Oh that's why.. I use a battery pack of 32650 on my kids power wheels, it started balanced, after my kid drained the pack, it won't charge properly, and I check the cells are imbalanced. Thank you very much, I should be using active balancer then.
Great idea! Also be aware of the total capacity of your battery cells. Capacitive balancers are great but drains some power continuously, so when not using for a long time, you should disconnect the balancer from the battery. Thank you for watching!!
Thanks for the video. So what I'm gathering is that the balancer is only necessary for batteries in series. Does it follow then that battery cells wired in parallel will self-balance? I'm only building a small 2S battery with 4 18650 cells total, so I don't know how important balancing would be, but I'm trying to learn as much as possible before moving forward. Thanks!
You are right. The balancer is only necessary for series configuration. I would recommend using a passive balancer when you are building 2s with a total of 4 batteries because the capacity between all the cells is not exactly identical. There are many 2s balancers you can find from online markets. Thank you for watching!!
This is exactly the video I need, such informative. Thank you so much! Side note: your 7 parallel 18650s are over 70Ah, that's an average of 10Ah each, which is something unheard of. Don't you think its exaggerated? They're most likely less than 3Ah each. So inductive balancer should have worked?
loved the video. As you stated, Active balancers are recommended for higher Ah capacities, and you gave some high examples. Would you recommend using active balancer if I were planning on making my own portable phone charger at roughly 20 Ah?
If you're making a portable phone charger you can put your batteries in parallel (4.2V max) and let them balance themselves without a balancer. I believe this is how most USB power banks work.
Hi sir!! Thanks allot for this video!!🙏 I have a question... Because it's not easy in my case to take out and open my battery.. Can i connect the wires of active balance straight to wires or BMS out of the battery..?🤔
Hello. You need to know the exact configuration of your battery cell before making the connection. If your BMS is exposed, then yes, you can connect the balancer to the pins of the BMS. Thanks for watching!
@@gemsungelectronics460 thank you very much for your quick response!!!🙏 I know the configuration, i make the battery and can double check them with the app of BMS! I have easy process to bms and wires that is why i want to connect balancer to battery through BMS wires...😘
Hello, Active balancers are equipped with capacitors, which suffers leakage current by a small amount. Though it might be small, it can discharge the cells at a faster rate. So, if you are not going to use the cells for a long time, it is better to disconnect the active balancer. Thank you for watching.
Hi, thank you for watching! If you can measure the voltage of each cell, then you might be able to tell which type of BMS is used. But it would not help if the cells are perfectly balanced. I would recommend asking the manufacturer or taking a peek into the battery pack :-)
Parabéns pelo vídeo. Eu estou usando uma placa balanceadora indutiva de 20S, com uma bateria de 72v. Porém está esquentando muito, as luzes estão apagadas e mesmo assim está esquentando. Sabe o motivo?
Oh, the configuration used in the video was 3 serial and 7 parallel. I used 3 li-ion batteries in series to achieve ~12V. So the BMS needed to be 3S only. Sorry for the confusion. I should have asked which configuration you were referring to first. Thank you!
Balancing is achieved during the final stage of charging when the charge current is very low. For this reason, the drain current need not be large. Also, increasing the drain current can limit the current, which can be used for charging other cells. Waisting the current can be another reason for not increasing the drain current. Thank you for watching!!
Low currents are all that are required for well matched packs. I made a 3s16p pack from salvaged (garbage) cells... I managed to get each bank to within 50mAh of each other which is impressively tight... until you realize the pack was ~30 000 mAh large... that is a *TIGHT* match. But my BMS which uses a passive balancer somehow managed to make 2 banks go to 0 volts (Not safe) with one bank at 4.25 volts (closer to 4.3 volts because my meter is out a bit). IDK how that happened, my cells were each tested to hold a stable full voltage for more than 2 weeks when left disconnected so that shouldn't happen. I used an active balancer to fix it but it was going to take a while, I helped it along by draining the high bank into some incandescent lights and I put external chargers on the low banks while the active balancer did its thing. Now my pack works again. But, if my pack had not been let go out of balance, the passive balancing would have been overkill, it was rated to 100mA but even 68mA would have been overkill given just how darn close my pack was. Even new cells are not always that closely matched... lots of cells in parallel means the average of them all is pretty close across the pack.
