I'm waiting for Seplos continuation video. Still want to believe it's very good BMS for the ability to communicate with inverters, and I have 3 Seplos waiting to be connected .. Great video as usual, keep rolling
I wonder, can the Heltec balancer pull from more than one cell and then pump that energy into more than one cell? What if you had two drained cells and two full cells? Would the balancer pull 4+A from *Each* of the full cells? That would start getting closer to the advertised 10A.
Hi Andy, I'm sure I speak for most people by saying, we are greatful you test things in a realisting manner, not some server rack pack that's capacity tested and then a visual look, most youtubers just do that, you test things we actual curios on buying and test all the, " but what if" things. That open circuit balancer (the cheap ones) I soldered 2 of them together on my 16s setup, with a 300mv dif, using the same clamp meter I measured 8amp balance current. Just a suggestion, haha works better then the heltec and is still cheaper to have 2 cheap ones. Summer is coming for you and I, and if I can suggest, why not put panels on the tesla roof, that gets less shading for winter, Useless update from my side on my 6k array, winter I got 26kwh average, and this time of year now I'm already up to 37kwh, noting 80% of my panels face north at a 40* angle. Keep up the good work, ps that number of subscribers paper is way out of date, unless your not doing it anymore.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia The joys of being retired Andy. 😃 (Nearly five weeks away just on the current trip. We’re making up for being locked down and restricted so much by Covid). We have moved around a bit, VERY slowly heading closer to home. While the great weather lasts we are definitely not in a hurry to go back to the rat race. Currently we’re in state forest West of Gympie, listening to whip birds and much more. The sun is shining, batteries are nearly full, HWS is hot, had two coffees from the coffee machine and a load of washing has been done this morning, and haven’t even turned on the LPG again after moving last Friday until last night for the oven for dinner, and also haven’t used the diesel heater at all even though it’s been rather cold, 3C this morning, (only the split system reverse cycle aircon). Gotta love my solar and Winston batteries!! If the weather goes downhill as it might possibly do next week :-(, we will head for home, only two hours away now.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia The joys of being retired Andy. Nearly five weeks away just on the current trip. We’re making up for being locked down and restricted so much by Covid. We have moved around a bit, VERY slowly heading closer to home. While the great weather lasts we are definitely not in a hurry to go back to the rat race. Currently we’re in state forest West of Gympie, listening to whip birds and much more. The sun is shining, batteries are nearly full, HWS is hot, had two coffees from the coffee machine and a load of washing has been done this morning, and haven’t even turned on the LPG again after moving last Friday until last night for the oven for dinner, and also haven’t used the diesel heater at all even though it’s been rather cold, 3C this morning, (only the split system reverse cycle aircon). Gotta love my solar and Winston batteries!! If the weather goes downhill as it might possibly do next week :-(, we will head for home, only two hours away now.
Good info, Thanks Andy. Btw, I recently built some EV packs from some "new" 32700 I got last year (now three years old) and some Daly 16S dumb BMS's, and while they worked on some perfectly matched and top-balanced cells they are incapable of balancing even 6ah 1s strings because they only balance with about 10- 20ma of current during charging above 3.45v. I tried charging at very low current for about 6 hours but only limited balancing.
Yeah, with the Daly, you need an active balancer. Their balancing will only work with small capacity cells if they are well matched and of high quality.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia And from what I just observed, not even with small capacity cells that are well matched and top balanced. I just did a postmortem on a "quality" name brand 20ah, 18650 Li-On pack that had a Daly BMS and Lishen cells.The owner had been charging it after every about 40% use for about a year (about 100 cycles), and 3 out of the 6 parallel strings were more than .8 volts lower than the two remaining good strings. I suspect as the Daly BMS was not able to balance the strings and one string was finally over-charged to death. A local ebike shop that sells and services Bosch eBikes has what looks like at least 50 dead Bosch Factory packs with what looks like Panasonic cells that exhibit one or two dead strings and other imbalanced parallel strings. They appear to be using a similar design BMS to the Daly. My guess at this point Andy, is that makers of smaller eBike packs don't have physical room and budget for a proper an advanced BMS with adequate balancing, and never the less it if true, makes the case for not using a BMS without proper balancing, and to monitor, maintain and properly any pack as you are demonstrating here.
Hallo Andy. Dein Video ist wieder einmal voll mit guten Informationen. Bei uns im Discord Forum treagst Du das Pseudonym Bombenfest. Das ist ein Kompliment fuer all Deine Arbeit.
Very good video, I'm using lipofo 4 battery, I'm learning a lot from your video here in Brazil there are few people who have knowledge of lipofo 4 battery.
Dude I just re-watched it and noticed those wires earlier in the video that is funny, why isn't it working. Lol. They still suck but that was funny when I noticed that. Always making me laugh while doing tech reviews.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia presumably your working voltage is the difference between a full cell and a low cell and is less than 1 volt. To get 10 amps the series resistance would have to be vanishingly small. Just speculation on my part, but I think it may be significant.
Effectivement ANDY, je trouve décevant qu'il ne balance pas jusqu'à 10A comme mentionné..., mais c'est encore plus décevant que la tension souhaité pour le fonctionnement soit +11,35V. bref la suite reste à découvrir dans tes recherches et tests. Merci
Still wandering how Daly 150amps 16s. Has managed to maintain less than. 0.01v difference in my two solar battery banks 202Ah and 230Ah for more than 1 year. Though it took one battery 76cycles and 230ah from docan 22cycles.
Both of them can use switch ! The one without box have just near to white socket soldered RUN points, you can disolder and solder a switch to have the same feature. One fine feature is to solder a "voltage trigger" who detect 3.45V and run balander then.
Andy, Is it possible to hook up a Victron charge controller to a veritable power supply to check its output? To make sure it hasn’t got faults inside and not putting out its correct power. Think it would make a good test video. Thanks
@@repairman2be250 The BMS is not that great either. It is working and I have it installed for a few months now but the current it shows is still 20% too low. The Heltec support could not tell me why that is...
