equalization function, because my inverter doesn't have absorbsion function. In Aqualization mode I can set higer bulk voltage, and my Neey can be set to 3,6v Start voltage and time set to 20-50 minutes. I use sometimse Float setting (same voltage as bulk) for give time for Neey for balance cells for an hour. As I understand, without absorbsion time, only with bulk cc cv, balancer fails to calibrate cells without a time to do that without constant voltage with almost 0 Amps for a while. In this case my weakest 3 cell from higher voltage during charge, runs down quiker when bulk stops, and still lower then bothers durin rest and discharge under loads....
Hi Andy, based on your usage what is the ideal low voltage of the battery to stop discharging (low battery) value, could 51.2v go lower?
What app are you using. The xiaoxing app doesnt show of the settings for me.
Andy here is an. Idea what can Yu do with a set of jumper cables. I use these to jump of battery packs to inverter. Charging with out. Changing cables might make a good video one way or the other
Jumper cables are made of aluminium as far as I know?
I have the JBD 200A 4s with heath function, and it balance perfect without charge. I not remeber what the default setting was.
May I know what's your battery size?
@@LawAbidingCitizen117 4x100Ah
@@Dan-LS thanks. I appreciate that..
i ran into the same thing with a overkill solar bms and found the same solution
It works great, right? I really like this once the balance setting is right.
Ones I've used turn on balance charging at .5 amps. And yes I noticed. My cells are pretty even but when I first installed them I ended up plugging in an icharger for accurate top balancing. The jbd def doesn't balance at 2 amps. It's been maint free so far. For the price it's a good bms imo
Must be because you are in southern hemisphere. You are upside down. You turn charge balance 'OFF' to get it to balance. Makes perfect sense. Depends on how you happen to interpret what 'charge balance' means. You have to figure out it means 'balance only when charging', not state of charge balance.
What happens if you have 'charge balance' ON and you get a cell overvoltage BMS shutdown. Does it bleed overvoltage cell so BMS resets?
I don't get why it doesn't balance regardless of whether it is charging or not charging?
Yep, that's a relic from the Li-ion battery times. A good BMS will balance regardless of charging, discharging or not doing anything.
That's a good idea I think I might start doing that every now and then just charge the battery my normal way and then instead of stop charging go in and change that setting and just let her run
Yes, I do this every 2-3 months on my pack and re-balance it just over night.
odd. i keep turning off the charge balance feature but every time i return to that screen it's back on. granted i dont have a charge on it. wondering if that matters. are you finding this setting persists after taking it off the charger?
Thank you for all the info that you give I am learning allot!
When I turn this off on my 16s jbd, it will ONLY balance when there is no charge
Hello sir ! Plz make a video about the difference between balance enable and charge balance ♎ or if u already make a video on this plz reply me a link 🔗 🙏🙏🙏
That's here on my channel: ruclips.net/video/aqSgNB6Jo-0/видео.html
So do it needs active balancer with this so the balancing is faster?
What App are you using? I just built my first battery with a JBD bms and I need to get something where I can change these settings?
I made a video here: ruclips.net/video/SbGKdpmOSSk/видео.html
Dear Offgrid- Garage community, i had a problem and think if someone knows it - it will be in Andys Team👋! So - have a Jbd bms where the current sensor seems to be uncalibrated, when charged with 25A it shows around 18A. Its roughly 30% off, checked it several times. I played wuth this bms a lot, not as much as Andy but - a lot. And i could barely remember that with the "Bely Batterie App" i could calibrate voltages which would be measured wrong in another Bms. But how to adjust/calibrate the Ampere current in aby App? Any idea? Tganks a lot guys!😊
Yes i have the JK-B1A20S15P and what i have seen is the 1amp balance is not enough to balance the 16s pack ( high capacity cells , like 200ah and above ). it struggles to get it done. yours is a 2amp so i would think it might do the job quicker. If i was to recommend to other buyers i would say don't buy any of the 1 amp bms for 16s setup. i would say for the small amount diff for the JK-B2A24S15P which is a 2a it is worth it. if you had a 8s or lower it probably would be ok. hey jk why not just make a JK-B2A20S15P and a JK-B5A20S15P. that is the largest part of market share that we want. check it out ANDY could make a good video. use some high resistance cells in there to make the test real. 4 or 5 should make your job real hard. you will cry.
