found new cheap site for BMS, LiFePO4 & charger up to 18000W

[Julez]

Yeah, I have the same problem with a Ping charger.

It works, but only as I power the cooling fan from a separate 12V power supply. :?

The EP-J looks more reliable.

 

[pwbset]

The plastic ones that are cheap are crap. Mine fried and So i am trying one of his steel ones.

Sorry to hear that.. my black plastic "400W" chargers are so far holding up fine even when the garage is 100+ degrees F. I also have to make sure to check the lights because the "orange" and the "green" as so similar.

 

[dnmun]

we commented very early in this thread about the voltage and shunt adjustment pots visible right behind the front panel. should be easy to adjust if you need to, but they will adjust it to your spec when they ship. they seem to be nice chargers, wish more people who bot them would chime in.

 

[julesa]

we commented very early in this thread about the voltage and shunt adjustment pots visible right behind the front panel. should be easy to adjust if you need to, but they will adjust it to your spec when they ship. they seem to be nice chargers, wish more people who bot them would chime in.

I got a couple 600W chargers. They look very nice, solid build, pretty cases, and Jack Du gave me very good customer service. Unfortunately I will have no batteries to test them with for probably another three or four weeks... :| I'll 'chime in' on the e-citypower.com chargers and BMSs again after I've had a chance to use them. Oofnik said he was very happy with what he got from them:
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=7220&start=120

 

[Sacman]

I'm in the same boat as you.... I got the chargers and they're looking pretty sitting on my garage shelf.
I'm just still waiting for those battery cells to arrive so I can try out these chargers. I'll post my findings then as well.

 

[kd8cgo]

My chargers both arrived today, I am looking forward to testing them this weekend. I need to get my bus bars made up to string the batteries together. I will be reporting the results as they come along. They seem well built, the odd output wire IEC line cord thing others already mentioned, but the housings and build quality look good visually. I have not taken them apart or anything yet, I'd like to see if they work first!

 

[Julez]

Cool, I am looking forward to your testing!

I am particularly interested in facts concerning the ability to tune the voltage and current.
The answers to the related questions to ecitypower were, that the voltage was hard-wired in the factory, and that the current could not be adjusted by oneself either.

 

[kd8cgo]

I got a chance to hook up one of my chargers after making some bus bars this afternoon.

The model pictured is the 600 watt model, it is configured for 73 volts and 8 amps. I was unable to let the charger finish its cycle since I don't have my BMS built yet, and some of the cells were getting too high. From what I can tell, the charger works, it puts out its rated amperage, and puts out 72+ volts. I cannot test if the voltage cutoff is properly set until I have my BMS hooked up.

Larger -> http://www.kd8cgo.com/images/ebike/IMG_1104.JPG 3360x1890 1.28MB

Larger -> http://www.kd8cgo.com/images/ebike/IMG_1105.JPG 2333x1902 896KB

Larger -> http://www.kd8cgo.com/images/ebike/IMG_1106.JPG 3456x2304 3.39MB

Larger -> http://www.kd8cgo.com/images/ebike/IMG_1117.JPG 3456x2304 1.58MB


I have not had a chance to test the 360 watt version yet.

edit: Add/modify pictures.

 

[bluehead]

I just ordered a 24V 20Ah battery and 240W charger from bmsbattery.com. I'll post my experience with them.

So far Jack at bmsbattery has been very responsive in answering questions about his products.

Daniel

 

[Julez]

Great!
I'm still waiting for someone with hands-on experience with the 240W charger.

 

[ToughRowToHoe]

I purchased two 36v 2a chargers from e-city/BMSBattery. The customer service was extremely high (honestly can't enough about their customer service - stunning) and I am quite happy with the product. Unfortunately the lack of documentation can be a problem for us less capable users.

 

[Doctorbass]

i'm hesitating between the Ping and Ecity now...

They seems to have nearly the same quality and service.. :|

I am waiting to place an order for 7 battery+ charger kit
48V 16Ah + 5A charger

Some reported that the 5A charger is crap and ping still have 100% rating and he sale them..

The ping are plastic shrink and the ecity are thick rubber shrink...

cells appear to be the same..

any oppinions?

Doc

 

[dnmun]

mr ping may give you a deal, and he does build to order if you have specific needs.

i just ordered a replacement pouch from him to repair another pouch pack, along with 3 of his old 48V BMS.

