Need a couple more miles range...

[townunheardof]

Hi All.

I ride the pictured (below) one-speed 9 miles to work, charge 9hrs with my 1-amp 36v Batteryminder desulphator charger, then ride home, and plug back in. It's got 24 in wheels, road tires. My motor is a Wilderness Energy 36v Brushless, and my batteries are 3) 12v 12ah lead acid gel cells. I generally get at least a year out of a set of batteries.

But at 9 miles I'm about at the limit for this setup. I weigh about 140 lbs, and here in S.E. Pennsylvania, it's fairly hilly terrain. Soon, my commute will change, and I'll have to go 12 miles each way.

I'm going to need to change something. These 12ah batteries won't get me 12 miles, I think...or if they do, they'll only last a month or two instead of more than a year.

So, what's best advice for tweakings, to get a few more miles range, without changing too much. I really like the whole set up. I love the bike. I like the motor, the kit, etc. I love the Batteryminder charger. I've been commuting with this outfit for two and a half years.

Should I look for 14ah batteries?(I'm not sure the 1amp charger will fully charge these in 9 hours...) Get a higher amp charger? Add a Dewalt 36v supplemental battery that I kick in for the last couple miles? Switch to a 26" bike? (I'd rather not do that I love this little step-through one speed)?

How good a range will a set of Ping's Lifepo4's from Ebay get me? Can I charge them with a Batteryminder, or is that only for SLA?

Town

 

[dirtdad]

I also have the same WE motor/battery.

A Cycle Analyst can be very helpful at getting more range out of your batteries. You can just keep an eye on amperage, or you can wire your throttle through it to create high amp limiter. I have one on my WE and I would not be without it anymore.

Lifepo4 batteries will give you more usable capacity at the same AH rating. If your batteries are already a couple of years old, they are probably not even giving you 12 AH anymore. I bet a 10 AH lifepo4 would give you more capacity than your old 12 AH SLAs. Also, they will lighten your load and give you more real world capacity that way, too.

 

[Eric G]

The hilly terrain is taking the life out of those sla. You can get more out of them if you pedal the bike to ~ 7 or 8mph before applying throttle and peddle along with the motor on all those hills.As dirtdad said getting a CA to limit amps or WattsUp meter to help you develop a riding style to keep your amp load down will help squeezing every mile out of sla.

The Ping packs will definately give you more bang for your buck as there's less voltage sag and you get more full use of your AH capacity.Others here can give better advice on Lifepo4's but I don't think you could use your 1amp Batteryminder to charge these as there are cell balancing issues to be dealt with.

Oh Yea Welcome to the Forum!

Eric

 

[kbarrett]

If you buy a ping pack, you get a LiFePO4 charger with it.

 

[vanilla ice]

If you want to stay low budget, yeah get some 14ah or 18 SLA. Or if you're 12's are still fresh, get three 7 ampers for a secondary parallel pack. Alos that way you can disconnect it if you want less weight for shorter trips.

 

[dogman dan]

Just go for the ping battery and get it in the 20 ah size. From what I've heard you could go ahead and get it in 48 volt if you want to. My WE brushed controller handles the volts no problem. The reason for the 20 ah size is to make sure you can provide the watts without the bms cutting out. Smaller sizes can have problems depending on the controller used in the bike. Ping is totally trustworthy, you can buy from him just by emailing him. He only does the ebay auctions for advertising and may sell cheaper than the latest auction price. Delivery is about 7 days after the shipment tracks leaving china.
I bought the 36 volt 20 ah battery for $450 including shipping. It charges in about 10 hours from fully empty. It will take me for about 18 miles at full throttle, with 70% of that uphill, including one very steep grade for one mile. I do peadal, but can only keep up with the motor on the uphills. At 15 pounds, you will love the way the bike feels 10 pounds lighter. I could go on and on and on how happy I've been with my ping battery. I use the ping charger at home, and an ordinary 36 volt charger at work for a faster charge. As long as it is a simple charger, without the pulsing cycle for desulphiting lead batteries it won't hurt the lifepo4 any to skip the balancing it gets on the ping charger. You just charge with that one at night and it still gets balanced once a day. My ping battery stopped needing balancing after the first few cycles anyway. At first it would balance for hours, then after a few days it would just do one balancing cycle and stop charging.
But another way to skin that cat would be to run 48 volts with 12ah sla's. That should get you a few miles further, or a few miles faster while sticking to what you know, sla's. You would need a 48 volt charger then, but in my opinion the ping battery is worth it for the lighter weight alone. If you add another lead battery you could be carrying as much as 40 pounds of lead. When I tried it, I just broke a lot of spokes. Way cool that you have been running your bike as long as you have, I see all the chrystalite guys out there raving on thier stuff, but it seems the WE users just quietly ride thier bikes unmodified, day after day.