Andy..... back when you were testing the dely BMS can you remember what amperage needed to go into the BMS before it started charging? The one I've got the charge controller is putting in 6 amps and the deli is only just turning on, seems to be quite a lot of loss of power..... Which means if I get a grey day it doesn't start charging until the afternoon when it is producing more than 6 amps going into the daly... Should I change this 4 string BMS? If so what would be a good one to replace it with?....... that won't cost the Earth.
And-E: it may not be very likely at all BUT, conceptually - it is at least POSSIBLE that may be the overall cell/pack balancing process is operating differently than we might first think it is. Unless I misunderstood, you measured the current flowing out of the SINGLE HIGHEST VOLTAGE cell into… SOMETHING. Is it possible that PERHAPS what is happening is that the balancer might be - just for example - transferring current EITHER from - say (again, just for example) ALL THREE OF THE HIGHEST CELLS - AT SOME AMPERAGE RATE OR OTHER - INTO THE SINGLE LOWEST CELL? Not sure if you want to attempt to check this out but I would say that IDEALLY when you want to test the balancer like this out, you might want to consider - and at least this is the way I would do it - is measuring the current flow on each of the cell balancers five in total leads, and see what the algebraic and absolute value sums of the current flows ‘work out to be’. Thoughts?
Disappointing result - thanks for checking with the batteries reversed (I did think there was a chance it would work). Did the company think nobody would actually test their product? You took one for the team buying that thing.
Andy, may I suggest you one test? I would like to know, what happend if you put to the pack one cell with significant higher SOC. So you have a pack with 15x cells soc 20% and 1x cell soc 90% and you start charging. I would like to know how this pack behave. Thanks
dang! i just bought this balancer and i am getting ready to hook it up and i came across this video. i am VERY new to lithium and i currently have a 96 ah headway bank built in 4s and i was linked this balancer. so i bought it. and it made no sense how to hook it up based on the sleep switch.. labeled A or M and only said something about on or off in the manual.. so in your eyes this is junk? i guess i bought a $30 paper weight lol.. in that case what balancer would you suggest using for a 96 ah headway bank built 4s? thanks for the video!
Hello Thank you for your reply good with tests to learn more. Can I ask a question? I have a setup 830 watts 2 panels of 265 watts each 2 of 150 watts each a Victron smart charger for each of the groups group (1) 530 watts Group (2) 300 watts Charger 150/50 Both to a battery 12Volt 115 Amp I would like more capacity from the battery bank as I have an inverter of 1500 Watt 230 Volt and Cool etc Can you recommend something that might fit Everything placed on and in a caravan which means that the weight should be as low as possible on the battery but high capacity SINCERELY Larry
10 helltec Amp = 4 Andy Amp Success - helltec is crap again , so share and tell the people what kind of crap the helltec is right. I like to hear such clear message at 10:35 - luckily the neely is doing a good job I hope so cause I am about ordering one for the SEPLOS BMS.
Hello It cannot be an option to have a lithium battery with so much that you have to manage (keep track of) all the time. Balancing, Temperature, charging and how much to strain the battery in order not to destroy it. All this at high cost Is it possible to catch up with something else or is this a full-time job to look after the battery every day
I'm testing all this here on the channel, so what you see is not a real world set up. Usually the BMS will take care of your battery once correctly setup and that's it. I'm going outside the usual routines and test what happens if something happens, pushing to the extreme.
I think if it can only doe one at a time it might as well for high cells boost to pack voltage and dump into the whole pack and if one is low buck the whole pack voltage and send it to a low pack
Most likely the balance wires are not thick enough and the voltage drop on the wires is reducing the current draw. I would be curious what happens if you replace those balance wires with thicker gauge.
The sales department does not manage us as a distributor and reseller. Very bad, I have spoken to Allen Zhang, he is a very nice person, who said that there would be a change in some things. although there are probably people in the sales department who do not understand what is being said to them. I have decided today to no longer sell Seplo's battery system because they have changed their sales policy, they have also become less cooperative when it comes to, among other things, the price picture for us as resellers and distributors. And don't like that it becomes more difficult with both the price part and other things.
I am guessing the DC to DC converter MOSFET's need higher gate drive voltage to achieve their lowest Rds_On resistance. You might get better results on an 8 or 16 cell stack. Would not be surprised if there is a regulator to set the 12-15v gate drive which if input to this regulator is not high enough the regulator output might be even lower than the battery's four cell stack voltage further limiting the DC-DC converter capability. Pumping 10 amps out of a 3.5v source takes low resistance MOSFET switching. Also due to super low voltage cells should not be charged at high current it may back down the transfer current to low voltage cells until they get above about 3.0v. Even with other three cells low in voltage the initial charging of the supercap should take 10 amps assuming the DC-DC converter gate drive voltage is not limiting the converter current capability.
They make these '10A' balancers only for 4s batteries. When I had it opened up in the first video, the wires to the transformer looked tiny. In any way, I could not see anything above 4.8A in or out of s single battery cell.
I think that way. Only the bigger ones (>12s) have the ideal voltage to fully turn ON the mosfets. They should correct this and sell the 4s version with 5A max and the >12s version for 10A. Will buy one soon for my 14s system and will let you guys know it.
