Test results LiFePO4 glider batteries after 6 years

On Thursday, March 9, 2017 at 6:16:51 PM UTC-8, SF wrote:
Yes worth it. Higher voltage will be appreciated by the radio. More capacity.
Lighter weight, longer life.
Not really a hassle with the right charger, just a little different.

The thread has inspired me to test my LFPs.

3 year old Starkpower 12AH used for instruments, 11.86AH (tested to 11V @ 1.5A). This improved to 11.91 on the second cycle.

3 year old Starkpower 9AH used for self rig wing dolly, 8.60AH (to 11V @ 1A).

2 year old CTC 19.8AH used for engine start, 19.38AH (to 11V @ 2A). I may give this one a second cycle to see if it improves.

While I was at it, a 5 year old PowerSonic 14 AH SLA, 9.8AH (11V @ 1A). This battery had been sitting idle and uncharged for 3 years, till I charged it for the test.

The SLA had a nearly linear drop from 12.8V to 11V, dropping under 12V at about 60% discharge, while all of the LFPs stayed above 12.5 until about the 90% discharged point.

On 3/12/2017 10:54 PM, jfitch wrote:
While I was at it, a 5 year old PowerSonic 14 AH SLA, 9.8AH (11V @ 1A). This battery had been sitting idle and uncharged for 3 years, till I charged it for the test.

I would have expected 3 years of uncharged storage to turn that
Powersonic into a doorstop.

On Monday, March 13, 2017 at 5:06:50 AM UTC-7, Vaughn Simon wrote:
On 3/12/2017 10:54 PM, jfitch wrote:
While I was at it, a 5 year old PowerSonic 14 AH SLA, 9.8AH (11V @ 1A). This battery had been sitting idle and uncharged for 3 years, till I charged it for the test.

I would have expected 3 years of uncharged storage to turn that
Powersonic into a doorstop.

Yeah, I was kind of surprised it still had useable capacity.

SF wrote on 3/12/2017 5:15 PM:
My Dittle FSG60M, (May it RIP after it's death three weeks ago) Was the first thing in the airplane that suffered from the effects of low voltage.

Definitely not a "modern radio", as the design is over 37 years old, but it was a
very good radio back then.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
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- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Dec 2014a" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm

http://soaringsafety.org/prevention/...anes-2014A.pdf

Mine is a Terra 720 and suffers badly during transmit when voltage drops below 12v so I have always made 14v packs which are over 3+ years old now and need replacing. Hence the quandary about new Lifepo4's I am in communication with "Dakota" batteries and they are putting a BMS system into there batteries the has cell balancing starting in April sometime. And are selling for about $90 ea for 10 amp hour.

I've had my K2's for about five years now. Last spring I bought a CTEK LiFePo4 charger, which has 8 stages and ran the batteries through several recharges. Each time the batteries seemed to absorb a bit more.

Last week I flew one battery for over 7 hours on two flights. The Air Glide S showed the voltage flipping between 11.9 & 12.1. Note that the Air Glide S seems to underread by about 0.6V compared to the Tasman. Poking around with probes showed no drop in voltage between the battery and the Air Glide.

Back on the charger it took over three hours to get the battery back up to float. The charger was quite warm for the 2.5 hours in stage 2.

The other battery flown for three hours charged back up in a little over an hour.

I suspect that the batteries need heavier usage than just 3-4 hours of flight before accepting a full recharge.

On 08/08/2018 10:08 AM, George Haeh wrote:
I've had my K2's for about five years now. Last spring I bought a CTEK LiFePo4 charger, which has 8 stages and ran the batteries through several recharges. Each time the batteries seemed to absorb a bit more.

Last week I flew one battery for over 7 hours on two flights. The Air Glide S showed the voltage flipping between 11.9 & 12.1. Note that the Air Glide S seems to underread by about 0.6V compared to the Tasman. Poking around with probes showed no drop in voltage between the battery and the Air Glide.

Back on the charger it took over three hours to get the battery back up to float. The charger was quite warm for the 2.5 hours in stage 2.

The other battery flown for three hours charged back up in a little over an hour.

I suspect that the batteries need heavier usage than just 3-4 hours of flight before accepting a full recharge.


You've got two old batteries, with two different state of charges.
Rather than speculating on some memory effect, it might be more likely
that the batteries are no longer equivalent, perhaps one has a few weak
cells and needs a bunch of balancing.

That was an interesting thread you bumped, didn't realize just how much
misinformation got crammed into that one. Someone stated that you don't
charge a LI-PO battery with a SLA charger, certainly a true statement.
Multiple people responded by saying that it's fine to charge an LFP with
a SLA charger. It's almost as if they don't know the difference. With
all the discussion about how typical BMS boards need high voltage
applied for a long period of time in order to balance cells, some people
still think the SLA charger works fine for LFP. I guess it's fine as
long as you don't care about the lifetime of your battery, and if you
don't care about getting a full charge.

Then there was another discussion about how radios supposedly last
longer with higher voltage, because someone's 37 year old radio just
died. I really don't think it would have lasted any longer no matter
what voltage was used. Similarly, radios that we use don't draw less
current with higher voltage, the only instrument in your panel that
might draw a bit less current is a transponder.

-Dave

"the only instrument in your panel that
might draw a bit less current is a transponder"

I seriously doubt it. All modern avionics are designed to operate over a wide input voltage range; they have internal dc-dc conversion circuits that transform the supply voltage to a regulated, operating voltage. Trig, for instance, specifies an input voltage of 11 to 33 V.

Tom

I installed a small coulometer (with LCD-display, available from Ebay) between my charger and battery. I can also discharge battery (with car tail light bulb as load) with coulometer. For example, before disconnecting charger I can see that charger put 3 Ah to battery. Annual test shows total capacity from 100% charge to 0%. No more guesswork about battery condition.

There would be market for full-blown panel mounted battery monitor system for gliders. One that monitors each battery charge and discharge, with built in breakers etc.

On Wed, 08 Aug 2018 23:55:38 -0700, krasw wrote:

I installed a small coulometer (with LCD-display, available from Ebay)
between my charger and battery.

Multi-chemistry chargers are sold for RC model flying that are also
suitable for checking capacity on our batteries and can handle any
chemistry that is normally used in gliders. Prices vary (of course)
depending on capabilities, but are generally reasonable unless you want
the sort of gorilla charger used by the F5x crowd. In the USA HobbyKing
would a a reasonable place to start looking.

But, none of them will fit in a glider's panel.



--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org