 

[mvadventure]

Regardless of the vendor, LiPO4's are, IMHO, the way to go. I believe there was even a set for sale here on the forum recently. The single biggest improvement to my bike next to the Crystalyte 5304 has been the LiPO4's. Range has more than tripled, Peukert effect has gone away, power is constant and the confidence factor alone has made the cost insignificant.

Plus, and this is a BIG plus for me at least, my charger gives me 85% charge in 45 minutes or less. The funny thing though is that with these batteries I've never had to take my charger with me!

Mike

 

[lazarus2405]

You should absolutely make the investment in a ping pack or similar, if for no other reason than the lifespan. While you may get a year out of a set of SLAs, you should get 4-5 years out of a LiFePO4 pack.

You should expect 20-25 miles from a 48v 10ah Ping pack, at least on flat land. I don't know how that'll change on hills. A bigger pack will naturally get you more range.

Going to 26" wheels won't give you any more range. You still have to do the same amount of work, and the lower RPM from the larger wheel might even make motor efficiency worse and hurt your range.

If you needed a quick and dirty solution, you could get a fourth battery and run at 48v. Your motor and controller could handle it easily. Of course, you'd need to figure out how to charge such a pack.

 

[Drunkskunk]

Battery for the win. But thats been covered.

There are a bunch of other tweaks you can do to up your efficancy a bit. Most of these things won't give much gain of them selves, but added up they will.
Tires. are they at full pressure? are they Semi-slick design and a hard compound? a good set of 90LBS tires in a true road tread design could give you maybe 5% more range.

Breakes. do they touch at all? even if you can't feel the drag pedaling, a draging brake can cost you 5% range.

Your front basket. Do you use it all the time? its wind resistance, and might be costing you several percent of your range depending on your speed.

Are your axles, chain, freewheel, and sprocket all lubed regularly? You might5 not even feel the drag, but you could be losing a few percent off each charge for want of a few drops of oil.

And on to the electricle..

what guage wire are you running? the thinner the guage, the higher the resistance. Run 10 guage from battery to controller to motor and you could pick up a couple percent more range.
what type and how many conectors are there in the wire between the battery and the motor? the more connectors, the nore resistance, and some types have bad resistance as it is. Simplify the path with as few connectors as possable, and the best quality you can get (deans, power poles) will give you a few percent more range.
Your controller probably runs cheap MOSFETS. Swapping to something like 4110s or better would improve it's overall efficancy, and give you a few percent better range.

Each thing listed is minor, but added up, it could give you an extra mile or two more range per charge.

 

[lazarus2405]

All of Skunk's advice is good, but...

Have you tried going slower and pedaling more?

 

[dogman dan]

Going slower works best for range , but with the ride getting longer an all, that wouldn't appeal to me. I still think that taking the plunge and getting lifepo4, or nicad, or anything other than lead is better than loading up with more lead though I also suggestedt that if on a budget. Unless you have the frame, spokes, etc for it such as Safe does. The bike in the pic will love running on a light weight duct tape battery. I would still go bigger though, since all that extra range leaves you with shallower discharges that are supposed to give you much more cycles, and less need to charge 100% at work. Also it's amazing the uses for range you will find, once you have it. My 20 ah battery never cuts out and I run it hard.

Mike, what are you charging with that you get 85% in 45 minuites? Interesting for sure, does that fast charge go through the BMS? I got a 4 amp charger to take to work, but I have no way of measuring the watts actually absorbed by the battery.