Andy, I think a better test would be one cell at maximum voltage and one cell at minimum voltage and the rest of the cell is average. And I think the 10a or 5a advertise current is only achievable with NMC chemistry because of the higher voltage different between fully charged and empty and the voltage curve is almost perfectly linear. For LFP it can't reach because the voltage curve is too flat reach the flat part of the curve too fast.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia assuming 18awg wire resistance of 0.01 for 0.5 meter (it is even higher if smaller wires are used) and vh3.96mm connector contact resistance is 0.01 ohm for a total of 0.02 ohm then time it by for discharge and charging. You could see 0.4V voltage drop with 10amp and 0.2V with 5amp. This does not even account for any other connection losses. Also I think should not the full and the empty cell next to each so that they don't share the balancing wire because imagine if the are next to each other in the string it might only show the amperage different. It might increase the appearance current or decrease it. Oh and VH3.96mm connector is only rated for 6 amp per contract
Hi Andy, I have a 24 volt system. A while ago I go I purchased 3, 305 watt panels. I hooked them up in series. I get (at max sun) 105 volts, but only get 9.5 amps. I think I installed the wrong. Even though they work right now, I don’t need that high voltage for a 24 volt battery, but need more amps to charge quicker and be able to take advantage of the limited sun we get here in Michigan. Wouldn’t connecting in parallel be better and Easter on my charge controller? I’d get more amps and still be above my battery voltage resulting in a quicker change. Am I thinking correctly?
The power remains the same. Your charge controller (if it handles that 105V) will convert it down to whatever the battery needs, and the lower voltage battery side automatically will increase your current (power in == power out). The higher voltage on the PV side has the advantage that it leads to less losses and you can use thinner cable. If you see 9.5A at the 24V side of the charge controller, you have an issue though - since those 300W panels in full sun should get you much closer to the theoretical max of 915W.
I think it is the opposite. If your charge controller can handle the input voltage of 105 volts it will be more efficient. Higher voltage and less amps means less resistance on the wires so more power will make it to the charge controller. The charge controller will also operate more efficiently at higher voltages. Volts x amps = watts. 105v x 9a = 945 watts or if you connected them in parallel 35v x 27a = 945 watts. It is the same you would end up needing thicker wires to carry the current and your charge controller may have a minimum voltage input requirement higher than a single panels voltage. Either way you have set it up correctly and the most efficient way. You can measure the amount of amps going in to your 24v battery if you want to see how many amps you are charging at. For example if you are getting 945w from the solar panels you would have 945w ÷ 27v = 35a so you could say "I have 35 amps outside right now" of course on a 48v system like Andy's that would be half the amps or "17.5 amps outside"
👆Agree. If it’s an MPPT charge controller and can handle that voltage higher is often better…..HOWEVER With a series connection, If some panels are often shaded throughout the day it will affect the output of the array as a whole! If you have for example 6 panels and 3 panels get more shade it can be beneficial to connect the shady panels in 3s and parallel to the sunny panels in 3s or whatever. Also, on a future upgrade you might consider increasing your battery voltage as well to increase efficiency
I was just about to ask Andy this and I saw that you beat me to the question. What happens if we put several active balancers in parallel? Isn't the effect additive?
You can have as many balancers in parallel as you like, they all will work together. I'll show this in one of the next videos when I test the Daly Active Balancers
I thought these were 10A max across all balance leads (total from the unit) not just from 1 cell. So if you had 2 fully charged cells and 2 low cells, you should get 4-5A from each full cells to the empty cells. Worth a go?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I agree, its not right and having just looked up the spec details, and I quote "When the voltage difference is 1V, more than 10A of balanced current will be generated, not more than 10A" Perhaps its not so 'REAL' 🤣 I spent today backtracking on my new JKBMS I fitted yesterday and reverted back to the old one with only 180mA balancing. The app locks up solid on Android after about 3 to 4 minutes, so I tried 3 other Android phones, all the same. Very disappointed. Cant find anything on the internet about this issue, I take it you have not heard anything about it? Thanks
@@dtvking Is that a 4s-8s Jk BMS? There is a known issue with early ones, which I had. They asked me to return it, said they’d refund my postage. They DID then refund the postage and have sent a new unit, (which is still on the way).
@@FutureSystem738 Yes its the JK-B2A8S20P-H. Just got a reply from them to use an updated app, I'm sure I've already used it v4.8.4 but apparently if the old version is still on your phone and all files not cleared out, it upsets the new version. I have yet to try it, will let you know how I get on!
Nice video Andy. Next try using balance wires with double the thickness of the factory installed ones and what happens if you plug in the balancers in parallel under this extremely unbalanced condition? Will they jointly deliver 8-10 amps?
that 10 amp rating is probably done by the same people who used to rate my $12 car stereo amp 200watts in the 1980's.... Andy is that 10amps RMS or P2P??? lol. Maybe you should make another video with the same Heltec balancer on a different phase of the moon?
Hi Andy. Whooh, my dear friend. You twisted the pooch with your last test! You need to WAIT for a few cycles to happen. REMEMBER that you are using active balancer units which charge the super capacitor, then discharge what it charged into a cell. You can't just "plug it in" and expect to see MAX current. Do your test again and give it a few cycles to get a full capacitor charge and discharge before you call the kettle black. Cheers
Honestly - why do you measure only one side of the full battery cell. The balancer can organize in to two directions, one current to the left (batt2 and batt1) and one to the right (batt4). A real test would measure all currants between all battery cells and the Heltec. Make the test correct and judge after, thanksx LG aus Köln Buchheim Jogi
And then add the current? Like a Daly BMS has now 16 times 150mA balance current and is advertised with 2.4A balance capability? That would be so misleading...
Yeah that sucks. Seems Heltec doesn't understand the need. You think there would be a way to take one of cheap tiny ones and big it bigger and better. The 10 dollar ones on ebay actually work only at 1amp but way better and those little lights come on making it fun to watch.
I have one of these 1A balancers as well. They work well with Li-ion but not so much with LiFePO4. The automatic turn on and cut off voltage does not suit LFP.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia The cheap ones that I have are little too sensitive balancing the when there is very little difference between the cells sometimes the little LED's flicker, but its nice when I leave a battery at 50% in storage I can just use a car battery charger on my 4S LifePO4 batteries for 15 minutes and just give them a little boost. Perfect for that, not sure they are of much use though for real balancing. I wish they didn't have the 10mA drain but for the price I can't complain. Should check out the Genetry Solar Balancers tell them I sent you. I don't get anything just fun on their forums. Tiny USA company that makes them.
sometimes Andy your breaking the law stay charged Kirchhoff's Circuit Laws Kirchhoff's circuit laws are two equalities that deal with the current and potential difference (commonly known as voltage) in the lumped element model of electrical circuits. They were first described in 1845 by German physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. This generalized the work of Georg Ohm and preceded the work of James Clerk Maxwell. Widely used in electrical engineering, they are also called Kirchhoff's rules or simply Kirchhoff's laws. These laws can be applied in time and frequency domains and form the basis for network analysis.