@@MegaCyrik I measured the difference bank to back (16 parallel cells per bank, 3 banks in series, 3s16p). Each cell was measured individually so I could match them up so that each bank was really tightly matched to the others. Then I welded the cells together. The difference between each bank was far lower than the measurement error of my equipment... Turns out that the 2 banks went flat (0 volts) because one cell in each was shorted and I did not know, and the short wasn't there when I started since I let all my cells sit a week first and they all measured the same voltage (so they had not self-discharged). I think that since I pulled my cells from 3s2p and 4s2p packs, that the 2 dead cells were in parallel in a pack and killed the pack, I then used them and did not see the issue until after they were all welded together. My passive balancer is still not to be relied upon since it only starts balancing at a slight overcharge which will shorten the life of the pack and make things more volatile. Instead I use an active flying capacitor balancer which seems to be overkill despite being the smallest one I could find.
WARNING: You are assuming cells are Lithium iron as found on most e-bikes - these values would be dangerously high for Lifepo4 which us becoming more popular and should be 3.65v
Most importantly, this is a competent video - but oh, the text-to-speech thing has so many audio artifacts, it's not fun to listen to. Don't let this discourage you!
You might want to look into using some more advanced AI tools for text to speech. They've gotten good enough that they sound indistinguishable from a real human speaking.
You are not going to get more capacity than the smallest/weakest cell, so the "top off" balancer is useless and just wears out the bad cell faster as it keeps it full while the others catch up, filling up batteries is what wears them out. What it can do is balance them every once in a while or if they get way out of balance, but that requires a charger that is very low charge rate. The active balancer is also a waste, it does not do enough to make any difference unless the batteries are drained very very slowly, in which case, just use a single cell battery and use a dc-dc booster and no balancing at all is needed.
Hi, I think you are referring to the capacitive balancer since no inductive balancer is used in this video. Can you be more specific on which point you think the balancer is broken? Thank you for watching!!
Lithium-ion batteries are a broad category of rechargeable batteries that use lithium ions as the primary source of energy. Within this category, there are many different types of lithium-based batteries that use different cathode materials, such as lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2), lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC), lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA), and lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), among others. Each of these chemistries has its own unique properties and trade-offs in terms of energy density, cycle life, cost, safety, and other factors. So, when people talk about "lithium-ion batteries," they could be referring to any one of these different types of lithium-based batteries, depending on the context.
060223/1917h PST 🇺🇸 Thank you for the presentation. Your concluding statement, clearly indicated that, it’s not advisable to permanently wire Active Capacitive balancer in a 4S, LiFePo4 50A configuration. I’ve a situation that needs to look into, as #1 cell in my configuration have the tendency to run away to 5.6V first, while the #2/3/4 lags trying to catch up. I decided to discharge #1 cell (only) through 65w halogen lamp, until it balances with the others and recharge the battery bank. If the trait follows, in spite of the experiment, I will wire AB to the system and watch. What do you say? A response is highly solicited. Thanks. 73s…
Sorry for the late response. Why would you need to discharge cell #1 first to make it balanced with the other cells? Why not use the active balancer from the beginning? Also, can you give more detail of wiring AB to the system? I couldn't quite understand the meaning. Thank you for watching!
Why not wire the balancer into the charger, you just need to find some way to automatically disconnect the balancer after the charger disconnects. I would consider wiring either some MOSFETS or some solid state relays (lower power usage than regular relays) to the balance lead going to the charger that disconnects after the charger is removed and the balance current has decreased sufficiently. A cheap microcontroller could do this easily but it might be cheaper to use voltage dividers or off the shelf voltage sensors so the microcontroller can measure each cell's voltage and sever the connection once balancing is complete. You could wire it so the charger activates the microcontroller and the balancer by powering the MOSFETs or solid state relays, and then the microcontroller will keep the relays active until balancing is done, then it cuts power to the MOSFETs or relays which also cuts power to itself saving a small amount of power.
If you are using a parallel only configuration, bms is not needed. BMS is only for serial configuration or serial-parallel hybrid configuration. Thank you for watching!!