I have also my lifePo4 battery battery. but my battery volt not same. Every cell very different
If I understand correctly, the BMS behaves differently with the app running than without? All the protective functions must also work autonomously!?
The BMS works the same with app or without. The problem is that the BMS does not balance unless there is a certain charge current flowing (charge balance). If the BMS for example turns off the battery due to a high voltage cell, it won't balance because there is no current it can measure.
I would recommend turning off Charge Balance with these JBD BMSs.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia im off the Charge Balance but still the last cell of my setup first to reach 3.6v my other 7 cells just 3.3 all of them until the last cell reach 3.6v. i don't know what to do... i have no active balancer for the mean time just the JDM
Good find Andy, I have a couple of these BMS's but haven't experimented with all the settings just yet. It is very strange that there's no full time balance option, what an odd function. It would be great if JK made a 12v version of their BMS, and if they made one that was 12v 250A or more, then it'd sell so fast. But they wanted $16k to develop it and that's too much for me, especially because if I had one custom made, I'd find it for sale to everyone else anyway. Perhaps you can use your contacts to make suggestions ;)
There should be a 12V JK BMS soon-ish. Don't quote me on that.
I suggested that to them already, said, we need a high amp 12V smart BMS with active balancer. I'll keep pushing.
For me a 100-150A would be fine enough 😀
Hi Andy. You should disable charge balance.
i've disable the charge balance but still the last cell took first to reach 3.6v and my other 7cells just 3.3v.
I have a problem with my Jbd BMS
Do you have any list on what the UI tells you about like when the grey outline on the battery series blinks or other stuff like that?
just recently bought this BMS and havent found anything online except your videos.
Thanks in advance if you have any list 😃
I made a whole series about MPPT, BMS and balancer settings. Maybe you find the answers there.
off-grid-garage.com/my-settings/
@@OffGridGarageAustralia thank you! I'll on it much appreciated 😆
How to calibrate Jbd BMS
thnks bro ,you know how to explain :) keep strong and do what you doing :)
Thanks Andy
So the high voltage cell has its resistor on but it's voltage is still much higher so voltage times amps equals what? Is it still getting net more power than the others even with the balancer on?
This is not about the power a cell get. The amps are what actually charges your cell. The cell which are balanced are just getting 0.06A less than the others.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I get what you're saying but the net power has to be less with the resistor on or else it won't be able to allow the others to catch up without the high cell going critical first. In fact if the cell is full the power actually making it into the cell has to be near zero or it would shoot up to a critical voltage. This is why when I've had severely out of balance cells in series as approaching top balancing voltages I've had to freeze the voltage at 13.8 in order to reduce the incoming amperage to something about equal to the bleed off resistors amperage abilities.
@Travis Sanders that is the key. Keeping the total charge voltage lower than the voltage that will cause the highest cell voltage to pass critical. That will allow it to balance. Once it balances at that voltage, you can increase it slightly to get a higher top balance .
@@TheTimshady337 exactly. My BMS is supposed to communicate through the can bus to my charger so that it will control this exact process but my Tesla hybrid inverter doesn't speak the same can bus language as my BMS. I have 152 cells in series . Nothing is in parallel so nothing is forced to be the same voltage. It's a little harder to keep things balanced with this many cells in series but at the same time it's also easier on the other hand because it is scientifically impossible for different cells to experience different amperages. So far it's been working 2 years . I'm only charging up to 3.398 volts per cell which is just barely enough to do a little top balancing.
@@SiriusSolar I can't imagine keeping track of 152s. If it is working, you must be doing something right.
How did I miss this setting? Thanks for the video!
First? Andy, it's 3am! What are you doing to me? 🤪
And the JNGE SCC makes an appearance!
Does anyone know what the load check feature does?
I am not convinced, would love to hear a detailled reply of dacian here
A reply about...?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia if balancing while charging is really no good idea at all.
@@BischesseHunting did you watch the video?? or just not understand the video?
That feature should be renamed to "Charge balance ONLY" and be disabled by default.
That's what I would do. It's so anoying.
can I ask for an e-mail? I can't speak English, only through a translator, and I wanted to ask you how to balance a 60v 38ah battery, I would send you how it is set and screenshots, thank you
I dissagree charge while balancing is the most efficient way if energy conversation is to be considered a bad cell can pull the whole bank down very quickly