charger question 15 cell vs 16 cell

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Aug 21, 2011
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Location
Orange County, CA
I need to buy a new charger. Does it matter if the charger says it is for 15 cell or 16 cell? I have a 48V 10Ah LifePO4 battery pack, but I don't know if there's 15 or 16 cells in it. I assume it's 15 cells of 3.2v batteries. The battery pack is wrapped in in yellow plastic with the blue plastic wrapping.

I look forward to your input. Thanks.
 
Lifepo4 48v is 16s. If you use lipo ( lico ) they will use 15s to make 48v. The common for Lifepo4 48v is 16s and almost all BMS's are 16s.


Edit: Yes there are 15s lifepo4 and bms's not as common.
 
999zip999 said:
Lifepo4 48v is 16s. If you use lipo ( lico ) they will use 15s to make 48v. The common for Lifepo4 48v is 16s and all BMS's are 16s.

Actually 14s is almost perfect for LiCo cells. When charging, 14 x 4.17 V = 58.4 V, which is the same charger as comes with LiFePO4 packs.
 
Yes you are right about 14s. for lico. I was thinking if you have a 48v lifepo4 charger and made a pack using it for liMn or lico it would be 15s at the 61v final charge voltage. That's the Ping charger final voltage.
 
999zip999 said:
Lifepo4 48v is 16s. If you use lipo ( lico ) they will use 15s to make 48v. The common for Lifepo4 48v is 16s and all BMS's are 16s.
Ignore 999zip999's comment.

The only way to know for sure is to charge the pack up fully (assuming that the charger/BMS) is working. Measure the pack voltage and calculate the number of cells. The other 100% sure way is to open the pack up and count the cells.

Yes, there are 15s LiFePO4 packs sold as 48V and there is nothing wrong with that. 3.2V * 15 = 48.0V nominal. 3.3V *15 = 49.5V nominal.
 
Count the wires on the BMS. Or what battery brand do you have ?
China can make anything so there are 15s batteries and not common.
 
999zip999 said:
Count the wires on the BMS. Or what battery do you have ?
Yes, count the wires on the BMS works too. But to do that, you'd have to open the pack anyway, unless he has an external BMS.
 
My charger is 4A with 58.4v output. The charger says it has a slow blow AC fuse 250V10A. The charger was releasing an odor after charging for about 1 hr. I turned the fuse knob and then starting hearing a hissing sound. Then I unplugged the charger and saw a little bit of smoke come out of the charger. I let it cool down and then later plugged it in again with a 8" fan blowing on it and it charged for about 15 min (I expected it to charge for about 30 min for the battery to be full) and then it stopped working. I can twist the fuse knob but it doesn't charge. I'll have to open it up later when I have time; plus I wanted to make sure it completely discharged.

I only have one charger so I was carrying it to work and back. For the first 1000 miles, I was carrying it in the seatpost / rack bag. Then later I put it in my backpack. The rack bag has fallen down twice with the charger in it. I changed racks / bags later on which is when I started carrying the charger in my backpack. I plan on purchasing a cheaper 2A charger to leave at work or home if I can repair the 4A charger. The ebike currently has 3050 miles on it.
 
if you can open it up and take good pictures inside we can give you some advice.smoke is not good.

if the fuse holder cap won't turn now it could be something related to the fuse which would be easier to fix than other stuff. the other stuff can be replaced too. we know which parts it may need to repair it.
 
if you can take good pictures we can give advice on where to look and where to probe for voltages. you should put your location in your personal info so we know where you are.
 
I opened the charger. There is still a little bit of odor remaining.
Below are pictures. It looks like there's some gunk around one of the coils. The metal casing (not shown) shows a tint like it was getting burnt).
The pics are too wide for the forum web page. Right click on the picture and choose Save As and then view it.

http://www.bimmage.com/pics/charger/2013-02-07 22-28-50.jpg
http://www.bimmage.com/pics/charger/2013-02-07 22-29-20.jpg
http://www.bimmage.com/pics/charger/2013-02-07 22-29-30.jpg
http://www.bimmage.com/pics/charger/2013-02-07 22-30-02.jpg
 
that is the kingpan charger and the choke is what is overheating. it is carrying a lot of current and that causes it to overheat.

i just blew up my charger by reversing the battery cell on the charger output.