Active balancer activates whenever there is a difference between the cells, so even when you connect a passive balancer parallel to the active balancer, the passive balancer might have no chance to kick in. The passive balancer is activated only when there is excessive charge on the cells, so it will dissipate power after the cells are fully charged, but will not contribute to balancing.
Those tests are exactly what I was looking for!
Nice work!👏
Thx!
Thank you for your comment!
Very good and transparent content. Awesome👍
Thanks!!
Excellent and complete explanation, thank you !newbie here not finding much about these balancers
Thank you for watching!
Let me know if you have any questions!
Now, that's a real tutorial. Thank you buddy.
Thank you for watching!!
great video! clear and fast with all my doubts resolved, thanks!
Thank you for your comment!!
Excellent tutorial , many thanks for the efforts
Thank you for watching!!
Great, BIGTHX for information.
This video was really clear. Thank you!
Thank you for watching!!
Oh that's why..
I use a battery pack of 32650 on my kids power wheels, it started balanced, after my kid drained the pack, it won't charge properly, and I check the cells are imbalanced. Thank you very much, I should be using active balancer then.
Great idea!
Also be aware of the total capacity of your battery cells.
Capacitive balancers are great but drains some power continuously, so when not using for a long time, you should disconnect the balancer from the battery.
Thank you for watching!!
thank you, very informative. Quality information
Thank you for watching!!
Good job. Nice Explanetion.
Thank you for watching!!
Very nice video, I learnt alot of things thank you
Your comment makes me motivated!
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the video. So what I'm gathering is that the balancer is only necessary for batteries in series. Does it follow then that battery cells wired in parallel will self-balance? I'm only building a small 2S battery with 4 18650 cells total, so I don't know how important balancing would be, but I'm trying to learn as much as possible before moving forward. Thanks!
You are right. The balancer is only necessary for series configuration.
I would recommend using a passive balancer when you are building 2s with a total of 4 batteries because the capacity between all the cells is not exactly identical.
There are many 2s balancers you can find from online markets.
Thank you for watching!!
@@gemsungelectronics460 Thanks!
cant i use active capacitive balancer on 12v 10Ah?
It depends on how large capacity the balancer can handle.
If the capacity of the balancer is small, the balancing will not work as intended.
This is exactly the video I need, such informative. Thank you so much!
Side note: your 7 parallel 18650s are over 70Ah, that's an average of 10Ah each, which is something unheard of. Don't you think its exaggerated? They're most likely less than 3Ah each. So inductive balancer should have worked?
Now we just need the Qualcom QC 3.0 module to make a proper phone charger for a proper phone 😅
Great idea 😀
Thank you for watching!!
loved the video. As you stated, Active balancers are recommended for higher Ah capacities, and you gave some high examples. Would you recommend using active balancer if I were planning on making my own portable phone charger at roughly 20 Ah?
If you're making a portable phone charger you can put your batteries in parallel (4.2V max) and let them balance themselves without a balancer. I believe this is how most USB power banks work.
Hi sir!!
Thanks allot for this video!!🙏
I have a question...
Because it's not easy in my case to take out and open my battery..
Can i connect the wires of active balance straight to wires or BMS out of the battery..?🤔
Hello.
You need to know the exact configuration of your battery cell before making the connection.
If your BMS is exposed, then yes, you can connect the balancer to the pins of the BMS.
Thanks for watching!
@@gemsungelectronics460 thank you very much for your quick response!!!🙏
I know the configuration, i make the battery and can double check them with the app of BMS!
I have easy process to bms and wires that is why i want to connect balancer to battery through BMS wires...😘
Great! That will do the job!
This was perfect. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment!
Thank you, brother. Why do we disconnect the active equalizer when we are not using the cells?
Hello,
Active balancers are equipped with capacitors, which suffers leakage current by a small amount. Though it might be small, it can discharge the cells at a faster rate. So, if you are not going to use the cells for a long time, it is better to disconnect the active balancer.
Thank you for watching.
Excellent video, thanks!
Is there a way to tell, which type a balancing a device is using without seeing the BMS?
Hi, thank you for watching!
If you can measure the voltage of each cell, then you might be able to tell which type of BMS is used. But it would not help if the cells are perfectly balanced.
I would recommend asking the manufacturer or taking a peek into the battery pack :-)
very well explained.. thanks for the very informative video.. you deserve more subscribers
Thank you for your comment!
