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Old 04-11-2012, 02:56 PM   #116 (permalink)
brucepick
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Location: Eastern CT, USA
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Outasight - '00 Honda Insight
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Quote:
Originally Posted by steffen707 View Post
I know you went with a different battery, but do you know if their 50AH rating is for 1amp draw for 50 hours? Do they all just assume its a 1amp draw? This is kinda a sweet setup as you don't have to use a DC-DC converter which would have an efficiency loss every time you use it.
I don't know. But I THINK if you search on the XS Power D1400 you might find the info. I wasn't happy at the charger's price; made it an expensive proposition. And I didn't find any other chargers for 14V lead acid batteries around. Plenty of them for hand held power tools but those batteries are a fraction of the size of the 14V Stinger and mostly now have lithium packs; these are completely different beasts.

Quote:
Originally Posted by steffen707 View Post
I also am concerned about this charger for your pack, Smart Charger (10 A) for 12.8V LiFePO4 Battery Pack, Worldwide use, CE listed doesn't mention if its a 3 stage charger or not. It says "smart" charger, but what does that really mean?
No it's not a 3-stage, it's one stage. However I believe that's what you want for a lithium pack. With lithium cells, the important thing is management of the voltage and charge level of the individual cells. My pack has a passive circuit that kicks in after charging completes, to balance the cells.

The Wipedia page on LiFePO4's says:
"Charge: Up to C/1 rate up to 3.6 V, then constant voltage at 3.6 V until I < C/24" C/1 translates to 40 amps charge rate for a 40 AH battery, 10A rate for a 10AH battery, etc. The "C" reference also applies for discharge rates which aren't necessarily the same as the charge rates. The "until I < C/24" translates to "until Amps drops to [capacity in amps] / 24".

The charger's spec sheet includes:
"Cut-Off voltage = 14.6 +/- 0.3VDC (3.65 +/- 0.08VDC per cell) "

So my charger runs at 10A until charging voltage rises to 3.65V/cell which is 14.6V overall. Not exactly the same as what Wikipedia's page indicates but I think in actual use, the volts and amps from this charger are within a very small delta from what the Wikipedia page would suggest.
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