 

[mvadventure]

This is a thread from an earlier post with a pic of the charger. http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3889 I have been unable to find any info onlilne and when Zane sent it to me he said he was waiting for a manual on it. Each cell is charged independtly and the final balancing is done at the end of the charge cycle.

The amazing thing, to me, is that I simply haven't been able to run the battery down. After 30 miles it still reads over 51 volts after a few moments rest. My normal cruise speed is the legal 20 MPH.

If I do a normal run of 17 miles the charger actually shuts off in about an hour, maybe a little less. Like yours, it is a 4 amp charger.

Mike

 

[diver]

Ive used 14 ah 6 volt battery's to make packs. two 6 volt make that size of one 12 volt 12 ah and you get 28ah. I have just about doubled the range with the 6 volt packs over the 12 volt packs

 

[cee]

hello im new on the forum i needed adivce i have a bd 36 front motor with a 36V 30A Crystalyte controller,36v 8ah nicad batteries (13.32 lbs) i just added my old sla batteries 36v 10 ah to the bike (21.50 lbs) total weight of batteries is (34.82) lbs The bicycle is for commuting to work the distance is 12 miles each way.i could plug in at work for 8 hrs to recharge the batteries.i have the batteries packs in parallel but i have 2 swtiches like an indenpent for each pack when i turn both on at the same time the voltage drops a little (i dont use them at the same time now when i saw the volatge drop didnt know if i will damage the packs)do i need like a (25 Amp Schottky Diode Parallel Battery Joiner)? or should i get another set of 36 v 8ah nicads and the (25 Amp Schottky Diode Parallel Battery Joiner) im not looking for to much speed 18 mph is good enough i needed more range.if i get another 36v 8ah nicads and remove the sla batteries it will drop around 8.18 lbs from the bicycle and the packs will be the same also.i also have the Cycle Analyst and set the current limit to 35 amps the defualt was 50 amps.i do peddal first.i do day labor at work and am a little tired after work.thats why i was trying a setup for more range.
my question is
1)would it be better just two leave it like this and use pack 1 (nicads) at 6 miles and then turn it off and turn on pack 2 sla at 6 miles?(i didnt try this yet only tested around the neighborhood)
2)will Schottky Diode Parallel Battery Joiner work with nicads and sla together and use them at the same time?
3)get Schottky Diode Parallel Battery Joiner and another nicad battery pack and lose 8.18 lbs from bicycle and use pack like a 36v 16 amp? parallel.

1)specialized bicycle
2)i weigh about 155lbs
3)work trip 12 miles each way mostly flat lots of stop and go brooklyn,nyc
4)nicad 36 v 8ah Triangular Layout 13.32 lbs
5)36 v 10 ah sla b and b batteries (21.5 lbs) i put 2 batteries in the rear beam and 1 in the frame near the nicads and controller
thank you very much for help. p.s. the nicads are 1.5 months old and the sla are still in good condition.but i could replace the sla batteries thanks again

 

[Lock]

townunheardof

Drunkskunk touched on wind resistance re the front basket... Just want to reinforce the aero concern. Some ppl on ES have seen surprising results w/very simple fairings (ok, stuff like lids from gash cans!)

Depends on how fast you usually travel too, but taken to extreme (fully faired recumbent) all else equal you have plenty of energy aboard to more than double your distance comfortably.
tks
Lock

 

[Link]

Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha! :lol:

 

[mvadventure]

for dogman: I made a mistake. My charger is eight (8) amps, not four.

Mike

 

[dogman dan]

Awesome. My fast charger is a 4 amp simple sla charger, since the ping specs say max charge amps is 5. Then I slow charge and balance at night with the ping charger at 2 amps. The sla charger gives it a full charge, it just doesn't do the balancing since it stops at a slightly lower voltage. I get about 10 ah worth of charge in 5 hours with the 4 amp. I suspect that most of the charge is done much sooner than that. I take it that you have something better than a ping battery?

 

[dogman dan]

For Cee, I'd run one pack at a time. Run the nicads till dead, then try to go the rest without taking the lead battery any more discharge than you must. The nicads like the full discharge, the lead wont. If still running out, try to be more aero, peadle more, and go slower. When you do buy a battery, I keep having to say, get lifepo4 of somekind. I still think 20 ah is the size. But wear out your old batteries first, unless you do what I did. Use them on the second e bike. My MTB goes 18 miles full throttle, uphill, for my 12 mile one way commute. The old lead is on the trike, which is a shotrer range grocery getter.

