can lipo be solar charged??

[mrfeelgooddrag26]

i know it will charge "probably go out of balance" though but say i had a lead acid battery bank and a 12 volt to 120 ac converter and my lead acid was kept topped off by solar during the day could i accumulate enough "free energy" to charge my lipos for my ebike? or is this wishfull thinking?

 

[mlt34]

If you mean that you are plugging your lipo charger into the inverter powered by the lead acids, then yes you could charge this way. Your lead acid battery bank and inverter might as well be your wall outlet as far as the lipo charger is concerned.

Depending on your lipo charger, you might not even need the inverter since many lipo chargers run off a 12V power supply.

The important thing is to make sure you understand lipo charging and balance charging specifically so you ensure you are doing it safely.

Charging your ebike off power stored from a solar setup can be a rewarding way to make your ebike even greener.

 

[Drunkskunk]

Yes. and No.
Solar panels make electricity. Batteries need electricity to charge, so yes, with the right combination of inverters and charging equipment you can get the power from a panel into any battery.

No, you can't just hook a panel to a lipo and walk away to let it charge. you can't hook anything to a lipo and walk away to let it charge. Charging Lipo is like asking a pyromaniac child to go light the grill. If you're not right there with them, you're probably going to get your house burned down.
Lipo need to be monitored while charging. It's like filling your car with gas. You can't just jam a nozzle in the tank and walk away. Shit happens, though rarely, but it does. And when it does, it goes very bad very fast.

 

[dogman dan]

You can definitely use solar power to do anything, provided you have the right equipment between the panel and the final use.

It's just pricy, and perhaps a bit less efficient, to go from the panel to a usually lead storage battery, then to AC, then back to DC, as many devices have a dc power transformer. (like a laptop for example, typically 18v or so DC.)

In the case of lipo, many of the chargers run on either 12v DC or 12-24v DC. So a lipo charger can run on the main solar power storage battery, be it lead, lifpo4 or whatever. This skips one of the efficiency losses, the AC inverter. It will take a fairly large storage battery, since as lead loses voltage discharging, the RC charger may shut down to low input voltage. What I mean is, you will need a lot more capacity in the storage bank than you plan on pulling out to charge the lipo. Double I would think.

I don't know enough about them to know whether a solar panels charge controller could be trusted to bulk charge some "already not out of balance lipo" but I think it could be possible. Safe as, or Crazy unsafe as,,,, any bulk charging of RC lico (lipo) chemisty pack.

Bulk charging lipo for sure, is not for inexperienced lipo users. Took me 3 years before I began to bulk charge my lipo. There is no doubt that your starting point should be to charge with a safe RC charger rather than bulk charge lipo.

 

[aaronlim]

You can definitely use solar power to do anything, provided you have the right equipment between the panel and the final use.

In the case of lipo, many of the chargers run on either 12v DC or 12-24v DC. So a lipo charger can run on the main solar power storage battery, be it lead, lifpo4 or whatever. This skips one of the efficiency losses, the AC inverter.

How do i actually bypass the ac-dc transformer on a typical lipo charger to save on this efficiency loss? I have one of those bmsbattery lipo charger and i'm interested in doing this

 

[mlt34]

You can definitely use solar power to do anything, provided you have the right equipment between the panel and the final use.

In the case of lipo, many of the chargers run on either 12v DC or 12-24v DC. So a lipo charger can run on the main solar power storage battery, be it lead, lifpo4 or whatever. This skips one of the efficiency losses, the AC inverter.

How do i actually bypass the ac-dc transformer on a typical lipo charger to save on this efficiency loss? I have one of those bmsbattery lipo charger and i'm interested in doing this

I think you're confusing lipo charger and li-ion charger. li-ion batteries are the standard ebike type batteries. lipo batteries are the explosive devices used to power RC cars/planes and sometimes ebikes.

lipo chargers (not li-ion chargers) are usually designed to run on 12V DC and require a power supply (transformer) to do the conversion work outside of the actual charger. So if you had a lipo charger, you would just not use a power supply or external transformer, instead you'd plug it directly into your lead acid battery bank. Though like dogman said, you'd need a high capacity lead acid bank to handle the load.

as far as i am aware, bmsbattery doesnt sell lipo chargers.

 

[aaronlim]

You can definitely use solar power to do anything, provided you have the right equipment between the panel and the final use.

In the case of lipo, many of the chargers run on either 12v DC or 12-24v DC. So a lipo charger can run on the main solar power storage battery, be it lead, lifpo4 or whatever. This skips one of the efficiency losses, the AC inverter.