My JK BMS, Stopped working, it lost cell number 20 & 21 but number 22 worked and it shut down after numbers of hours. It is an installation that has ben running for abut 4 weeks. Then I contacted the Hankzor BMS Store. Explain the problem and I took some pictures and told them that I am an engineer. I have a small company, where I am designing and repairing electronics. At first the communication was superficial, like try download the new APP for IOS or Android and links for communicate with the JK BMS and so on. Please, it was working befor, nothing change... and I replace it with a new one, NO FAULT. Then there was an engineer who had a look at it. Then the communication to Hankzor BMS Store changed to be good 😊 Now I have to options: 1. Ship it back for repair. 2. Repair it my self. Of course I choose number two. So now I will disassemble it and have a look, probably I will have to wait until the replacement parts arrive and instruction as well. The JK BMS with 2 A Active balancer is nice, just hope for a longer life span then approximately 4 weeks. Maybe Jack Ricard was right, "the lithium cells are more stable than the electronics" he was quite often right. PS: All in all I have ordret 3 JK BMS S25 2A, the laste one is on it's way to me as I write PPS: yeah that's probably a lot of faults in my writing but I can't help it I am dyslexic, so bear with me 😉
It's amazing the amount of people that buy something, do not read the instructions/specifications, and wonder why it doesn't work like THEY think it should. lol
It is doing that with the cables it is supplied with... Disappointing anyway... For the price it should have programming capabilities. Check the price... It is almost as much as a JK 4/8S Wich is a great BMS and has active balancing.... No reason to pick this...
There's no way those little balance wires are going to carry 10 amps without a massive voltage drop. The balancer probably can't pull 10A through that massive voltage drop.
it is probably misleading ratings from china again. Or it could be the testing setup. because if you think about it you are not just connecting your clamp meter onto battery 3, your clamp meter is on the positive of cell 3 but the negative of cell 4 so if there are 10A going out of cell 3 there is also possibly 5A going into cell 4. that is hard to wrap my head around even for me that had the idea but that seems like what might be happening there. your clamp meter needs to be between the bussbar and the positive of cell 3, instead of being on the balance wire.
Disappointing indeed. Make a video that shows how important it is to buy good/matched cells. Instead of spending money and energy on balancers buy good cells. My new EVE cells does need very little balancing. My JBD BMS have no problem keeping the cell balanced.
I love when you do these tests. Keep them coming :)
More to come!
„It is as disappointing as a Daly-BMS“ - Haha! Hilarious! Love how you debunk incorrect product promises!
better known as fraud at least here if you promise 10A, get the full prise and barely deliver 40% of 10A = 4 A
I'm waiting for Seplos continuation video. Still want to believe it's very good BMS for the ability to communicate with inverters, and I have 3 Seplos waiting to be connected .. Great video as usual, keep rolling
I wonder, can the Heltec balancer pull from more than one cell and then pump that energy into more than one cell? What if you had two drained cells and two full cells? Would the balancer pull 4+A from *Each* of the full cells? That would start getting closer to the advertised 10A.
That's what I was wondering as I watched the results.
Hi Andy, I'm sure I speak for most people by saying, we are greatful you test things in a realisting manner, not some server rack pack that's capacity tested and then a visual look, most youtubers just do that, you test things we actual curios on buying and test all the, " but what if" things.
That open circuit balancer (the cheap ones) I soldered 2 of them together on my 16s setup, with a 300mv dif, using the same clamp meter I measured 8amp balance current. Just a suggestion, haha works better then the heltec and is still cheaper to have 2 cheap ones.
Summer is coming for you and I, and if I can suggest, why not put panels on the tesla roof, that gets less shading for winter,
Useless update from my side on my 6k array, winter I got 26kwh average, and this time of year now I'm already up to 37kwh, noting 80% of my panels face north at a 40* angle.
Keep up the good work, ps that number of subscribers paper is way out of date, unless your not doing it anymore.
I've had no luck with these "active" balancers.. thanks for showing the video
Thanks Andy, always great to see another from you- even if I have to watch at MINIMUM resolution of 144p due to weak 3G signal LOL :-)
Oh, wow, where the h... are you? Still on vacation obviously. I should make a podcast, ey?! 😂
@@OffGridGarageAustralia The joys of being retired Andy. 😃 (Nearly five weeks away just on the current trip. We’re making up for being locked down and restricted so much by Covid).
We have moved around a bit, VERY slowly heading closer to home. While the great weather lasts we are definitely not in a hurry to go back to the rat race.
Currently we’re in state forest West of Gympie, listening to whip birds and much more.
The sun is shining, batteries are nearly full, HWS is hot, had two coffees from the coffee machine and a load of washing has been done this morning, and haven’t even turned on the LPG again after moving last Friday until last night for the oven for dinner, and also haven’t used the diesel heater at all even though it’s been rather cold, 3C this morning, (only the split system reverse cycle aircon).
Gotta love my solar and Winston batteries!!
If the weather goes downhill as it might possibly do next week :-(, we will head for home, only two hours away now.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia The joys of being retired Andy. Nearly five weeks away just on the current trip. We’re making up for being locked down and restricted so much by Covid.
We have moved around a bit, VERY slowly heading closer to home. While the great weather lasts we are definitely not in a hurry to go back to the rat race.
Currently we’re in state forest West of Gympie, listening to whip birds and much more.