it is a 10A single cell charger that puts out 3.65V so i was using it to charge up a pile of loose cells i have that i am using to build a 72V12Ah ping pack from. i thought i was so careful, looked right at it and said "that is the positive tab, that is the negative tab" and then put the alligator clips on the wrong terminals of my charger. so i had the battery cell backwards on the charger but the charger was not turned on yet. so i was connecting some more cells together to put on the charger with that group of cells, and i hear a pop and see some smoke coming from the charger. i had blown the schottky diode on the output. the diode is there to protect the charger from reversing the polarity. and protects the battery too. normally what happens is that the diode is forward biased when the battery is reversed polarity on the terminals. so the diode will conduct current and the current is so high that it blows open the fuse on the output. so the circuit is open now that the fuse has blown and charger is protected. that is why they have that fuse on the output. in my case the voltage was only 3.5V so the current was not enuff to blow the fuse and instead after a few seconds the diode overheated and blew. usually both would blow when polarity is reversed.

but i have some other schottky didoes i bot on ebay, SR5100 whcih are axial type schottky diodes, 5A100V. i think it was 20 cents, 10 for $2. so i had to take my single cell charger apart, unsolder the burned out diode, and solder the new one in place. at the same time i cut off that thyrister daughterboard and put a short solid wire jumper across the terminals where the wires from the daughterboard came down to the pcb.

it works again, wasted an hour or so, but it works again and i can finish charging all these pouches up.

if you have no voltage on the trace running from the schottky diode (that you loosened the clamp on) over to the choke, then there is something wrong closer to the front end of the charger.

if there is voltage on that trace, coming from the center pin of the diode, and there is no voltage on the back where the red wire is connected to the spot that has + on it. where the positive charger lead attaches to the pcb then the problem is in the back end.

if there is no voltage going from the schottky to that + output terminal then the choke has unsoldered itself from the solder on the trace on the pcb.
 
it is a kingpan charger. i think he has gone now. if you notice the clamp that holds the schottky diode to the side, it is loose, so i assume he loosened it. but the voltage regulator next to it is also under the same clamp. the voltage regulator is not as thick as the TO-247 package of the schottky diode, so when you clamp it down, the clamp 'twists' the schottky diode by applying all the force on the one edge of the diode package. this causes the diode to twist and the other side of the diode pulls away from the side plate so it cannot handle as much heat as if it were heatsinked to the side.

they used to use TO-220 parts for the diode and the clamp would keep the diode flat. but when they started using these TO-247 packages they have not done anything to make the clamping force uniform across the diode so this is gonna be a problem. i have seen a few where they put a fold of cardboard under the clamp on top of the regulator to make it equal distance for the clamp.

my charger was like his when i took it apart last night, and i noticed this problem, so i had a piece of hard plastic from a laptop battery shell that i stuck under the clamp on top of the regulator. this was thick enuff to force the diode to lay flat.

so anyone with one of these kingpan chargers would be wise to consider doing something similar when they open their charger. also cut out the thyristor daughter board and use a jumper of solid wire from the spot marked b to the spot marked AC closest to the capacitor. then it will be 120V all the time and you don't have the risk of the charger going out when it is on a two wire extension cord and the polarity of the AC input is reversed.
 
I got the kit from Brian Howell at ElectroRide. I've been trying to contact him for the last 3 days. I don't know if he's on vacation or what.

In any case, I am going to buy another charger, probably the Tenergy 48v 2amp one. Does it make a difference if it says it is for 15 cell and i actually have 16 cell? The Tenergy charger says it has the same output voltage as my Kingpan charger.

When the battery is at full charge, the Cycle Analyst would say it is 56v at idle. When there is about 2 Ah left in the battery the voltage under wide open throttle and under load would be 46-47v, and when idle it would be 49-50v. I know I could just cut open the plastic holding the batteries but I lack the tools to wrap it back up with plastic; I would end up taping it back up.
 
if it is 16S then you should buy a 48V lifepo4 charger. do not buy a limn charger or lipo or SLA charger. you should be able to see the BMS and be able to photograph it so we can tell you what it is.
 
nope. but i noticed that in order to work on it you have to fold the legs of the mosfet up to stand up the heatsink. those are the long 10Ah pouches?

you can probe the legs of the devices from the underside. i think it just has a plastic plate with screws in the corners. i bet that is where the HVC and LVC comparators are, and i think that is an opto transistor series along the side? 4 legs on each package?
 
Looks to me like transistor Q3 is blown in one photo but ok in another. That's weird. But I also noticed that the you fet heatsink block at the top is lose. That needs to be tightened back before running the charger again.
 
@dnmun: the battery pack is 10Ah with long prismatic cells.

@wesnewell: On the charger, I loosened the side screws since I thought I needed to do that to open the case.

In conclusion, I ended up buying two new Kingpan chargers from Headway-Headquarters.com. One is 4A and the other is 2A. I will leave the 4A at work and 2A at home. I usually don't need to charge it more than twice a day and would prefer to be able to charge it faster at work.
 
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