Battery Hookup new listing “Case 100x 3.3v 2200mah - 200x 18650 Lifepo4” for $100.00 + shipping

[sam_sam_sam]

All you really need is a volt / current meter that can data logging feature over time this would probably be more accurate and efficient for testing a lot of battery cells and they can be had for very little money the reason I chose not to go this route is because it is hard to find a meter that can do both voltage and current on the same cart that is the biggest reason I chose this particular device that I did purchase

Now you can use the SkyRc B6 version 2 they are very decent and very affordable and reliable way to test battery cells but in your case if are going to load test multi cell battery pack and do not want the device to use the balancing function I would highly recommend that you do the firmware update it will allow you to do this function and you would be able to use the BMS protection board in the battery pack

The only downside to this approach is that the details of the graphics are very limited to the size of display screen which is controlled by the software which is not adjustable and you can deal with this limitation by testing a few new battery cells from well known battery manufacturers to get familiar with what the charge / discharge curves should look like but make sure that it is not a knock off brand because you do not have the firmware update to be able to use it the way I described in this post I would highly recommend that you get the temperature sensor attachment so can fully use all of its features and set the maximum temperature for 100*F for best performance and accuracy of the device and by using this feature you will weed out battery cells that have heating up issues

I do use the SkyRc B6 battery tester on used battery cells that I do not know the history of them or if I buy some from Battery Hookup and they say that there might be bad battery cells then I will use this battery tester to check these battery cells if they do not trip the high temperature set point I will then test them on my other battery testing machine for a more detailed charge / discharge curve analysis and determine how healthy the battery cells are

[eccerr0r]

I didn't even really bother with graphing... Time full. Time empty. Constant power draw. Done, calculate capacity. Yeah, some of the cells will be weaker than the others but can tell by checking each cell voltage when the pack is depleted/protection kicks in. Yes, if the protection is wrong that's a problem, but hopefully no fire starts and can remove that weak cell if possible. Eventually an AVR 90S4433 or something and some coding will do the dirty work if I need more accurate data...

BTW what percentage of cells are bad from BH (assuming if it's a pack, it's been tested?) ... I do see some packs where they are quite clear they didn't test, but some are "tested" - buyer beware and need to buy more just in case you get a bad pack?

[sam_sam_sam]

Maybe about 10% of the time of what I ordered and 70% when they say that the cell might be questionable and you should 80% good but I have noticed that stopped doing those listings a while back so I have not had a recent orders that I have had issues with

One note these are not the pallets deals that they have I have never done one I have been thinking about the rack mount battery packs but the shipping kills the deal for me unfortunately

[eccerr0r]

so if you order something that says "90% capacity left" it won't be 50% left within 10 cycles?

hmm... still not sure I want to order ... though I'd like to get at least 1kWh of 12V for backup, and 24V for miscellaneous uses ... yes shipping sucks, and don't know how good the cells really are...

[sam_sam_sam]

If you are interested in something post the link and let me see if I have been interested I might consider order one and test it and let you know what I think of it when I have bought some battery cells that I think someone might be interested I have posted the results of them and what I think of the product but I point out earlier the pallet deal are to expensive for my blood for battery packs that have bad cells in them and there is no guarantee that you will have as many as they claim you should have this is where I have had to ask for a partial refund because the majority of the cells did not meet what was advertised because if dose not say that they were tested it is a crapshoot I done this in the past when I wanted the enclosure and really did not care about the battery cells being good or not and weather or they were tested

Here is an example of why I would not even think about doing a pallet deal unless 90% of the battery cells are above 3.00 for lipo4 battery cells because in most cases they have issues with bad BMS board malfunctioning or just bad quality battery cells or they are at the end of life sin drum and what do you do with a bunch of bad battery cells I already have issue with this what I going to do make this situation even worse by buying something like this no I will not go down this rabbit hole