The sun is shining, batteries are nearly full, HWS is hot, had two coffees from the coffee machine and a load of washing has been done this morning, and haven’t even turned on the LPG again after moving last Friday until last night for the oven for dinner, and also haven’t used the diesel heater at all even though it’s been rather cold, 3C this morning, (only the split system reverse cycle aircon).
Gotta love my solar and Winston batteries!!
If the weather goes downhill as it might possibly do next week :-(, we will head for home, only two hours away now.
Thanks Andy
No worries
Good info, Thanks Andy.
Btw, I recently built some EV packs from some "new" 32700 I got last year (now three years old) and some Daly 16S dumb BMS's, and while they worked on some perfectly matched and top-balanced cells they are incapable of balancing even 6ah 1s strings because they only balance with about 10- 20ma of current during charging above 3.45v. I tried charging at very low current for about 6 hours but only limited balancing.
Yeah, with the Daly, you need an active balancer. Their balancing will only work with small capacity cells if they are well matched and of high quality.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia And from what I just observed, not even with small capacity cells that are well matched and top balanced. I just did a postmortem on a "quality" name brand 20ah, 18650 Li-On pack that had a Daly BMS and Lishen cells.The owner had been charging it after every about 40% use for about a year (about 100 cycles), and 3 out of the 6 parallel strings were more than .8 volts lower than the two remaining good strings. I suspect as the Daly BMS was not able to balance the strings and one string was finally over-charged to death.
A local ebike shop that sells and services Bosch eBikes has what looks like at least 50 dead Bosch Factory packs with what looks like Panasonic cells that exhibit one or two dead strings and other imbalanced parallel strings. They appear to be using a similar design BMS to the Daly.
My guess at this point Andy, is that makers of smaller eBike packs don't have physical room and budget for a proper an advanced BMS with adequate balancing, and never the less it if true, makes the case for not using a BMS without proper balancing, and to monitor, maintain and properly any pack as you are demonstrating here.
Hey Andy, will you make an follow up Video on that SEPLOS System?
And would you share if youre able to connect the SEPLOS with your Multiplus ?
Yes and Yes. But I won't connect it to the Multiplus. For what reason 🤷♂️
Hallo Andy. Dein Video ist wieder einmal voll mit guten Informationen. Bei uns im Discord Forum treagst Du das Pseudonym Bombenfest. Das ist ein Kompliment fuer all Deine Arbeit.
Very good video, I'm using lipofo 4 battery, I'm learning a lot from your video here in Brazil there are few people who have knowledge of lipofo 4 battery.
Great Informations. BIGTHX👌
Thank you, Marko.
Dude I just re-watched it and noticed those wires earlier in the video that is funny, why isn't it working. Lol. They still suck but that was funny when I noticed that. Always making me laugh while doing tech reviews.
Nice work Andy, now we don't have to buy their junk. thank you again.
Thanks Pro ,Regards from Holland
Just gave 1 LIKE. BTW, what is the BEST balancer should I buy if my BMS does not have the function?
If you want the best balancer, have a look at the NEEY: off-grid-garage.com/battery-management-systems-bms/
They are skinny little balance wires with significant resistance. Did you measure the voltage drop on them?
No, I didn't. I doubt this is the problem though. We're working on 3.3V only.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia yes, but a fraction of an Ohm will limit the current significantly.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia presumably your working voltage is the difference between a full cell and a low cell and is less than 1 volt. To get 10 amps the series resistance would have to be vanishingly small. Just speculation on my part, but I think it may be significant.
Effectivement ANDY, je trouve décevant qu'il ne balance pas jusqu'à 10A comme mentionné..., mais c'est encore plus décevant que la tension souhaité pour le fonctionnement soit +11,35V. bref la suite reste à découvrir dans tes recherches et tests. Merci
Still wandering how Daly 150amps 16s. Has managed to maintain less than. 0.01v difference in my two solar battery banks 202Ah and 230Ah for more than 1 year. Though it took one battery 76cycles and 230ah from docan 22cycles.
Both of them can use switch ! The one without box have just near to white socket soldered RUN points, you can disolder and solder a switch to have the same feature. One fine feature is to solder a "voltage trigger" who detect 3.45V and run balander then.
We have explored this option already in a previous video here on the channel. That was not the point of the test though. I wanted to see the real 10A!
hello Andy;
you have 3 batteries in parallel, say you are discharging, the SOC will varies with the same rate ?
Andy,
Is it possible to hook up a Victron charge controller to a veritable power supply to check its output? To make sure it hasn’t got faults inside and not putting out its correct power. Think it would make a good test video. Thanks
What is the size of these balance wires? Are they safe for 10A?
8:52 😱😱😱😱😱
Look inside this balancer in the first video. They are tiny cables...
Right, seems like an obvious indicator that it’s pulling 10A is when the silicone starts melting off the wires
@@maukaman BINGO!
Wonder if you have contacted Heltec and asked under what condition this balancer should give up to 10A.
They are not responding to me any more 🤷♂️
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Thanks Andy. Perhaps a red flag and not spend money on heltec?
@@repairman2be250 The BMS is not that great either. It is working and I have it installed for a few months now but the current it shows is still 20% too low. The Heltec support could not tell me why that is...
@@OffGridGarageAustraliaThat says it all. No support and they do not care.
Andy..... back when you were testing the dely BMS can you remember what amperage needed to go into the BMS before it started charging?
The one I've got the charge controller is putting in 6 amps and the deli is only just turning on,
seems to be quite a lot of loss of power.....
Which means if I get a grey day it doesn't start charging until the afternoon when it is producing more than 6 amps going into the daly...
Should I change this 4 string BMS?
If so what would be a good one to replace it with?....... that won't cost the Earth.
Bonjour monsieur
Avec tous ces essais , avez vous trouvé un équilibreur efficace ?
Si oui lequel me conseillez vous .
