How to calculate battery life?

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Mar 25, 2012
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Is there a way to calculate exactly how long my two Ping 36V 20AH batteries wired in series are going to last? They say "up to 3000 cycles", but an ideal charge is to charge slowly and discharge slowly.. So if I am doing a 7 day a week commute of 5 miles in the mourning to work, charge during work, and then 5 miles home @ 40MPH average, and it rests all night... How long should my batteries last? Sometimes I may go to the store which is 2 miles away. If the situation was going slow and discharging the batteries over many miles, I could go 30 miles plus very easy every discharge, and that equates to the batteries lasting 60,000 miles. Which is, many many years.. but I am just doing flat out, 40MPH commutes and discharging fast at 40 AMPS... so it's got to be shorter life, but how much?
 
Pleasew turn your controller down to 22amps now. 40amps kills a Ping. Use your C.A. or get a different controller. Lower amp draw. A Ping 36v20ah is for a 800 watt your setup 36x40 = 1440 watts so. Hard on battery 1yr.
 
Probobally pretty short. But we have documented pings discharged at that rate lasting a year. I sure don't recomend it, and sure don't recomend any examples of pings standing that 2c discharge for years and years. Most of those I recall reading about were because the battery was no longer working right after a year of such abuse. Often enough less than a year. Not all of the batteries were pings though, some were the cheezier 18650 cell packs. Those are 1c cells.

2000 miles or less would be my estimate. You could of course get lucky. It's a matter of the odds that one of the pouches in the pack is not as robust as the rest. Just one pouch gets weak, then the whole pack is 5 ah smaller in capacity. Soon an entire string of 4 paralelled pouches is gone, because once one goes, the others get higher discharge rates. The basic problem is getting lucky enough to get a pack with every single pouch in it very strong. It does happen, but there is no garantee your pack is so lucky. More likely one pouch in there is only OK, rather than exceptional.

Trying to explain, you are promised 2c cells. Likely all your cells can handle 2c for awhile. But the discharge test for the cells is performed at 1c or less. So you push 2c from all your cells as you are doing, and they won't last the 1000 cycles at all. Lucky if you get half that. Likely enough to get less than half the 1000 cycles. Then if you get one cell in there that is really only able to stand 1.5c, and you might puff up that cell even sooner. You just can't expect maximum lifespan from your cells if you discharge them at the max rate. The rule of thumb I use is cut the c rate almost in half, so you'd consider your pack good for at most 30 amps, and conservatively, 20 amps.

It's true though, it depends a LOT on how you ride. Obviously even if you have a 40 amp controller, riding 20 mph is not straining those batteries. But I bet you do use about 20 amps or more going 40 mph, and for sure you spike it to nearly 60 amps starting up if you grab lots of throttle.

I know of one example of some pings running on 30 amp controllers, and doing fine. But I'm not so sure they are ridden hard. They might never be getting more than 1c, even with a big controller if the rider does not like riding fast.
 
Souns like a fun ride from reading your posts. Wish I had no cars on the Road. Cars or not, wear a brain bucket if your gonna go that fast. I have a close friend who has to take car of his son 24/7 because of no helmet. Its really hard on my friend. And me too, since Ive watched him grow up his whole life. His son was only going 25mph. You said No cars, how about curbs? or walls? or parked cars? I hope you have great ins.I live on an Island too.
Ok back to batterys.
I had to replace 2 cell groups in my lifepo4 polymer pouches.(Same type your using) a few wks ago. The symptom of my battery was that it would cut power . (48v 15ah and its not that old). From what I learned from others on ES, it's because of drawing to many amps from it. I had replaced my BMS with a high rate one and presumed that if they made it ,it must be OK. Not so.I now understand the importance of knowing what the c rate of my batterys are.
While my battery was down ,I started using HK lipo and felt the what a difference higher c rate can make in performance. Good luck
 
Go for A123; cell_man, bmsbattery or victpower; higher C rating cells. They should last longer and are easier to repair.
I'd say 1+ year depending on each individual cell. You might get lucky and have 1000+ cycle or just have 100...
Battery life is caculated by users post on their experience mostly and spec sheet rated cycle life.

Edit : ok you already have 1300$ of ping..... well get a lower amp controller for sure; you don't want to waste those batteries!!!
also riding at half throttle and sometime go WOT; could do the trick!
I'm abusing a LiFePo4 at 2C+ about 60 cycle/600km and the pack is still strong; but it was a 300$ pack, so I care less I guess
 
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