More videos are to come!
Parabéns pelo vídeo. Eu estou usando uma placa balanceadora indutiva de 20S, com uma bateria de 72v. Porém está esquentando muito, as luzes estão apagadas e mesmo assim está esquentando. Sabe o motivo?
This first reason is your charge current, second the requirements of balancers is 5 amp.
Thanks. This video helps a lot .
But i have a question,
How can i get the curves???
The configuration of the test is introduced in the slides, and the tool used for drawing the plots is python matplotlib.
Thank you for watching!!
3x7 means a Series of 7 Blocks of parallel connected cell triples?
3x7 means batteries connected in 3 parallel and 7 serial configuration.
Thank you for watching!!
@@gemsungelectronics460 So there would a "7S BMS" be connect.
Oh, the configuration used in the video was 3 serial and 7 parallel.
I used 3 li-ion batteries in series to achieve ~12V. So the BMS needed to be 3S only.
Sorry for the confusion.
I should have asked which configuration you were referring to first.
Thank you!
why not make your story short, tell us directly which of the 2 is the best to install, the passive or the active that's it!.
This passive balancer does not make sense because it drains only 68ma. At least 500ma would be ok.
Balancing is achieved during the final stage of charging when the charge current is very low. For this reason, the drain current need not be large.
Also, increasing the drain current can limit the current, which can be used for charging other cells. Waisting the current can be another reason for not increasing the drain current.
Thank you for watching!!
Low currents are all that are required for well matched packs. I made a 3s16p pack from salvaged (garbage) cells... I managed to get each bank to within 50mAh of each other which is impressively tight... until you realize the pack was ~30 000 mAh large... that is a *TIGHT* match. But my BMS which uses a passive balancer somehow managed to make 2 banks go to 0 volts (Not safe) with one bank at 4.25 volts (closer to 4.3 volts because my meter is out a bit). IDK how that happened, my cells were each tested to hold a stable full voltage for more than 2 weeks when left disconnected so that shouldn't happen. I used an active balancer to fix it but it was going to take a while, I helped it along by draining the high bank into some incandescent lights and I put external chargers on the low banks while the active balancer did its thing. Now my pack works again. But, if my pack had not been let go out of balance, the passive balancing would have been overkill, it was rated to 100mA but even 68mA would have been overkill given just how darn close my pack was. Even new cells are not always that closely matched... lots of cells in parallel means the average of them all is pretty close across the pack.
@@asificam1rubbish story lol
@@MegaCyrik I measured the difference bank to back (16 parallel cells per bank, 3 banks in series, 3s16p). Each cell was measured individually so I could match them up so that each bank was really tightly matched to the others. Then I welded the cells together. The difference between each bank was far lower than the measurement error of my equipment... Turns out that the 2 banks went flat (0 volts) because one cell in each was shorted and I did not know, and the short wasn't there when I started since I let all my cells sit a week first and they all measured the same voltage (so they had not self-discharged). I think that since I pulled my cells from 3s2p and 4s2p packs, that the 2 dead cells were in parallel in a pack and killed the pack, I then used them and did not see the issue until after they were all welded together.
My passive balancer is still not to be relied upon since it only starts balancing at a slight overcharge which will shorten the life of the pack and make things more volatile. Instead I use an active flying capacitor balancer which seems to be overkill despite being the smallest one I could find.
WARNING: You are assuming cells are Lithium iron as found on most e-bikes - these values would be dangerously high for Lifepo4 which us becoming more popular and should be 3.65v
thx
Thank you for watching!!
excellent , thanks ------------- sub'd + like +
Thank you for watching!!
Most importantly, this is a competent video - but oh, the text-to-speech thing has so many audio artifacts, it's not fun to listen to. Don't let this discourage you!
Thank you for your comment!
It is most helpful for improving my video!
You might want to look into using some more advanced AI tools for text to speech. They've gotten good enough that they sound indistinguishable from a real human speaking.
@@randr10 Any recommendations?
@@ralfbaechle You know that's a great question. The demonstrations never seem to mention the tools they used. 🤔
Thank you for your comment!
I will look for any awesome TTS tools available!