Merci
And-E: it may not be very likely at all BUT, conceptually - it is at least POSSIBLE that may be the overall cell/pack balancing process is operating differently than we might first think it is. Unless I misunderstood, you measured the current flowing out of the SINGLE HIGHEST VOLTAGE cell into… SOMETHING. Is it possible that PERHAPS what is happening is that the balancer might be - just for example - transferring current EITHER from - say (again, just for example) ALL THREE OF THE HIGHEST CELLS - AT SOME AMPERAGE RATE OR OTHER - INTO THE SINGLE LOWEST CELL?
Not sure if you want to attempt to check this out but I would say that IDEALLY when you want to test the balancer like this out, you might want to consider - and at least this is the way I would do it - is measuring the current flow on each of the cell balancers five in total leads, and see what the algebraic and absolute value sums of the current flows ‘work out to be’.
Thoughts?
That's exactly what we have tested in the first test and video😉 I thought I explained that right at the beginning...
Disappointing result - thanks for checking with the batteries reversed (I did think there was a chance it would work). Did the company think nobody would actually test their product? You took one for the team buying that thing.
WOW!!!!! That is NICHT GUT!!! Ouch, I think Heltech have some explaining to do.....Thank you Andy, much appreciated.
Got my hopes up for a moment. Thought it might be the 280AH EVE Mason build.
Coming soon!
Andy, may I suggest you one test? I would like to know, what happend if you put to the pack one cell with significant higher SOC. So you have a pack with 15x cells soc 20% and 1x cell soc 90% and you start charging. I would like to know how this pack behave. Thanks
dang! i just bought this balancer and i am getting ready to hook it up and i came across this video. i am VERY new to lithium and i currently have a 96 ah headway bank built in 4s and i was linked this balancer. so i bought it. and it made no sense how to hook it up based on the sleep switch.. labeled A or M and only said something about on or off in the manual.. so in your eyes this is junk? i guess i bought a $30 paper weight lol.. in that case what balancer would you suggest using for a 96 ah headway bank built 4s? thanks for the video!
As I am a Dilly that bought a Daly I am tempted to buy one... I love an underdog 🤣🤣🤣
Hello
Thank you for your reply
good with tests to learn more.
Can I ask a question?
I have a setup 830 watts 2 panels of 265 watts each 2 of 150 watts each
a Victron smart charger for each of the groups
group (1) 530 watts
Group (2) 300 watts
Charger 150/50
Both to a battery 12Volt 115 Amp
I would like more capacity from the battery bank as I have an inverter of 1500 Watt 230 Volt
and Cool etc
Can you recommend something that might fit
Everything placed on and in a caravan
which means that the weight should be as low as possible on the battery but high capacity
SINCERELY
Larry
Maybe the balancer can only charge 4 A from 1 full cell and another 4 if you have 2 full cells ?
Well, then it's just a 4A balancer to me, not 10A.
10 helltec Amp = 4 Andy Amp
Success - helltec is crap again , so share and tell the people what kind of crap the helltec is right.
I like to hear such clear message at 10:35 - luckily the neely is doing a good job I hope so cause I am about ordering one for the SEPLOS BMS.
The latest 4a neeeeeey?
Hello
It cannot be an option to have a lithium battery with so much that you have to manage (keep track of) all the time. Balancing, Temperature, charging and how much to strain the battery in order not to destroy it.
All this at high cost
Is it possible to catch up with something else or is this a full-time job to look after the battery every day
I'm testing all this here on the channel, so what you see is not a real world set up. Usually the BMS will take care of your battery once correctly setup and that's it. I'm going outside the usual routines and test what happens if something happens, pushing to the extreme.
I think if it can only doe one at a time it might as well for high cells boost to pack voltage and dump into the whole pack and if one is low buck the whole pack voltage and send it to a low pack
I got thumbs up #1!!!!
Most likely the balance wires are not thick enough and the voltage drop on the wires is reducing the current draw. I would be curious what happens if you replace those balance wires with thicker gauge.
the connector on the device is not made for thicker wires so that would still make it A design fault.
It cannot be the wire resistance. Look at the wires inside the balancer to the actual transformer!
The sales department does not manage us as a distributor and reseller.
Very bad, I have spoken to Allen Zhang, he is a very nice person, who said that there would be a change in some things. although there are probably people in the sales department who do not understand what is being said to them.
I have decided today to no longer sell Seplo's battery system because they have changed their sales policy, they have also become less cooperative when it comes to, among other things, the price picture for us as resellers and distributors.
And don't like that it becomes more difficult with both the price part and other things.
Maybe if you had two full and two empty it will do 8A. So 2x 4A from each full to each empty. But still not 10A 🙂
That is exactly my thinking here. I think just to make it absolutely clear and not leaving any possibilities out...
And a 16s BMS with 150mA balancer would the a 2.4A balancer then? 😉
I guess it is marked in Chinese Amps. Hahahahaha. Keep up the great work Andy.
I am guessing the DC to DC converter MOSFET's need higher gate drive voltage to achieve their lowest Rds_On resistance. You might get better results on an 8 or 16 cell stack. Would not be surprised if there is a regulator to set the 12-15v gate drive which if input to this regulator is not high enough the regulator output might be even lower than the battery's four cell stack voltage further limiting the DC-DC converter capability.
Pumping 10 amps out of a 3.5v source takes low resistance MOSFET switching.
Also due to super low voltage cells should not be charged at high current it may back down the transfer current to low voltage cells until they get above about 3.0v.
Even with other three cells low in voltage the initial charging of the supercap should take 10 amps assuming the DC-DC converter gate drive voltage is not limiting the converter current capability.
They make these '10A' balancers only for 4s batteries. When I had it opened up in the first video, the wires to the transformer looked tiny.
In any way, I could not see anything above 4.8A in or out of s single battery cell.
I think that way. Only the bigger ones (>12s) have the ideal voltage to fully turn ON the mosfets. They should correct this and sell the 4s version with 5A max and the >12s version for 10A. Will buy one soon for my 14s system and will let you guys know it.
