Active Balancer Modules

These are the non-smart active balancers from 100Balance.
Sodium ion cells from:
www.evpromax.com
Active balancer links:
www.aliexpress.com/item/10050...
www.aliexpress.com/item/10050...
Data sheets:
semic-boutique.com/wp-content...
datasheet.lcsc.com/lcsc/20121...
datasheet.lcsc.com/lcsc/18110...
datasheet.lcsc.com/lcsc/18111...
datasheet.lcsc.com/lcsc/18101...
www.icgan.com/uploadfile/pdf/a...

[@batterymooch]

The white silicone sealant could also be there to add vibration/shock resistance since the solder joints for SMD electrolytic caps are so small (and the solder joints easily snap).

[@user-tj5nk7lb8l]

J says that his row of caps got quite hot. This should sound alarm bells as it means that the caps are driven well beyond their permitted ripple current limit (which all caps have vs their IR). It means a significant shortened life for these caps and they can fail to s/c with disaster consequences. BEWARE

[@CTCTraining1]

Love those huge new batteries ... reminds me of sticks of gelignite from the cartoons. 😀👍

[@TheDefpom]

Active balancers can imbalance the cells if the activation voltage is too low, they should only balance when the cells are almost fully charged to avoid that.

[@thegreenthing7603]

How do we treat rouge cells that discharge/charge too quickly.. like this cells are always way above other during charging/discharging 200mv above/below others

[@jlucasound]

Thanks, Julian!! 😁😃🤩

[@levieux1137]

Very interesting. Over the last decade I tried several times to make a capacitor-based active balancer myself and always faced issues. First one was that often the cell's voltage is close to the MOSFET's gate threshold. Some specific MOSFETs now support very low voltages but it has always been an issue. Second problem was that balancing induces strong currents when cells are very imbalanced, possibly to the point of harming the very discharged one, and that on the opposite, it almost never converges when the voltage difference between cells is low because the current through the capacitor counts in just a few milliamps if not less. I also thought about implementing a microcontroller to pick from the most charged and send to the least charged cell so that it would balance quicker, but I gave up on the complexity.

[@JulianIlett]

You'll love the smart active balancer - it's ridiculously complex :)

[@levieux1137]

@@JulianIlett I found much more interesting, there are some inductor-based balancers. Something I wanted to experiment with but never did. There are likely some losses in the diode but I ordered a few to test them. They start at $1 for 2S :-)

[@km_photo]

A cliffhanger 😮
Will there be a schematic for the 3s board in part 2?

[@frankowalker4662]

That ended abruptly. LOL.

[@VictorC173]

A diy dumb active capacitive balancer would be interesting, I think the simplest way of doing is to drive various N-Mosfets with a gate drive transformer... it could be turned on whenever the battery was charging...

[@VictorC173]

A toroid with multiple secondaries for each battery and a simple diode rectification would theoretically charge them equally (same number of turns and well-coupled), and the full battery voltage on the primary for reduce the current stress on the primary...

[@sanjikaneki6226]

what would be just balance up + u need some FB from cell 1 so that u dont overcharge but how do u know that the other are balanced at that point?@@VictorC173

[@fredflintstone1]

Hmm 2 parter neat 🙂

[@kevgermany]

Looks like Victron blue. Bet the internals are not up to their standard.

[@crtsuznik]

Omg

[@mickre-fuses]

That's just cruel. I hate cliff-hangers. 🙂

[@JanicekTrnecka]

Somebody has been a smart-ass to make us curious about second part ;)

[@JulianIlett]

Well, the whole video is 33 minutes long. The whole thing is accessible to Patreon supporters.

[@lezbriddon]

its not a flying capacitor like inside an expensive JK bms etc, this is another ripple method. still way way better than a wasteful useless resistor balancer.
these types work by connect the caps to cell 1, disconnect and connect to cell 2, rinse and repeat, this will balance 1 and 2 because the cap works like a bucket between two ponds, the next capacitor circuit is doing the same with 2 and 3, next with 3 and 4, this way any voltage imbalance is rippled/shuffled throughout the pack.
as the caps are charging and discharging the same chemistry of cells, the circuit doesn't care about the voltages of the cells they just become smoothed out, so no settings needed, not having cells go over voltage is the responsibility of the charger
the processor just sends a square wave/clock signal for the switching to take place, same signal can flash an LED for 'running'
its basic and simple and kind of fool proof.

[@andymouse]

White silicone sealant or should we say 'Squealant' don't want to offend it and land up in jail....cheers.

[@JulianIlett]

squealant - excellent :)

[@donepearce]

That thing looks like it should have wheels