iCharger 3010b regenerative discharge setup advice anyone?

[voicecoils]

Hi iCharger experts!

I'm trying to get a iCharger 3010b setup to do two things primarily:

* low current cell level balance of 10S LiMn lipo packs (powered by a Meanwell 12v 29A supply)
* discharge test above packs at or close to 1000W while data-logging through LogView

I'd like to tackle the second task first and from what I've read, regen charging into another battery is the best method for the 3010b to handle high power discharging.

What I'm unclear about, from the charger's manual is what sort of battery I need to be discharging into. Will any 12v or 24v deep cycle lead acid suit? (can the charger do the necessary DC-DC conversion at high discharge currents?) Or is it best to use a similar, partially charged 10S lithium battery so that the voltages are close?

If the 2nd option is best, I can take the battery I want to test with, fully charged and connect to the charger's 'output' and then on the charger's 'input' I can connect a mostly discharged battery of the same nominal voltage but with much higher capacity.

eg test a full 42v10Ah battery by discharging into a near empty 35v20Ah pack (so that the 'load bank' does not overcharge).

Thanks for the advice in advance!

 

[voicecoils]

link to the manual FYI:

http://www.progressiverc.com/iCharger%203010B%20Manual.pdf

Page 11 discusses regenerative discharge for general reference

 

[neptronix]

Hi iCharger experts!

I'm trying to get a iCharger 3010b setup to do two things primarily:

* low current cell level balance of 10S LiMn lipo packs (powered by a Meanwell 12v 29A supply)
* discharge test above packs at or close to 1000W while data-logging through LogView

I'd like to tackle the second task first and from what I've read, regen charging into another battery is the best method for the 3010b to handle high power discharging.

What I'm unclear about, from the charger's manual is what sort of battery I need to be discharging into. Will any 12v or 24v deep cycle lead acid suit? (can the charger do the necessary DC-DC conversion at high discharge currents?) Or is it best to use a similar, partially charged 10S lithium battery so that the voltages are close?

If the 2nd option is best, I can take the battery I want to test with, fully charged and connect to the charger's 'output' and then on the charger's 'input' I can connect a mostly discharged battery of the same nominal voltage but with much higher capacity.

eg test a full 42v10Ah battery by discharging into a near empty 35v20Ah pack (so that the 'load bank' does not overcharge).

Thanks for the advice in advance!

Any battery will work.
You set the minimum and maximum voltages for the battery, as well as the amp rate to charge the battery at.
The range of voltage for the battery should be the same as the input voltage range of your charger. I forget what the 3010b+ is, but i'm thinking it's 10v-24v.

The main consideration is the charge rate of the input battery.
You can only discharge as much as the input battery can take. So the bigger battery on the input side, the better!!

Remember that lead acid's charge rate is like.. 0.2C on a good day.
I did the calculations on how big a battery i would need to do a 10a discharge..
Yeah, i'd need two giant car batteries :x

I just went with a halogen discharge setup instead. I can't track the AH that way but i can track the voltage difference near the end.. which matters to me most. If you got spare lipo though, go for it..

 

[voicecoils]

Thanks Nep.

So it has a reasonably efficient converter that can boost or lower voltage at the output (charging side)? The specs just say 4.5-38v input, output listed as 1-10S LiPo.

I was thinking some 12-24v 100Ah+ deep cycle batteries could take a 1000W hit or I can just hack up some headway 3.2v10Ah cell packs, perhaps 6 in series and several in parallel.

 

[neptronix]

I am pretty sure of that but can't say yes.
I believe how it works is much like a eBike controller doing regen; taking X volts and converting it into X volts, going backwards..

I believe the low & high voltage range setting of the iCharger can be used as a LVC/HVC for the regen battery.

LFP knows more, hopefully he chimes in here.

 

[liveforphysics]

It's a bi-directional, high efficiency, wide range variable input/output DC/DC converter.

It can work with just about any battery you want.

