dogman dan
1 PW
There's the rub. Lifepo4 has a very flat discharge curve, so watching a simple voltmeter on the handlebars works really poorly. All is fine for a long time, then wham, you overdischarged it. News flash for you, 12v is pretty much fully discharged. So try not to let it go to 11v per pack.
That's why you see so little of lifepo4 being used without a bms. Other chemistries give you a few min warning before diving off the voltage cliff. So if you are watching, you can stop sooner. But with lifepo4, it hits like, WHAM. I think your controller lvc may be low enough to still allow damage before it trips.
The only solution short of a bms is to do careful testing, and find out what your capacity is with a wattmeter of some kind. Then, try to not use more than 80% of your field tested actual real world capacity.
No way can you let kids take it, with a warning to not over discharge. They will. It will be hard enough for you not to do it.
That's why you see so little of lifepo4 being used without a bms. Other chemistries give you a few min warning before diving off the voltage cliff. So if you are watching, you can stop sooner. But with lifepo4, it hits like, WHAM. I think your controller lvc may be low enough to still allow damage before it trips.
The only solution short of a bms is to do careful testing, and find out what your capacity is with a wattmeter of some kind. Then, try to not use more than 80% of your field tested actual real world capacity.
No way can you let kids take it, with a warning to not over discharge. They will. It will be hard enough for you not to do it.