52V battery dropped to 3.3v output, what to check?

Stu Summer

100 W
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Apr 27, 2016
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Hillsdale, NY
I have a Dolphin 52V battery. Was on an several day tour. Day one, the battery worked fine, next day 3.3v. I've opened it up but am a newbie. What should I check first?

Fortunately, I had a backup, but had to charge more often.
 
Satiator reads 56.9v charging. So the power is in there. The unit has no fuse.
 
measure every cell group. the bms has shut down and prevents discharge because of a voltage issue.
 
The voltage it gets to charging means nothing.

It's Ah capacity per cell that counts, or

connections needs looking at.
 
Strong indicator the BMS has shut down. Possible weak string of cells or possible faulty board.

It might be helpful to know just a little bit of information which might be useful, such as:

How old is this battery?

Roughly how many charge cycles?

Charge to 90% or 100%? Full charge roughly how often?

How low did it go on the one day it did work?

Did you buy from a quality vendor, or Joe Schlockenheimer's Cheapo battery store?

Do you have with you the necessary connectors to briefly and carefully charge thru the discharge connectors? Can you get to the BMS board itself?
 
AngryBob said:
Strong indicator the BMS has shut down. Possible weak string of cells or possible faulty board.

It might be helpful to know just a little bit of information which might be useful, such as:

How old is this battery?

Roughly how many charge cycles?

Charge to 90% or 100%? Full charge roughly how often?

How low did it go on the one day it did work?

Did you buy from a quality vendor, or Joe Schlockenheimer's Cheapo battery store?

Do you have with you the necessary connectors to briefly and carefully charge thru the discharge connectors? Can you get to the BMS board itself?
Angry Bob, thanks so much for the questions.It is a Luna 52V Dolphin, maybe 3 years old, maybe 450 cycles, almost always to 80% and usually not exhausted. The previous day the battery was drained, I'm not sure how far, let's guess to 30% of capacity. I can charge through the discharge connector (with some work as I have the battery case open). I can get to the BMS but haven't unwrapped the packet yet to do so. Thanks again! I will charge through the discharge for a minute and see if that resets things first. And will report back.
 
So, it is an old battery, roughly half of its useful life left, you bought from Joe, never allowed it to balance, and ran it nearly dead, on the first night of a long trip. This information should have been in your very first post.

My guess is that your 30% is closer to 10%, and that is one reason this info was not in your first post. No, I do not know this for certain, but this is an estimate based on long experience. With humans not wanting to admit they screwed up, that is.

Did you pee directly into it or have it run over by a bus, as well?

You almost certainly have a severely depleted group, likely more than one, reviving the BMS likely to be only the most temporary of solutions. Charging fully and leaving on charge for several days or more seems not currently feasible during trip, tear down and charging individual strings another way, however, age, vendor, usage pattern, and abuse may render recovery efforts of questionable value.

You may get "lucky", and it is just a BMS lvc shutdown, primarily, but this will likely just mask the depleted series strings which are very likely to be present.

The battery shut itself down at the end of day one, didn't it? Because if you are saying it was fine when you parked it, and then suddenly failed the next morning, that would indicate a completely different problem, which is really quite extremely unlikely, what is much more highly probable is that you ran it to shutdown, knew that was a bad thing, and did not want to admit to it, thereby leaving out crucial information which is necessary to solving your problem.
 
Just take care not to short the metals and measure all the bits you can see... you will get an idea. If you can find the first group with battery negatives, on the end, thats -, andcsearchbyour way up from there with the meter, it shout go 3.5-7-10-13 multiples of 52/13 or whatever.
 
Never fully charged on a dumb bms is a garuantee its unbalanced as you can get.
It needs manual charging of cell groups.
Pretty sure half the pack is toast.
 
Probably a UPP, or other similar mediocre China builder. The BMS were budget regardless of claims.
 
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