Even though it would be more convenient to have an rack mounted battery enclosure that is made for this purpose
I even asked Battery Hookup about if they ever removed bad battery cells out of one of these rack mounted battery cell enclosures would they consider selling it to me they said that they checked the warehouse and they said that they did not have any I do not know weather or not I believe them or not on this one because sometimes they respond to emails and sometimes they do not respond at all so who knows

Here is one that I bought several of them the battery cells are very good they tested at about 90 to 100 % according to the data sheet if I remember correctly

https://batteryhookup.com/collection...13s-6-4a-300wh

You can not use the board that is on it you have to remove it and just part it out it is fairly easy to recover the battery cells or just split it in half but be aware that one side one more battery cell rail than the other side

[sam_sam_sam]

so if you order something that says "90% capacity left" it won't be 50% left within 10 cycles?

I personally have not had this experience before when they say slightly used is because they have tested a few of them and that is the result that they got I have bought of those types of battery cells and I have gotten very good results but I will only do this if the battery cells are from a highly respected manufacturer like Samsung , Panasonic Sanyo and one other brand that they carry that I have written about the 21700 battery cells that were in a robotic battery pack enclosure those battery cells I sold on EBay for a little while last year and they were listed as slightly used and they tested as new according to the manufacturer data sheet

What you have to watch out for is when they say they were only voltage tested this a crapshoot buy because you could be lucky or you could get a bunch of very worn out battery cells I read there description very carefully for if they tested the battery cells randomly or did they just voltage test some of them randomly you are taking a bigger chance with this type of testing because in my book this not telling you very much other than they are not fully discharged battery cells and are not just scrap

I one had some Chinese made battery cells that were in a BlackWeb cell phone battery packs the electronics were decently made and during the Christmas holidays they ran a half off sale on them for several years until Walmart stopped selling this brand but the battery cells would last about a year or so and would get to a certain point where the run time was crap when this happened

I did not have access to Battery Hookup because these battery cells are 21700 cells in some of them and some of them had 18650 battery in fact one of the BlackWeb battery packs is gutted out the battery pack and put it in a medical computer backup enclosure that Battery Hookup is selling again the enclosure holds 27 battery cells ( 18650 ) however the battery cells that are in it are Panasonic brand but this series have an issue when they are at the end of their life some them become what is called heater cells and are not good for anything but the battery cell holder is very good quality and the outer enclosure is also a very good quality as well I have a few of them and I going to put a lot better battery cells in them and reuse them

Here is the computer battery backup enclosure I was referring to above

https://batteryhookup.com/collection...cents-per-cell


Here is where I used a BlackWeb battery for pack in the 27 battery cell holder that has a outside enclosure that was originally designed for a computer battery backup system


https://www.badcaps.net/forum/troubl...tteries-review


Here is another one that is very good quality battery cell they offer this several voltage and current capacity these are also tested at around 90 to 100 % so this one you can trust I tested a lot of them when I bought them I have an application where I going to retest some of them again because they have been in storage for several years now but when I randomly test some of them for voltage they were still very close to what my discharge cutoff voltage is

https://batteryhookup.com/products/2...hreaded-insert

I hope this helps

One note shipping costs are not going to be lower anytime soon if ever I notice that it just keeps going up so I just bite the bullet and just look for the best deals that they have on what they have available at the time

I can tell you that I am NOT very happy with the cost of shipping for quite some time now and it is only going to get worse shipping battery cells have to shipped a certain way and this drives up the price as well

[eccerr0r]

yeah, have to get a big batch to amortize shipping costs...but not buy so much that one can't use it...

[sam_sam_sam]

yeah, have to get a big batch to amortize shipping costs...but not buy so much that one can't use it...

