Capacity of new Turnigy LiPO

I have three 6s 5 Ah Turnigy packs. I have not used them much, maybe have around 200 miles on them, with charges every 8 miles (avg). I used my balance charger on one brick for the first time to do a 0.3 amp discharge to 18v and got about 4.5 Ah. Does anyone have a value for new LiPO to which I could compare?

If you are getting 4.5 Ah out of a 5Ah pack that has over 200 cycles on it, I would wadger that you are doing pretty good. HK liPo is known for not delivering exactly the rated capacity anyhow.

Hm, were the cells all charge up to 4.2v first?

What equipment were you using to count the amp hours?

losses in cables, connectors while charging and leaving about 20% of juice in the battery when empty, I'd say it is rated well...

kenwood96 said:

losses in cables, connectors while charging and leaving about 20% of juice in the battery when empty, I'd say it is rated well...

Click to expand...

You're thinking of watt hours. The peukert effect does not apply here. Especially at a 0.3A draw.

I always thought the turnigy were a bit over 5AH, but they may be a bit below.

We all need more accurate amp measurement tools tho. Most are off quite a bit.

1 6s pack down to 18v! That's 3v per cell, isnt that rather low?!?!

They are usually marked 5140 to 5340mAh but I got over 5,5Ah from them at low discharge rates.

Follow-ups:
Xanda2260: 3V per cell is low and I certainly wouldn't advise doing this every day, but not unusually low for a capacity check. I could have used 3.1 or maybe 3.2 since there is probably very little capacity at voltages below 3.2 with LiPO, but I was interested in checking the capacity; I wasn't running it like this on the bike. It was hooked to my charger using the "LiPO discharge" feature of the charger. 3.0 V per cell is the default value for LiPO on the charger. I immediately charged it after the discharge test.

Miuan: This is what I was interested in. So they are, maybe, a little higher than rated capacity new. As Neptronix pointed out however, our measurements could differ just due to the instrument. Should have done it when the cells were new.

Neptronix: Re: accurate current measurements... I was just using whatever is built-in to the charger. I have no idea how accurate it is. I was mostly interested in seeing how much the capacity changes over time. I wish I'd checked it when they were new so I would be able to compare apples to apples. It seems like I get home with less charge lately but that could be a function of how hard I am pushing it. I find I ride more aggressively, in terms of battery usage, as time goes on.

Pure: Not 200 cycles, 200 miles. Probably more like 20 cycles or so. Not my main bike.

When you charge your pack to 4,2V after the discharge, what did you get ?

I have 12 6s 5000mah zippy/turnigy batteries that I have used primarly for the last 10 months almost daily.
I need to look at my CA for cycles. I charge to 4.15 and drain to about 3.5-6 doing 20 mile rides either to work
or just for fun.

So far I have not noticed any capacity issues , but it would be interesting to do a test to 3.2 and see what I get.

Still once I weeded out bad cells I have been very very happy with how they have held up.

Thanks for the reply. I'm still a lipo noob and get hot and sweaty if a cell drops below 3.5v

Cheers

Whats the age on them? Thats a 10% drop, That wouldn't be to bad for a year old lipo, or for 200 cycles.