Andy, I think a better test would be one cell at maximum voltage and one cell at minimum voltage and the rest of the cell is average. And I think the 10a or 5a advertise current is only achievable with NMC chemistry because of the higher voltage different between fully charged and empty and the voltage curve is almost perfectly linear. For LFP it can't reach because the voltage curve is too flat reach the flat part of the curve too fast.
They advertise a 1.5A balance current for every 100mV difference. I had over 1V difference in the pack...
@@OffGridGarageAustralia assuming 18awg wire resistance of 0.01 for 0.5 meter (it is even higher if smaller wires are used) and vh3.96mm connector contact resistance is 0.01 ohm for a total of 0.02 ohm then time it by for discharge and charging. You could see 0.4V voltage drop with 10amp and 0.2V with 5amp. This does not even account for any other connection losses.
Also I think should not the full and the empty cell next to each so that they don't share the balancing wire because imagine if the are next to each other in the string it might only show the amperage different. It might increase the appearance current or decrease it.
Oh and VH3.96mm connector is only rated for 6 amp per contract
You should also measure the wire from no 3, maybe they did a “super balancer” that is balancing 2 cells at the same time :)))
But it is pulling from cell 3 so that is not valid
Hi Andy,
I have a 24 volt system. A while ago I go I purchased 3, 305 watt panels. I hooked them up in series. I get (at max sun) 105 volts, but only get 9.5 amps. I think I installed the wrong. Even though they work right now, I don’t need that high voltage for a 24 volt battery, but need more amps to charge quicker and be able to take advantage of the limited sun we get here in Michigan. Wouldn’t connecting in parallel be better and Easter on my charge controller? I’d get more amps and still be above my battery voltage resulting in a quicker change. Am I thinking correctly?
The power remains the same. Your charge controller (if it handles that 105V) will convert it down to whatever the battery needs, and the lower voltage battery side automatically will increase your current (power in == power out). The higher voltage on the PV side has the advantage that it leads to less losses and you can use thinner cable. If you see 9.5A at the 24V side of the charge controller, you have an issue though - since those 300W panels in full sun should get you much closer to the theoretical max of 915W.
I think it is the opposite. If your charge controller can handle the input voltage of 105 volts it will be more efficient. Higher voltage and less amps means less resistance on the wires so more power will make it to the charge controller. The charge controller will also operate more efficiently at higher voltages. Volts x amps = watts. 105v x 9a = 945 watts or if you connected them in parallel 35v x 27a = 945 watts. It is the same you would end up needing thicker wires to carry the current and your charge controller may have a minimum voltage input requirement higher than a single panels voltage. Either way you have set it up correctly and the most efficient way. You can measure the amount of amps going in to your 24v battery if you want to see how many amps you are charging at. For example if you are getting 945w from the solar panels you would have 945w ÷ 27v = 35a so you could say "I have 35 amps outside right now" of course on a 48v system like Andy's that would be half the amps or "17.5 amps outside"
👆Agree. If it’s an MPPT charge controller and can handle that voltage higher is often better…..HOWEVER
With a series connection, If some panels are often shaded throughout the day it will affect the output of the array as a whole! If you have for example 6 panels and 3 panels get more shade it can be beneficial to connect the shady panels in 3s and parallel to the sunny panels in 3s or whatever.
Also, on a future upgrade you might consider increasing your battery voltage as well to increase efficiency
I was first last video. Have you considered putting the the 2 balancers in parallel? YOLO
I was just about to ask Andy this and I saw that you beat me to the question. What happens if we put several active balancers in parallel? Isn't the effect additive?
@@omarfarhat9583 would they balance the same cells. Would they fight each other. would they work together and do 8amps?
You can have as many balancers in parallel as you like, they all will work together.
I'll show this in one of the next videos when I test the Daly Active Balancers
I thought these were 10A max across all balance leads (total from the unit) not just from 1 cell.
So if you had 2 fully charged cells and 2 low cells, you should get 4-5A from each full cells to the empty cells.
Worth a go?
But isn't that misleading? Could a 16s BMS with 150mA balancing current then be advertised as a 2.4A balancer?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I agree, its not right and having just looked up the spec details, and I quote "When the voltage difference is 1V, more than 10A of balanced current will be generated, not more than 10A" Perhaps its not so 'REAL' 🤣
I spent today backtracking on my new JKBMS I fitted yesterday and reverted back to the old one with only 180mA balancing.
The app locks up solid on Android after about 3 to 4 minutes, so I tried 3 other Android phones, all the same.
Very disappointed. Cant find anything on the internet about this issue, I take it you have not heard anything about it? Thanks
@@dtvking Is this the newest app version? I heard from others having the same issue with an older version. 4.8.2 is the newest.
@@dtvking Is that a 4s-8s Jk BMS?
There is a known issue with early ones, which I had.
They asked me to return it, said they’d refund my postage.
They DID then refund the postage and have sent a new unit, (which is still on the way).
@@FutureSystem738 Yes its the JK-B2A8S20P-H.
Just got a reply from them to use an updated app, I'm sure I've already used it v4.8.4 but apparently if the old version is still on your phone and all files not cleared out, it upsets the new version.
I have yet to try it, will let you know how I get on!
If I top off my 8 cell Lifepo4 24v battery, do i charge it to 28.8 or higher?
27.6V would be my maximum for absorption.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Agreed!
I use 13.8v daily in use for my caravan LFP battery, and LESS when it’s not being used, more like around 13.3v.
Nice video Andy. Next try using balance wires with double the thickness of the factory installed ones and what happens if you plug in the balancers in parallel under this extremely unbalanced condition? Will they jointly deliver 8-10 amps?
It's not the balance wire size which is restricting the current to flow here.
that 10 amp rating is probably done by the same people who used to rate my $12 car stereo amp 200watts in the 1980's.... Andy is that 10amps RMS or P2P??? lol. Maybe you should make another video with the same Heltec balancer on a different phase of the moon?