Here is a trick that you can do about seeing if the shipping costs make sense for your order for one big order or separate them for two shipments instead of just one big one because the size of the box also matters as well sometimes I find when ordering something that has weight to it it makes more sense to do two orders instead of just one big order just be careful that you do not go to the payment screen by accident and your order is placed it happen to me once when using Affirm payment plan

One thing you might consider is getting a shipping account with maybe FedEx which is what they use for most of their orders I am not sure just how much you would save by doing this even if you could get a shipping account from them

What I do is take the amount of individual battery cells and divide them by how much the shipping charges are and see how much more money is add to each individual cell and is still worth it compared to a new battery cell of the same battery cell series if I am still saving a lot of money still and I can use them then I will get them

On rare occasions there cost is not much difference than buying new battery cells from a place like 18650battery.com when they are running a sale the only thing with them is sometimes they do not tell you how long the sale is for that price

But there shipping costs are a little higher in some case so unless there sale is not for half off or more than there normal price it does not make sense sometimes not worth it in the long run if you can find slightly used battery cells for less then this makes more sense

[eccerr0r]

Looks like 50 pounds is the shipping killer. Something like $15 + $1 or so per pound for ups/fedex, once it hits 50 have to go freight.
hmm.

Ugh. I wonder why BMS costs so much. Need to design my own I guess, though probably after getting boards fabricated it will also be expensive in quantities of 1. Plus I have a few cobalt/manganese/polymer 4S 20A BMS I got for a buck a piece maybe a year ago. Wonder if I can mod them for iron phosphate...

[sam_sam_sam]

From what I understand from YouTube videos I watched depending on the chip used you can supposedly modify the voltage set limit to a certain extent you just have to read the data sheets for if they are adjustable or not

Yes I know that at certain weight it has to go freight that is the reason I said about trying different order combinations for the best option for shipping

Because sometimes this also a deal breaker for me as well when the shipping costs are too high

One thing that you will notice is the higher the current capacity output one the higher the cost and some of them have the balancing feature built in I personally prefer them over just a BMS protection board but unfortunately they are more expensive than just a standard protection board

Also if they have the ability to communicate with your phone or tablet you will pay for this feature as well and unless you can adjust the voltage level limits and balancing feature to me it does not make sense to have this feature that it can communicate with your phone or tablet and in some cases can communicate with your computer

I personally have research this topic a little bit because like you I wonder why some of them are so expensive what features do they have that makes them so expensive and after watching several YouTube videos I started to understand why this was the case

[sam_sam_sam]

Here is an example of one offer that Battery Hookup has in there pallet collection that I would definitely NOT consider and would NOT recommend at ALL

https://batteryhookup.com/collection...s-parts-repair

Because I can bet you you are taking there bad battery pack cells are at the end of there life and would not be worth $100.00 this where reading the description is very IMPORTANT to do when they are repairing deals some of them are dealing and some of are not deals at all if shipping costs is not concern for you then the next listing is one I would consider

Now here is an example of what I would consider rebuilding a new battery cell configuration after retesting all of the cells to get the BMS protection board to behave like it should if it works properly

( But like I mentioned earlier this is a crapshoot because they are only voltage tested which only tells you that they are NOT completely dead so buyer be aware of this )

https://batteryhookup.com/products/4...50ah-lifepo4-1

To me this price is still a little bit high but the shipping cost would almost as much as they are asking for the pallet

What I waiting for is for them a pallet where the majority of the cells are bad and ask them gut the battery cells out of them that are totally dead so the shipping weight would be less so this is the reason I continually look at there pallet deal

When they had the pallet deals as an auction style I could not believe how high they got for what they were offering I was thinking to myself do these people understand what they are buying because these items were only voltage tested and nothing else I saw one pallet of rack mounted battery enclosure system got as high as $1000.00 and was sold for this price I said WOW really

I am sure this is one reason why they stopped doing auction style bidding because once they started testing them they were probably worn out and not worth what they paid for and probably had to refund the majority of it

[sam_sam_sam]

Here is another battery pack that you might consider

https://batteryhookup.com/products/1...dule-m1b-cells

One word of caution about these battery pack cells they are a little difficult to separate because the tabbing is hard to remove and the possibility of causing a direct short is extremely high these battery cells have a lot of current and can discharge it very quickly and make you case a fire it happens twice to me with this battery pack trying to separate it for several 12 volt battery packs after this happened I decided to just separate all of the battery cells and remake the battery pack configuration