 

[voicecoils]

It's a bi-directional, high efficiency, wide range variable input/output DC/DC converter.

It can work with just about any battery you want.

Sweet, thanks Luke.

Any ideas on the practical max input & output voltages? They mention 38v as the top input voltage, but for 10S LiPo I'll need to both charge to 42v and discharge from 42v.

I'd also like to avoid blowing it up, as the HobbyCity customer reviews regularly mention them bursting into flames (though probably from improper use). I won't be using the Meanwell power supply for any high current charging which I hope will help.

 

[neptronix]

Run those regen batteries in parallel and not serial.

Bursting into flames; that's another issue. Actually the heatsink design on the 3010b is terrible, docbass had a thread about it.
Keep the charge rates and input voltage a bit below maximum and you should be okay.

The only failures i've heard on here were when people ran the discharge+ mode and plugged in an input at the top of the voltage range of a 1010b+ ( mwkeefer ). What i find with DC-DC converters is that their top input range = right around where they die.

Those are the only bad things i know about the iCharger line.

 

[voicecoils]

Run those regen batteries in parallel and not serial.

Bursting into flames; that's another issue. Actually the heatsink design on the 3010b is terrible, docbass had a thread about it.
Keep the charge rates and input voltage a bit below maximum and you should be okay.

The only failures i've heard on here were when people ran the discharge+ mode and plugged in an input at the top of the voltage range of a 1010b+ ( mwkeefer ). What i find with DC-DC converters is that their top input range = right around where they die.

Those are the only bad things i know about the iCharger line.

When I mentioned the Headways, I was thinking along the lines of 6S4P (24 cells total, 768Wh, 19.2v 40Ah)

The manual says internal discharge power is 80W or I can see how it would blow if people tried to push it beyond that.

I need to be able to run up to 42v but for balance charging, 1-2A is more then fine and for discharge testing it can just pass energy from one battery to another. However, if the DC-DC is less then 90% efficient, then discharging at 1000W will be dissipating 100W+ at the charger and that's when I'd start worrying about the charger's ability to dissipate that heat.

 

[joe tomten]

Keep in mind that if your source "big battery" is fully charged and you start discharging your bike batteries into it, it's voltage will quickly rise to the max setpoint that you chose, and the icharger will back off the discharge rate.

 

[liveforphysics]

Voicecoils- It doesn't matter what voltage the battery is that you're using for regen discharge. Hook a pair of car batteries in series for a 24v battery, and call it a day. It will charge your pack up to 42v, and discharge your 42v pack as happy as can be (assuming your pack doesn't hold more capacity than the pair of car batteries can hold, then obviously it can't.)

It can discharge a single 3v cell into that 24v battery with no issues at all, I do it almost every day. It's efficient enough during regen that I've never hit the thermal dissipation limits of the device, though it does get warm (as it should).

The way people kill these chargers is as follows:

#1. Disconnecting battery or power supply while charging at high current, and the inductive spike kills it.
#2. Using sh#tty wiggly alligator clip connections or something, bumping it, and having the connection break for a moment and getting killed by he inductive spike.
#3. Using the series resistive load to increase the discharge rate. If it was a giant resistor, it would never kill the charger (minimal inductance added), but people use big coils of wire and groups of lightbulbs and things instead, so as the charger is regulating current, it's eating a big spike sandwich everytime it turns the FETs off (or if you disconnected the leads).

 

[joe tomten]

Oops, sorry.
I was thinking the 1010b which is a 12v deal.

livephysique is right per usual

 

[voicecoils]

Voicecoils- It doesn't matter what voltage the battery is that you're using for regen discharge. Hook a pair of car batteries in series for a 24v battery, and call it a day. It will charge your pack up to 42v, and discharge your 42v pack as happy as can be (assuming your pack doesn't hold more capacity than the pair of car batteries can hold, then obviously it can't.)

Thanks again. Fortunately, I had no intention of doing bad things #1, #2 or #3 but I do like knowing the reasons why things blow.

