Large Scale Central

Battery Chargers - - A poll

Electronics Power and Sound
#21

Balancing chargers in general are far superior to the basic Smart chargers referenced above. The so called low-end SMART chargers are essentially nothing more than low cost linear battery chargers, simplicity, wider voltage tolerances together with inefficiency and potential for excessive heat dissipation ring true. Furthermore these chargers RELY on the batteries onboard PCB/PCM’s charge current shunts and sensitivity to terminate charge albeit not accurately, whereas these chargers offer a system level specification of ±1% final battery voltage to terminate without benefit of elapsed time limits, temperature and other desirable secondary termination attributes (± 50mV of final battery voltage is typical with real Smart chargers).

The low end Smart chargers also fall short of fully charging your batteries. Undercharging by only 100mV nets a 10% loss of the battery capacity. For this reason, accurate control of the final charging voltage is desirable if not mandatory of Lithium chargers. FWIW some cells are rated at 3.6V while others are rated at 3.7V which exasperates the aforementioned under charged phenomena.

All that said these low end Smart chargers suffice for the masses and are easy to operate. There are caveats though as noted in the descriptions of said chargers such as DO NOT USE THIS CHARGER WITHOUT BENEFIT OF BATTERIES WITH INTEGRAL PCB/PCMs. Additionally some sort of line voltage timer to limit overall charge time would be desirable offerring a secondary charge termination feature.

The aforementioned Tenergy balance charger offers many desirable benefits as compared to the low end chargers. This charger can be used without benefit of the integral cell charge/discharge balance feature same as any other charger.

Michael

#22

So… What are you wanting to poll?

#23

Steve,

I personally believe the low end smart chargers fall short of my requirements.

I tend to lean toward the more sophisticated multi cell chemistry/technology or universal intelligent chargers, as I use batteries for planes, trains and automobiles and more. These chargers require the operator to provide some basic data of which the charger validates and off you go. That said these chargers are ill advised for many users that want plug and charge simplicity. Most of these chargers also allow you to select the final cell voltage for lithium i.e., 4.1V or 4.2V.

The primary features I’d look for of a Lithium charger is a current-limited constant voltage source constant-current, constant-voltage, or CC-CV charging algorithm. I’ve noted references to this as a 4 stage/step charge algorithm too.

Secondary features would be elapsed time cut-off, balancing functions and cell/battery temperature monitoring to name just a few…

Charger specifications or needs are a prerequisite of user choices i.e., cell chemistry-voltage-capacity.
I review the chargers data sheet when available, unfortunately data sheets of low end stuff is generally not offered.

Tenergy’s TLP-4000 works on 1-4 lithium cells offering a 1A charge rate together with CC-CV charge algorithm and is user friendly too, but its only good for a MAXIMUM battery voltage of 14.4V.

If you run higher voltage batteries, the charger must work within that voltage specification.

The Tenergy TB6-B is good choice IMO for those that require a charger that does more!

There are MANY chargers available from a multitude of sources, many share the same IC’s.

Michael

#24

Michael -

Thanks much for the information you posted here and in the other thread regarding charge rate. That is exactly what I was missing in order to set up my programmable charger. I’ll start using it as my primary and keep the simple “smart” charger as a backup.

#25

Good info, Michael