Another word of caution about these battery cells the heat shrink tubing that was use is extremely thin and very easily ripped and this what caused the short circuit and caused it to catch fire twice also there is a thin plastic layer that is supposed to protect the battery cells from shorting out but this is also what makes it difficult to remove the tabbing from the battery cells as well


I still have not separated the hole pack yet because of this issue

Please take extreme care if you decide to buy one and want to make a different battery configuration than what is right now if just plan use this battery pack as designed you should be just fine it is going to be an issue if you decide to reuse these battery cells in a different configuration

To me this might be a better deal for me because it is configured for eight battery cells S and one P
I going to try this battery pack in my battery backup and see how well it performs in this application

https://batteryhookup.com/products/f...bms-24v-74-kwh


If it dose not work for this application I something else in mind maybe for my solar generator depending on what battery type was used because I have two solar panels for this solar generator and need to put them on my new shed and start using it

I will have to see if these battery packs are easier to separate in 12 volt battery packs than the one that I referred to above

[sam_sam_sam]

I mentioned this earlier in this post about how these BMS protection boards do not seem not to function correctly I have decided to test them in a different way and see if this makes a difference or not

https://batteryhookup.com/collection...-lifepo4-cells

But received my order of 6.4 and 9.6 BMS protection boards that I need to test as well I might get to this today sometime later on today

[sam_sam_sam]

Here is how I am testing the BMS protection board for functionality with the voltage cutoff set point is which is unknown when charging I know what the discharge cutoff voltage which is 1.5 volts but this is BMS turning off but I do not know what the actual battery voltage is and my hunch is that it is different from when you are hooked to the BMS output side of it so what I done is make a BMS testing jig so I can see what the exact voltage cutoff is for charging and discharging threshold are to know if I can use this BMS protection board for charging or not see the picture below to see how I am doing this test

The set points are 2 amp charging and 3.4 volt cutoff when this done then I will set the current to 0.50 amps and a cutoff voltage of 3.7 volts and see what the results are so I can determine weather or not I can use them as they are or do I have remove the BMS protection boards and discard them because they are not meant Lipo 4 battery cells

I might have time to test the 9.6 BMS protection boards that I bought recently and see how they function

The power leads are hooked to the BMS protection board output and the voltage sensing wires are on the battery cells it self before the BMS protection board

[sam_sam_sam]

One thing I have noticed is that the charging curve looks different when you have it hooked directly to the battery cell output instead of the BMS output lines they look a lot better than from the BMS output side

No there is an issue with this BMS protection board the voltage climbed up to 3.6something and I stopped the testing of this BMS board now I going to put on a regular 18650 li-ion battery cell and set the voltage to 4.5 volts and see if it ever gets to a cutoff voltage point or they completely defective and are not useable at all WOW no wonder these battery packs were sold for a second chance at a new life they are still worth the money paid for them I am just disappointed that I could not use the BMS protection board I sure could have used some of the and saved some money but I guess this is not in the cards this time around

Now I am testing a regular 4.2 li-ion battery cell so let's see if it will cutoff at 4.2 volts or not if this is the case then the mystery will be solved once and for all about BMS the seller of BMS protection boards are sometimes misleading about what the cutoff voltage range because it has happened to me before when it 3.8 volts they mean cutoff voltage really is 4.2 volts and when they that it is 3.2 volt it really depends on the manufacturer because it could 3.5 to 3.8 volts so you have to test them when you buy them to make sure that you have the right type of BMS protection board for what type of battery you are using

I would build mine my own but the ones I have seen on YouTube use a voltage reference ic chip to turn a transistor or a mosfet and use regular diodes as the voltage drop when the battery finishes charging and reaches the cutoff voltage I do not like this design or approach for a couple of reasons one is you would have to watch the protection board LEDs for when it changes from red to green and when it is green it is wasting current energy in the string of diodes that do this to keep this from happening you would have remove power from the protection board circuit is to much of a hassle to do this

The second thing is that you are limited to one amp or less this is not practical for to use this setup

[sam_sam_sam]

probably have to desolder and test without the battery? or with a real cobalt/manganese/polymer battery?