Hi Andy. Whooh, my dear friend. You twisted the pooch with your last test! You need to WAIT for a few cycles to happen. REMEMBER that you are using active balancer units which charge the super capacitor, then discharge what it charged into a cell. You can't just "plug it in" and expect to see MAX current. Do your test again and give it a few cycles to get a full capacitor charge and discharge before you call the kettle black. Cheers
Honestly - why do you measure only one side of the full battery cell. The balancer can organize in to two directions, one current to the left (batt2 and batt1) and one to the right (batt4).
A real test would measure all currants between all battery cells and the Heltec.
Make the test correct and judge after, thanksx
LG aus Köln Buchheim Jogi
I followed the instructions in the manual. We have explored this in the first video about this balancer.
Maybe two high and two low?
And then add the current? Like a Daly BMS has now 16 times 150mA balance current and is advertised with 2.4A balance capability? That would be so misleading...
@@OffGridGarageAustralia 100% agreed.
There is no way you can add all the individual balance currents.
Yeah that sucks. Seems Heltec doesn't understand the need. You think there would be a way to take one of cheap tiny ones and big it bigger and better. The 10 dollar ones on ebay actually work only at 1amp but way better and those little lights come on making it fun to watch.
I have one of these 1A balancers as well. They work well with Li-ion but not so much with LiFePO4. The automatic turn on and cut off voltage does not suit LFP.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia The cheap ones that I have are little too sensitive balancing the when there is very little difference between the cells sometimes the little LED's flicker, but its nice when I leave a battery at 50% in storage I can just use a car battery charger on my 4S LifePO4 batteries for 15 minutes and just give them a little boost. Perfect for that, not sure they are of much use though for real balancing. I wish they didn't have the 10mA drain but for the price I can't complain. Should check out the Genetry Solar Balancers tell them I sent you. I don't get anything just fun on their forums. Tiny USA company that makes them.
Heltec does some good iot lora chips
I think if you're too close to 2.5v, it goes into sleep mode.
Yes, it does, it turns itself off at some stage.
sometimes Andy your breaking the law stay charged Kirchhoff's Circuit Laws
Kirchhoff's circuit laws are two equalities that deal with the current and potential difference (commonly known as voltage) in the lumped element model of electrical circuits. They were first described in 1845 by German physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. This generalized the work of Georg Ohm and preceded the work of James Clerk Maxwell. Widely used in electrical engineering, they are also called Kirchhoff's rules or simply Kirchhoff's laws. These laws can be applied in time and frequency domains and form the basis for network analysis.
My JK BMS, Stopped working, it lost cell number 20 & 21 but number 22 worked and it shut down after numbers of hours.
It is an installation that has ben running for abut 4 weeks.
Then I contacted the Hankzor BMS Store.
Explain the problem and I took some pictures and told them that I am an engineer.
I have a small company, where I am designing and repairing electronics.
At first the communication was superficial, like try download the new APP for IOS or Android and links for communicate with the JK BMS and so on.
Please, it was working befor, nothing change... and I replace it with a new one, NO FAULT.
Then there was an engineer who had a look at it.
Then the communication to Hankzor BMS Store changed to be good 😊
Now I have to options:
1. Ship it back for repair.
2. Repair it my self.
Of course I choose number two.
So now I will disassemble it and have a look, probably I will have to wait until the replacement parts arrive and instruction as well.
The JK BMS with 2 A Active balancer is nice, just hope for a longer life span then approximately 4 weeks.
Maybe Jack Ricard was right, "the lithium cells are more stable than the electronics" he was quite often right.
PS: All in all I have ordret 3 JK BMS S25 2A, the laste one is on it's way to me as I write
PPS: yeah that's probably a lot of faults in my writing but I can't help it I am dyslexic, so bear with me 😉
It's amazing the amount of people that buy something, do not read the instructions/specifications, and wonder why it doesn't work like THEY think it should. lol
You wonder why an product from „Hell“ with a deviation from „666“ is lying and „bad“ 😂 you‘re funny 😉
The voltage drop along the cables might reduce the voltage difference so the BMS cannot do its Job.
It is doing that with the cables it is supplied with... Disappointing anyway...
For the price it should have programming capabilities.
Check the price... It is almost as much as a JK 4/8S Wich is a great BMS and has active balancing.... No reason to pick this...
Not good for sure. Too bad. Thanks for sharing
Make it open and see wath is inside. Mabey the same as the otter one.
That's in the first video already.
TBH I don't think 10A would be a good idea through a cable that size!
Agree. But they announce 10 amps... So it is worth the test.
chiniese 10A... the same as 5000W DC/AC converter... only have 2500W real.
Yeah, it seems to be a marketing trick.
There's no way those little balance wires are going to carry 10 amps without a massive voltage drop. The balancer probably can't pull 10A through that massive voltage drop.
I see melting cables coming
it is probably misleading ratings from china again. Or it could be the testing setup. because if you think about it you are not just connecting your clamp meter onto battery 3, your clamp meter is on the positive of cell 3 but the negative of cell 4 so if there are 10A going out of cell 3 there is also possibly 5A going into cell 4. that is hard to wrap my head around even for me that had the idea but that seems like what might be happening there. your clamp meter needs to be between the bussbar and the positive of cell 3, instead of being on the balance wire.
You should have given the rating in amps not stars/frogs, 3.2 amps out of 10, the same as its performance😆
Hahaha, yeah, that's a good idea!
My daliy bms works fine but its lion
Maybe you'd see 10 amps with Lithium Ion.
those cables are too long and thin!!! use bifyer cables and mybe you will see more amps...
Disappointing indeed. Make a video that shows how important it is to buy good/matched cells. Instead of spending money and energy on balancers buy good cells. My new EVE cells does need very little balancing. My JBD BMS have no problem keeping the cell balanced.
Heya, to use your words not good just not good
bummer man....so not cool...thanks
I cannot believe you are still wasting time with Heltec equipment.
I need to know what's wrong with it... 🤷♂️
Heltec = rubbish
It's a lot of money for 4A balancing for sure...