 

[mvadventure]

dogman: Since the BMS is built into the charger I "assume" it takes all the power right away. Re the Ping vs anything else debate that's gone on, in one form or another for pages and pages, I don't think anyone knows for sure that all the different brands don't come out of the same factory. For the most part they look alike, at least to me from the photos I've seen.

Mine are from Aten Energy and come with a three year warranty which so far, at least for the chargers, go has been wonderful.

Mike

 

[dogman dan]

Cool, i figured you had something different than the ping battery. My ping is just right for my needs, as long as I have time to charge about 4 hours if i ride further from home than 12 miles. About an hour is my butts toleance limit anyway.

 

[cee]

hello thanks dogman thats what ill do run one at a time with the nicads first and sla second i didnt know the nicads liked to be fully discharged i cant take the bicycle tommorrow becuase it will rain but wednesday will be nice and will try it out .when the batteries are totally dead ill try the lifepo4 batteries.
thanks again for advice.

 

[townunheardof]

Town here...,

Thanks everybody for lots of very useful advice. I shall be getting Lithiumified at some point soon (maybe when PingPing has ready supplies of good cells again) and after that I'll probably get one of those battery managers some of you mentioned.

Here's a little anecdote, wherein I already applied some of the common sense you provided:

A few days ago it was workday's end, and I wrapped up and stowed my charger, and started riding. I didn't really notice anything amiss until, at the first hill, just a mile out, the yellow "battery dead" light came on. So I called EV Rescue, and pedaled and coasted my way to the agreed interception point a couple miles onward.

EV Rescue (wife) and I loaded the bike on the Taurus rack, and I pondered what had gone wrong. I didn't ride the next day because I figured something was wrong with my batteries (they are about 18 months old, have over 300 charge cycles, and usually are nearly spent when I get home anyway).

Well, I eventually figured out that during my work charge somehow the extension cord got partly dislodged, and I only got maybe 2 hours charge instead of the usual 9.

So Friday, after it had charged for a day and a half, I rode again. And I did all the simple things offered in your suggestions: I was as conscious as I could be about conserving my juice, on both the inbound and outbound rides.

And where normally, when I'm on the last couple uphills near home, I see the yellow "power gone" button come on, it stayed green and healthy all the way to my driveway.

It's a little more work and vigilance, but I'll ride this way and hopefully stay on the road until I can get my LIFEPO4 setup.

Town

PS: By the way this was the first time I'd needed EV Rescue since last July when the seat stem weld broke.

 

[dogman dan]

Yay! Driving the ice car with the same type of vigilance pays off too. When I was a kid I had a truck with a vacume guage on the intake manifold. Using it, I got milage up to 9mpg!

 

[icecube57]

Hmm in a way i dont care about effiency. Or power to weight ratios. I bought a ping pack to increase distance and lighten load and so far its been a paperweight... because of the current draw from this controller. I gotta get/mod a a controller that wont slap the bms in the ass and tell it gimme your goodies. But apparently im a novice biker but and can pedal 15-20 miles unassited over mixed terrain. I do give credit to switching to slicks. I bought a cheap Bell (Wally World) cruiser slicks. Inflated to 60psi and my god it was a different experince while riding. Brake drag from badly adjust brakes or a warped rim can add its toll to your batteries and your commute. I also took the time and planned different routes for going to work and coming home. Going to work is mostly down hill. Coming back home the same way has alot of up hills. My alternate route is a mile or two longer but the ascent is isnt as big. Some people use full throttle all the time i use pulse and glide. while pedaling along. Once i feel the resistance in the pedaling when i loose speed i give the throttle a push. Going down hill it doesnt make sensee to hold full throttle once you maxed your speed so i coast after i build up my momentum. If you can use momentum to your advantage. I dont have stop signs or red lights and i work night shift so going and coming to work little to no traffic and no stops. Although SLA is cheaper... and heavier... i dont even notice them. My bike is heavy almost hitting 100lbs with SLA. I guess i have good muscles in my legs. Thats my two cents.