I'll need to get/make a charger... fortunately have some 24V chargers but not very high current...

Do you want to monitor the individual battery cell rails or just let the BMS protection board handle this part of it because I could link a couple of eBay sellers that something like this

[sam_sam_sam]

I have bad mouth this Lipo 4 BMS protection board when I said that I wonder if it function correctly at all well it does function but I do not like the parameters at which it works at as follows charging cutoff voltage 3.895 discharge cutoff voltage around 1.5 volts I personally do not like these parameters for long term longevity of the battery cells and the pack as is packaged

The up side of this when the battery voltage get beyond 3.5 volts it climbs very quickly and would turn off but you would have to use a 500 milliamperes charger for it not to kill the battery cell if the BMS fails to turn off to late at higher current

I will use them on some Lipo 4 battery cells that are not so great to begin with and further there demise so I can give them a proper good by for poor quality and poor running time preference to begin with and just see if this makes them burst in a flaming fire ball but I will have to get a metal pale with a good amount of sand for safety reasons and make sure that I am outside when I do this nonsense

I finally found a safe way to test BMS protection boards with my battery testing machine but it has taken a very long time to get to this point where I am at I could not complete this endeavor if I had not persisted with it and not taking NO as an answer to this issue yes I did rune two single channel battery testing machine that I will repurpose for another function that I need to data log for an up coming proof of concept that I have in mind

This is one reason I have not been very gun ho to build very many battery packs because of not having a reliable way to test BMS protection boards properly because of not wanting to have thermal runaway situations where they can and do bursting in to fire when things go terribly wrong yes I have a lot of respect for these battery cells that can be dangerous and do a lot of property damage plus I want to do this under taking responsibility and not have hazardously doing something I know better

One very important note that I will have to modify this single battery testing machine to do single battery cell testing because I not sure how the buck converter is going to handle voltage that abruptly turning off from 3.5 to 4.2 volts and jumps to 24 volts dc but this not difficult to modify I just have to remove the 12 volt linear voltage regulator ic chip and cut one circuit trace and hook it to a 12 volt switching power supply board that is the same size physically and power the battery testing controller at the regulator output pin and input pin put a adjustable switching power supply and have it about 2 volts higher than the battery pack voltage and yes I did a proof of concept of this aspect part of issue and I know that it does work with no issues because I sure that there are still voltage spike issues the only difference is that when you have both the voltage sense and current output wires on the output of the BMS protection board you all of sudden turn the power off after the voltage spike versus leaving the voltage high because the voltage sense wires have not meet the set point which just leaves in the high voltage level which to me is not quite as bad but even this can not be good in the long term which is the reason I going to modify one of them to just do BMS protection boards and that is it

One other note for people that have been following my endeavor with testing battery cells and BMS protection boards to keep my battery testing machine from destroying it self from my testing them which it was not designed to do safely I have finally found a solution to this problem which I am happy about and I can move on to bigger and more challenging endeavors like I mentioned earlier in this post or another one where I made the comment that when something bothers me and I do not understand why it will not work or why I just cannot get it to work the way I want it to I just cannot leave it alone it just keeps raising it ugly head and becomes a thorn in the side I have to find an answer to it to put to reset one and for all

When I have modified the battery machine I will make another post on this subject and I will show pictures of what was modified to make this to work testing BMS protection boards

My next endeavor is going to be to combine the BMS protection board testing and add the function of seeing each battery voltage in real time while testing battery packs for battery packs that are more than one S and being able to test battery packs up to 24 volts this project has already been tested for proof of concept now it is putting everything together in one enclosure and this project is about 60% complete right now

One finally note I do not think I am going to do the 9.6 BMS battery testing today I need to build the jig for it and I do not want to start this———this late in the afternoon close to night time because I need to settle down for night so I sleep and get up in the morning to go to work

[sam_sam_sam]

dang...about ready to push the button on a few of the used packs from BH... should I beware?
thinking about seeing if I can save a kilowatt hour and dumping it back onto the grid when the electrical rate is high, but unsure how my GTI will handle it, not to mention still need to figure out how to charge these batteries.