 

[patrickza]

Has anyone tried there energy transfer BMS yet? I'm seriously considering there 24s BMS for my headway cells, comments would be appreciated.

 

[bluehead]

I just ordered a 24V 20Ah battery and 240W charger from bmsbattery.com. I'll post my experience with them.

I checked in with them last week and it is supposed to ship tomorrow. I see from the latency between the "I ordered it" and "I got it" posts that this is about average for lead time.

 

[caleb7777]

I received my 3 single battery pouches from Jack and now only need to build a CD welder for assembly.....
can't wait

Also ordered the better the better charger, EP-J, should be better

 

[pwbset]

I learned something interesting about my 75v charger recently... if my battery pack is sitting at anything higher than ~72v the charger will not kick on, but just sits with the green light. That's 4v/cell for the LiMn I use. Essentially I have to slurp out at least a couple ah out before the charger comes alive. No big deal unless you like to keep your pack topped off.

I'm also noting that there is no way in hell it's a 400W charger... must be the 200W at best as putting back in the ~400wh I use on my commute takes hours and hours. :?

Going to order more from Jack since my 37v batteryspace.com charger blew up last week.

I mean really... how hard can it really be to make a good reliable charger? :lol:

 

[Sacman]

i finally had a chance to use my two chargers from eCityPower.com for a few days now and so far I'm impressed! I got two of the Model EP-A 87.6V 4A chargers in the aluminum cases. It took me a while to take apart my 48v 15ah battery packs and recofigured them into two 72v 5ah (so 10ah total) so now I'm able to charge these packs with the new chargers.

When I plug in the chargers the 2 red lights come on and the fan kicks on as expected. That fan is slightly noisier than my other 48V charger (not by much tho) but it looks like it is really needed because I can feel the aluminum case get slightly warm at 30 minutes into the charge cycle. So without that fan it could get much hotter. I keep my Cycle Analyst on so I can check the voltage every 10 minutes or so. Each time I check back I can see the voltage rise slightly higher than before. When charging the 10ah pack it takes about 2 hours which is just about right for this charger specified at 4A.

I prop up the rear wheel (& motor) of my bike firmly to a training stand and I run the motor to burn off some power from the battery pack. And I can adjust up the drag load on the wheel to use up more battery power. When I do this I can see the voltage on the Cycle Analyst drop. When the voltage gets to 86V or lower, the charger and it's fan kick back on, and the two lights turn red. I can actually see the voltage on the CA rise slowly. And when it reaches 87.8V the fan on the charger stops and the red charging light turns green.

Then it looks like it goes into trickle charge mode. I can see the green light pulse bright for 1 second and then dim again and it repeats every 12 or 15 seconds. After 3 minutes the voltage on the CA drops a bit and reads 87.6V and holds ... BANG ON ... exact same voltage as labled on the charger. This is a really nice charger for this the $53 price. So far I'm very happy with it.

The label even shows proper output (87.6v 4A) .

 

[speculawyer]

One of the functions of a BMS is to prevent overcharge of a cell while still charging the other cells. The usual technique is to "shunt" some of the charge current around the cell using a resistor. This allows the other cells to accept more charge while protecting the cell that is full. If you charge at too high of a current, you can overwhelm the bypass resistor so often the BMS has a way to tell the charger to throttle back (or it throttles is back itself via a FET). The extra energy shunted around the cell is lost as heat. Another technique to compare groups of cells (like cell 1 to cell 2) and charge up a capacitor (or inductor) from the higher voltage cell, then discharge it to the lower voltage cell. This "shuttles" excess charge from the fuller cells to the less full cells. This technique is more complicated, wastes less energy, makes your recharge time faster, and only works well if your cells are pretty unbalanced. It is hard to move charge when the difference in voltage between cells is small. Also if the highest cell and lowest cell are not near each other, the technique is not very effective. Does this help?

This helped me a lot. And since I'm not worried about burning off some energy or making my recharge faster, I'm leaning toward the bleeding system.

However, does one system have more capacity than the other?

I'm looking at creating a pack of 24 Thundersky cells for a 72V NEV. I'll probably go with the 60 amp-hour but might be tempted to go a little bigger. Would the two different BMS systems on the bmsbattery.com battery site be big enough for balancing a 24 pack of 60 or 100 amp-hour Thundersky batteries? The fact that they bleed only in the millivolts seems to make them a bit too small for such a pack. Yes? No? Any help would be greatly appreciated.