How do i actually bypass the ac-dc transformer on a typical lipo charger to save on this efficiency loss? I have one of those bmsbattery lipo charger and i'm interested in doing this

I think you're confusing lipo charger and li-ion charger. li-ion batteries are the standard ebike type batteries. lipo batteries are the explosive devices used to power RC cars/planes and sometimes ebikes.

lipo chargers (not li-ion chargers) are usually designed to run on 12V DC and require a power supply (transformer) to do the conversion work outside of the actual charger. So if you had a lipo charger, you would just not use a power supply or external transformer, instead you'd plug it directly into your lead acid battery bank. Though like dogman said, you'd need a high capacity lead acid bank to handle the load.

as far as i am aware, bmsbattery doesnt sell lipo chargers.

thanks for the explaination, i get it now, i got confused with lipo charger and "balance charger"

 

[John in CR]

I've got a bit more testing to do, but I will soon be selling kits capable of solar balance charging that can accommodate any chemistry with tunable charge cutoff voltages, and it's expandable and configurable to any voltage or capacity. There are no conversions, so it's as direct from panel to battery as possible with minimal losses. By "kit" I mean only basic knowledge of your batteries, soldering skills, multimeter, and connectors are required.

 

[mlt34]

I've got a bit more testing to do, but I will soon be selling kits capable of solar balance charging that can accommodate any chemistry with tunable charge cutoff voltages, and it's expandable and configurable to any voltage or capacity. There are no conversions, so it's as direct from panel to battery as possible with minimal losses. By "kit" I mean only basic knowledge of your batteries, soldering skills, multimeter, and connectors are required.

That's awesome! I feel like market has needed a kit like this for a while. Good luck and I'll be staying tuned

 

[steve s]

John,
Is this kit going to be something small that could be used to do a little charging while out riding/ running errands to extend range?

 

[John in CR]

John,
Is this kit going to be something small that could be used to do a little charging while out riding/ running errands to extend range?

The short answer is yes, but to keep that rig the most compact you'd probably want to configure it to bulk charge instead of balance charge. The components do be able to do only that would be minimal in cost, weight, and size. Of course, the less panel area you have the less energy you can capture. The modules are made with high efficiency solar cells, so not the negligible output of thin film solar panels put on backpacks and stuff. It can add up surprisingly quick, especially if you have reliable sun.

Once I finish my extreme speed pursuits shortly, then I want to build a bike with some kind full or partial faring with tail box for great aerodynamics, with much of it's shell a skin of solar modules. I'm talking about a vehicle that can meet or exceed traffic speeds on most local roads here, which almost never needs to be plugged in, solar or wall. Get on/in, turn the key on, glance at the individual cell voltages to verify pack status, and go. Then just park it away from shade and turn it off. That's the ultimate in convenience, and since I typically use less than 1.5kwh most days with my extreme performance ebike, this self charging bike is within simple reach now that I've found my simple and cheap solar solution. Almost time to launch some websites. I just thought of and nabbed a couple of new domains. Bike in Spanish is "bici", and the catchy and short SolarBici.com was available and is now mine. Sun is "sol" in Spanish, and low an behold SolBici.com was available too. A 7 letter dot com made of 2 words still available in 2014 is amazing.

 

[tahustvedt]

I'm thinking about how to add automatic solar charging to my future velomobile with 10S lipos (or lifepo4). I've got a 10S lipo BMS, and wonder if I can use a panel like this 42.3V panel: http://www.ebay.com/itm/261556673155 permanently connected in parallell with the battery. The BMS should keep the battery balanced and below 42 V. I could install a DC regulator limited to 41 V between the panel and lipo as well as an extra overvoltage protection. That would enable using a 12 V panel instead.

 

[mlt34]

This sounds great Jon. A lot of people have asked me about solar charging solutions and my standard answer is that with most solar panels these days, anything that will conveniently fit on their bike just won't give them enough of a bump in capacity to be worth the cost/hassle of riding with all the equipment. It sounds like a great idea in theory, but when an afternoon of sun on a large form factor 20W panel just bumps you from 50% to 55% pack capacity, it isn't so useful.

But it sounds like you've been developing something more efficient to solve that - very exciting! Cool score on the domain names as well. When you're ready to start talking about it, I'd love to maybe do a feature about you/it on my site I'm building, which is going to be an informational site about ebikes meant for total noobs. A common noob question is "can I stick a solar panel on it?" and it sounds like soon the answer might be "yes!"