This might be a solution for you I personally have not bought one but I have considered it as a possibility for high current charging but I have no idea what kind of a quality they are but I can tell you that probably Chinese made and even designed by China or some other country


https://www.aliexpress.us/item/32568...Cquery_from%3A

One limitation they seem to have when the voltage and current are adjustable controls the current is very non linear in nature unfortunately especially at current lower than 500 milliamperes and above this current it goes up rapidly no fine adjustment now the voltage is a little bit better but not by much but if you do not need to be very precise then this should work fine

The rough adjustments like 100 milliamperes jump unless you turn the adjustment knob very slowly you will go by your intended set point and for the might be 0.050 volts jumping up or down depending on what direction you are going but let say that you 25.0 volts you will probably go up to high and going in the opposite direction you might go past it unless you go very slowly even though it is a 10 turn pot control

Setting for fast charging might not be that much of a challenge to set the current or voltage controls if you have a decent BMS protection board you probably will need to be that accurate because you have two forms of protection in mater of speaking

[sam_sam_sam]

I do not know if you saw this project before or not

https://www.instructables.com/Li-ion-Capacity-Tester-/

Here is another one you might find interesting

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+...CHtwskzLA,st:0


I have watched some of YouTube videos before and I find his projects very interesting and informative

One thing you should be aware of is that sometimes the charging milliamperes do not always match the discharging current milliamperes and sometimes not even close and the curves sometimes are very different sometimes it does not make a difference in determining how healthy a battery cell but sometimes it does make a difference and this is something that I do not completely understand stand this but I have seen this in battery cells that are near the end of life or maybe it a sign that it on its way to being that way but I really do not have any answers to this question

In the aspect of the charging time is shorter in the discharging time and how steep the curve are and the difference between them are sometimes makes a difference when building a battery pack because the ones that charge up faster can trip the BMS protection board to end the charging cycle and the same thing happens when discharging now if the difference is not very much it does not effect the running time very much but if it is drastic then it will greatly affect the running time and I am sure that you might be aware of all of this and the reasons I am bringing this up

The more accurate you have your current load source the more accurate information you will have for determining milliamperes of a battery cell and the pack in general why I bring this up is that you do not necessarily need to date log the results to analyze the results in detail but it helps when you have a very picky BMS protection board

[sam_sam_sam]

The more accurate you have your current load source the more accurate information you will have for determining milliamperes of a battery cell and the pack in general why I bring this up is that you do not necessarily need to date log the results to analyze the results in detail but it helps when you have a very picky BMS protection board

This also the case if you are interested in efficiency of your process meaning efficiency of the solar panels and the battery bank both effect the performance of the system

This is what is keeping me from building a solar panels and battery banks to cut down on electricity consumption in my house as well but I still have to many unanswered questions plus the cost of the panels and not knowing enough about which solar panels are better than other the battery cell and pack building I am pretty informed about and I have done enough battery testing make the next step is getting a good understanding of BMS protection balancing protocol and how to determine which brands are better than others but the biggest challenge was getting a proper way to test the functionality of BMS protection balancing protocols to ensure that they work properly the rest of the knowledge that I need will come from testing BMS protection board and testing the balancing functionality if has that function

The one big question I have is BMS protection balancing modules that gives you the ability to create your own profiles for changing and discharging and maintaining your battery packs is really worth the extra money that you would have to spend on these modular systems and especially the ones that have the Bluetooth capabilities that you can see remotely in real time is it really worth it in the long run but a bigger question is what if your BMS has a major malfunction what are you left with do they shut down and refuse to turn on half ass turn and create a short circuit and you have thermal run a way