The silly thing is, I have no lead acid batteries in my life otherwise I'd use them to dump charge into. Now that I know a 10S lipo load is not a problem, there's plenty of lithium around that I can use & abuse.

Check out the badass bug that decided to hangout on my meanwell yesterday!

 

[texaspyro]

One of my favorite bugs... I've seen them eat the lizards around here (invasive geckos, not the lovely anoles). I'm also rather fond of walking sticks.

 

[liveforphysics]

Mantids rock. I had a pet mantis for a few months in college. We battled him against black widows, big armored beetles, ants, various spiders, etc. Kicked everythings ass, and did it with stylw

 

[neptronix]

Mantids rock. I had a pet mantis for a few months in college. We battled him against black widows, big armored beetles, ants, various spiders, etc. Kicked everythings ass, and did it with stylw

Cool! Reminds me of pokemon..

 

[voicecoils]

GRAVE DIG

I've finally had a chance to play around with the icharger regenerative discharge mode. While the menu system takes a little getting used to, the charger itself is an amazingly capable device.

One limitation I've found is that the battery you are discharging into (ie charging) can only be charged up to 37v, the voltage is adjustable but 37v is the top charge.

At the moment I'm discharging a 3.2v60Ah thundersky at 30A into a 37v10Ah LiMn battery. Cool!

 

[theRealFury]

GRAVE DIG

I've finally had a chance to play around with the icharger regenerative discharge mode. While the menu system takes a little getting used to, the charger itself is an amazingly capable device.

One limitation I've found is that the battery you are discharging into (ie charging) can only be charged up to 37v, the voltage is adjustable but 37v is the top charge.

At the moment I'm discharging a 3.2v60Ah thundersky at 30A into a 37v10Ah LiMn battery. Cool!

Nice one. Just for reference though, its better to have alower voltage battery on the receiving end of the power. So in your case it would be better to discharge your 3.2v 60AH battery into a 6S 20AH pack. The problem is that the maximum voltage that your charger can handle on the usual input side (in this case the battery to be receiving the regenerative discharge) is 38V so the charger cuts off at 37v for safety. If you run a 6S storage battery then it will be a happier charger.

 

[voicecoils]

Well, one of the things I think is so neat about the iCharger is that you can have a mismatch of voltages on either end and the charger. The charger can step-up or step-down voltage as needed.

I plan to do some battery discharge testing with it and will primarily be discharging 37v nominal lipo so I'll probably try to dump it into a 20-30v bank of batteries.

 

[Spacey]

Would you be able to draw a diagram of your set up using the discharge into another battery if you have time?

I'm discharging sinle Headway cells ....all 16 @ 16ah.... At the huge discharge of 7A

 

[voicecoils]

Would you be able to draw a diagram of your set up using the discharge into another battery if you have time?

I'm discharging sinle Headway cells ....all 16 @ 16ah.... At the huge discharge of 7A

Are you using the same charger?

I can take a photo of the setup.

But, basically you just connect the battery you want to charge to the output, and the battery you want to discharge to the input.

In the menus, you need to turn 'regenerative charging' ON. It's OFF by default. If you search for 'regenerative' in the online manual you will find the section on how to turn it on.

 

[whatever]

heres an interesting video showing the icharger being used in regen mode...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK7Y7zkiv3w


he's using light globes instead of resistors, i had read elsewhere of people having problems using globes,
but maybe they were using dischg not dischg+ mode

anyone got any updates since this thread was last used

 

[theRealFury]

Thats not regen mode, thats just Discharge+ mode which used an external load such as a resistor to increase discharge power. The regen discharge specifically means discharging one battery to directly charge another. Basically a storage battery takes the place of the power supply in a normal RC charger setup, but when discharging the subject battery the power is sent into the storage battery so that it can be stored and used to recharge another battery later.

 

[whatever]

thanks fury, i've just starting using an icharger 208b, still learning the ropes, they are amazing chargers,
very useful for balancing cells, I'm a bit wary of doing discharging, but hope to give it a try soon