However, the TTS used in this video was provided by Google. :-)
No schematics? 🤥
Thanks
You are not going to get more capacity than the smallest/weakest cell,
so the "top off" balancer is useless and just wears out the bad cell faster as it keeps it full while the others catch up, filling up batteries is what wears them out.
What it can do is balance them every once in a while or if they get way out of balance, but that requires a charger that is very low charge rate.
The active balancer is also a waste, it does not do enough to make any difference unless the batteries are drained very very slowly, in which case, just use a single cell battery and use a dc-dc booster and no balancing at all is needed.
Your inductive balancer is broken. Get a new one and re-test.
Hi, I think you are referring to the capacitive balancer since no inductive balancer is used in this video.
Can you be more specific on which point you think the balancer is broken?
Thank you for watching!!
@@gemsungelectronics460 5:30
"no inductive balancer is used in this video" 5:27 timestamp
2.4 volts.. hahaa yea if you want your battery to die faster I guess. Rest of the video is great, but li-ion shouldn't go below 3v.. 3.2 ideally
Depends on the cells, higher capacity can be discharged to 2.5V, some even as low as 2V I've seen depending on chemistry
@@daijoubu4529 this is li-ion. There is only one chemistry being discussed. I even said the chemistry in my post. So what you said makes no sense.
@@gg-gn3re there are at least 3 kinds of lithium chemistry: Lithium Cobalt Oxide, Lithium Manganese Oxide, Lithium Iron Phosphate
@@daijoubu4529 I said lithium-ion, learn to read. stop digging your hole
Lithium-ion batteries are a broad category of rechargeable batteries that use lithium ions as the primary source of energy.
Within this category, there are many different types of lithium-based batteries that use different cathode materials, such as lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2), lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC), lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA), and lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), among others. Each of these chemistries has its own unique properties and trade-offs in terms of energy density, cycle life, cost, safety, and other factors. So, when people talk about "lithium-ion batteries," they could be referring to any one of these different types of lithium-based batteries, depending on the context.
060223/1917h PST 🇺🇸 Thank you for the presentation. Your concluding statement, clearly indicated that, it’s not advisable to permanently wire Active Capacitive balancer in a 4S, LiFePo4 50A configuration. I’ve a situation that needs to look into, as #1 cell in my configuration have the tendency to run away to 5.6V first, while the #2/3/4 lags trying to catch up. I decided to discharge #1 cell (only) through 65w halogen lamp, until it balances with the others and recharge the battery bank. If the trait follows, in spite of the experiment, I will wire AB to the system and watch. What do you say? A response is highly solicited. Thanks.
73s…
Sorry for the late response.
Why would you need to discharge cell #1 first to make it balanced with the other cells?
Why not use the active balancer from the beginning?
Also, can you give more detail of wiring AB to the system? I couldn't quite understand the meaning.
Thank you for watching!
Why not wire the balancer into the charger, you just need to find some way to automatically disconnect the balancer after the charger disconnects. I would consider wiring either some MOSFETS or some solid state relays (lower power usage than regular relays) to the balance lead going to the charger that disconnects after the charger is removed and the balance current has decreased sufficiently. A cheap microcontroller could do this easily but it might be cheaper to use voltage dividers or off the shelf voltage sensors so the microcontroller can measure each cell's voltage and sever the connection once balancing is complete. You could wire it so the charger activates the microcontroller and the balancer by powering the MOSFETs or solid state relays, and then the microcontroller will keep the relays active until balancing is done, then it cuts power to the MOSFETs or relays which also cuts power to itself saving a small amount of power.
Can one parallel the active and passive BMS?
If you are using a parallel only configuration, bms is not needed.
BMS is only for serial configuration or serial-parallel hybrid configuration.
Thank you for watching!!
@@gemsungelectronics460 Let me rephrase. I've a 16S. Can I put both active and passive BMS in parallel? Would both contradict each other?
Active balancer activates whenever there is a difference between the cells, so even when you connect a passive balancer parallel to the active balancer, the passive balancer might have no chance to kick in. The passive balancer is activated only when there is excessive charge on the cells, so it will dissipate power after the cells are fully charged, but will not contribute to balancing.
1.2A is very very very faild balancer .. I tried it. Thanks for your efforts .. but I do not recommend it at all
pretty cool;
Thank you for watching!!