As far as a charger, I think using the existing Delta-Q designed for lead-acids would be fine. It would not charge as fast as a charger designed for lithium ion batteries but that is fine. Anyone see any problem with this??

-Spec

 

[bluehead]

I just ordered a 24V 20Ah battery and 240W charger from bmsbattery.com. I'll post my experience with them.

The battery and charger arrived today, 27 days after ordering. Jack at bmsbattery/ecitypower was responsive to e-mails during that time and apologized for a delay in shipping. Here's the box:

View attachment 4

Note the contents description and value written on the customs form (actual cost: $299 + $180 shipping)


Inside the box:


The contents:


The EP3007JL nominally 240W charger is marked as 29.2V, 7A. It doesn't have an on/off switch like kd8cgo's charger does. I left it to charge the battery for an hour and a half and it got quite warm; about 50 degrees Celsius. After that the red charging LED was still on, but I unplugged the coaxial charging connector from the battery. When I reconnected it the green LED light stayed on, indicating that the battery was fully charged. I disconnected and reconnected again two minutes later and charging continued. The charger is still going twenty minutes later, but is now running much cooler. I assume that means that charging has nearly finished.

The output from the 24V 20Ah battery uses the same kind of connector used by PCs and electric kettles:View attachment connector.jpg
The connector is marked as "SS-180 10A250~". I hope it can handle the 39A the Cyclone motor peaks at. What is not marked is which pin is positive. I suspect it is the pin on the same side as the fuse holder, but I will find a voltmeter before I verify that theory on the motor controller.
I'll need to make a cable to go from the battery to Cyclone's two-pole connector.
The battery has a 6x30mm fuse holder with a 25A 250V fuse preinstalled. That's going to blow fairly quickly on a 500W Cyclone so I'll be replacing it with a 40A fuse. I hope the fuse holder is up to the job.

Daniel

 

[bluehead]

Here are the connections inside the box. The fuse is on the left, the key on the right. The BMS is inside the black wrap with the cells.



There are two parallel wires to the negative of the external connector but for positive there are two wires until the fuse holder and only one after that.

I'm going to try to get a cable made to go from the box's output connector to the bike's connectors. After reading Ypedal's review of his battery (http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8452#p127971) that came in what is apparently the same box I was going to take the whole battery in and get the output rewired. I live near an e-bike shop that is good at custom solutions and they did something similar for my previous battery. However, resistance came from an unexpected quarter - my wife was aghast at the idea that I would take a battery that cost nearly $480 including shipping and leave it in a shop for modification. "They could change your battery for an inferior one and you would never know", she said. Nice to see her taking an interest in biking. So, I'll start with just the cable and see how that works out.

 

[pwbset]

So... I've got a 75v DC output ecitypower charger that has been working great for the last few months... then I got rid of all my raw cells and now am going to go with an 81-82v battery solution. Wondering how/if I can squeeze 6-7v more out of this charger. It's listed as a "48v" charger so clearly Jack and company modified it somehow to output 75v... hoping a PCB or electro guru can point me in the right direction to tweak that up a bit. Happy to take more macro photos if I just know where to focus the lens. Thanks!

View attachment dscn7240.jpg

View attachment 1

View attachment dscn7244.jpg

 

[dnmun]

i remember a thread that tiberius created and another from jeremy about how to modify the meanwell type power supplies to change the output voltage. as i recall there is a zener diode that sets the range for the output feedback circuit. they swapped out the zener to change the voltage output range.

i need to learn this stuff too because i would like to be able to fix them.

nothing unusual about that resistor. it is just larger in power so it would not fit the original holes so they stand it up a little to get the legs through the hole.

 

[pwbset]

Thanks dnmun I'll take a look for that thread.. if I learn what the heck I'm doing with this charger I'll post..

 

[patrickza]

i finally had a chance to use my two chargers from eCityPower.com for a few days now and so far I'm impressed! I got two of the Model EP-A 87.6V 4A chargers in the aluminum cases.

Hi Sacman (or others with the same charger). Do you think this charger would be suitable for bike mounting? I have one on order and I'd like to put it on a seatpost rack for onboard charging. Any idea if the components will be able to handle the bouncing around, or if I could secure components with some hot glue or silicon.