Bike_on said:Troy,
For completeness, what was your organic fuel budget? aka. food.
Good stats.
Dan
rborger73 said:I could swear I replied on this page.. hmm Anyways Troy what was your average distance between charges, and average charge time?
Just round about numbers.
grindz145 said:rborger73 said:I could swear I replied on this page.. hmm Anyways Troy what was your average distance between charges, and average charge time?
Just round about numbers.
40 miles, couple of hours, might be more mode than mean. I was always looking for a charge location around 40, but there a few times I did 60+ before charging stops. I have a lot more range than I really used.
maxwell92036 said:On my 375 mile 2.5 day trip I got 60 to 80 miles of range on two 48 volt 15 amp hour batteries. I brought along two 3 amp chargers and used them whenever I stopped or at night. Most places were cool with you charging as long as you told them what you were up to. I too don't like to go to deep into the batteries, so when I got down to one bar I would swap battery connection, That way when you charge you are charging packs from the same rate of discharge so you aren't just topping one off while the other one has a long ways to go. No need to tie the batteries together as it just complicates things.
I did start a facebook page on Electric bike touring but I am pretty busy with some Wattwagon orders, so it may be another week or two before I open it up.
maxwell92036 said:No need to tie the batteries together as it just complicates things.
maxwell92036 said:Both batteries have BMS so I don't see a problem not tying them together. I don't stress the batteries at all in the assist levels I use and that way I can take two chargers so I effectively have 6 amps of charging power without spending a ton of money and IF one charger bites the dust I still have a backup. Of course there are a million different ways to skin the cat but I find out this works best for me since usually I just run one battery and only add a second one for longer rides or touring.
rborger73 said:maxwell92036 said:Both batteries have BMS so I don't see a problem not tying them together. I don't stress the batteries at all in the assist levels I use and that way I can take two chargers so I effectively have 6 amps of charging power without spending a ton of money and IF one charger bites the dust I still have a backup. Of course there are a million different ways to skin the cat but I find out this works best for me since usually I just run one battery and only add a second one for longer rides or touring.
More capacity in a single pack =s less sag. Not to mention if you are running one pack and only doing shorter trips you will age your packs differently. Separate packs might be easier for you to charge but you are losing a lot of life and efficiency. I know all my cells are pretty close in cycles. Which means a more reliable pack with longer life. Even with bms on the packs it is still far better to run your packs as one, unless it is a weight issue for short trips. I had planned on having separate packs like that in the early stages. Changed my mind later after looking at the hard data.
grindz145 said:As far as paralleling battery packs are concerned, I like to be able to very simply charge the whole pack at once, and due to the pukert effect, as already mentioned, one big, bad battery pack can be better, but as you have mentioned, not entirely necessary. To be able to pull out one cable and immediately start charging, is ideal.
I totally agree with you with respect to chassis design. Traditional bike frames are not cool with higher speeds without being designed from the ground up, and I hate nearly every chassis on the market for ebikes.
rborger73 said:grindz145 said:As far as paralleling battery packs are concerned, I like to be able to very simply charge the whole pack at once, and due to the pukert effect, as already mentioned, one big, bad battery pack can be better, but as you have mentioned, not entirely necessary. To be able to pull out one cable and immediately start charging, is ideal.
I totally agree with you with respect to chassis design. Traditional bike frames are not cool with higher speeds without being designed from the ground up, and I hate nearly every chassis on the market for ebikes.
I was planning on having 2 packs on my bike, the rear one being removable, but it just didn't end up making sense to use one pack as a primary and run it way further down per cell, plus removing and storing the second pack will wind up in a mistake at some point. Forgotten after a long vacation, spouse gets preggers, family member sick, at some point a valuable battery will end up sitting longer than it should. Then the whole idea of the second pack having less cycles than the primary pack, which of course leads to more sag in one pack or the other, which of course can lead to failure of cells more quickly. I'm the same with a single plug setup all charge as one, and check balance once or twice a week. Just makes sense to me. Even use across the cells will result in less risk of failure due to different amounts of cycles.
dnmun said:you guys were talking about charging batteries in parallel.
if you charge identical packs with the same charger, then the packs have to be disconnected from each other at the P- lead on the BMS if the BMS uses a separate mosfet for the charging.
some designs use just the one spot to charge and discharge, with two sets of mosfets back to back through the tabs, and those can be charged in parallel without being disconnected.
but if there is a C- spot and separate charging mosfet then the drains or P- spot on the BMS have to be disconnected from each other. you can just disconnect one of the leads, don't have to separate both from the controller when you do it.
rborger73 said:No bms for me, and the only time anything gets unhooked is for balancing once a month if that. 96 cells stay within a .03 variance from high to low after thousands of miles. The key to battery health is more capacity than you need. I check balance weekly and am amazed every time how close everything stays.
grindz145 said:rborger73 said:No bms for me, and the only time anything gets unhooked is for balancing once a month if that. 96 cells stay within a .03 variance from high to low after thousands of miles. The key to battery health is more capacity than you need. I check balance weekly and am amazed every time how close everything stays.
I couldn't agree more, although A BMS is a good idea...