16s A123 battery pack and Castle Creations HV160?

[StinkyGoalieGuy]

I hear that the upper limit of the Castle Creations HV160 is right around 53 volts or so. I have a 16S3P A123 pack. Hot off the charger I typically see around 53 volts. Any sort of draw around 40 amps drops it down to about 48 volts (using a Cyclone 1200 watt motor and Cyclone controller). Am I asking for trouble if I go to wire this battery up to the HV160? I know a 15S pack would be much safer, but this 16S pack is already built up. If I can get away with it, I would rather keep the pack the way it is.

 

[Hillhater]

Have you considered asking Castle ?
They would be the best to advise.

 

[spinningmagnets]

A couple times at the E-bike races, someone popped their Castle ESC in just this situation 48V battery charged up to the max.

AJ added halls to an 80-100 and was then able to run a common E-bike controller, which had 63V capacitors (after he fried a couple HV-160's), that is..IIRC.

 

[StinkyGoalieGuy]

Mr. Magnets, is AJ the same as AussieJester?

HillHater, I'll check with Castle as well, but I'm assuming they will stick to what their specs say, which is 50V max. I was wondering if people's first hand experience was different.

 

[Hillhater]

SGG,
dont those A123's charge up to 3.6v with a nominal of 3.3 ?
It seems 16s would be way over if fully charged ?

 

[Byte]

Definitely don't try that! My capacitor broke off while riding once, which got the ripple voltage up to 7V (luckily the ESC wasn't damaged). I was running 10S LiPo (which I always charge to 41V maximum). However, because of the huge ripple voltage the ESC saw voltages of 43.5V(!). I'm not an electronics engineer and my English is poor too, so hopefully you understand what I mean. Maybe someone could chime in on this and clarify it a little more. The point what I'm trying to make is: it's possible that the ESC will see a higher voltage than the batteries actually are. So instead the battery voltage drops when you're giving power, it will become higher for the ESC.

 

[StinkyGoalieGuy]

Yes HillHater, 3.3 nominal. So I would expect 52.8 nominal, up to 57.6 straight off the charger, but I usually see 53 resting. Underload, it drops well below 50. It sounds like it's not such a great idea due to ripple current is what I'm hearing. Now I need to learn about ripple current.