DIY Solutions to Honda Hybrid Battery Problems (Insight, Civic, IMA)

[msantimanzano]

The cycles I ran were discharge then charge. Stick 9, first cycle, discharged 1427, then charged 4456. I am concerned that because I left all settings at the default levels the charger may be set to charge a lower amount than it should for these particular batteries. I don't know if that is likely or not. Cobb, none of the cells got too hot to touch, all of the sticks got warm/hot at different times of the process. I checked all cells with laser temp gun. The hottest temps were 118, with all cells in that pack hovering the same range. All 3 sticks saw temps up between 115 to 118 at different points.

Should I adjust specific settings and start all over? Since the factory specs say my battery pack is a 6000 amp hour pack, shouldn't the batteries have taken around 6000ah instead of just over 4000?

[msantimanzano]

After a bit more research, I find a couple of things which may have resulted in low charge rates with the sticks I cycled so far.

The charger has a default safety timer set to 120 minutes. That means that at 2 hours, regardless of what the voltage, capacity, delta peak etc. is, the charger will stop charging as a safety mechanism. I don't know, but if I understand correctly, 1 cycle of a stick could take longer than 2 hours. That being the case, none of the sticks I already did would have charged enough.

The delta peak settings were set at 3mv. If any of my cells dropped in voltage by that much, the charger would also stop charging.

The capacity cutoff was also wrong.

I have changed these settings, and I am running a different stick of 6 cells through the cycles.

Can you guys clarify for me, if the battery capacity is 6000, should the charges be showing closer to that number?

[msantimanzano]

Just a brief update. I've been tied up with work etc. so have not been able to do all I wanted to on this, but I did re-do a stick but with different parameters, to ensure the charger was not shutting off prematurely, failing to discharge the cells properly etc. The numbers are vastly different. I'll let some of you tell me in laymen's what I am looking at now.

Battery 3, gave me these numbers the first time I cycled it:

STICK 3 CHARGE DISCHARGE
FIRST 2794 1165
SECOND 2280 1118
THIRD 2285 1116
FOURTH 2351 1116
FIFTH 2266 1118


Adjusting the charger, it now gives me these numbers:
STICK 3 CHARGE DISCHARGE
FIRST 3441 5504
SECOND 3448 5234
THIRD 3449 5162
FOURTH 3449 5322
FIFTH 3454 5302

[cavalon]

So this may have been answered somewhere in here but hopefully someone can just confirm my summary. So from what I understand grid charging can balance the cells, and you can even do monthly or so grid charges if all the cells rates of discharge vary greatly. Now is it right accurate hat grid charging will not be helpful if one or more cells' capacity is significantly lower than the others? It seems then that the sure fire way would be to do the charge and discharge of all the cells. Now, final question, is doing so also effectively similar to a grid charge, in that once you have cycled all of the cells and charged them back up that they are technically balanced, or do you also need a grid charger for that. The motivation for this question simply comes from trying to find the most efficient and cost-effective way to deal with this. Maybe just grid charging would do it, but if the chances are low then I'll just do the whole shibang with each cell.

Thanks for anything!

[mixu-]

This weekend I've been doing intensive reading on reconditioning hybrid batteries as well as grid charging. I very recently purchased a 2011 Honda Jazz (aka. Fit) Hybrid. It has a 1.3 liter engine and the 100 volt IMA system. The IMA is probably similar to the one second generation Insight has.

Now, I haven't found _any_ info on grid charging or reconditioning one of the 100V batteries. These things have been on the market since 2010 so I find this quite strange.

Does anyone have any experience or pointers regarding the 100 volt Honda IMA batteries? Any reason why I couldn't just use the principles laid out by 99mpg.com for instance? What I want to do is install a grid charger.

Also, are there any feasible ways of testing the current health of my battery, or monitoring it with some sort of an external measurement device? The "instrumentation" Honda provides is disappointing for an engineer.

[S Keith]

Originally Posted by mixu-

This weekend I've been doing intensive reading on reconditioning hybrid batteries as well as grid charging. I very recently purchased a 2011 Honda Jazz (aka. Fit) Hybrid. It has a 1.3 liter engine and the 100 volt IMA system. The IMA is probably similar to the one second generation Insight has.

Now, I haven't found _any_ info on grid charging or reconditioning one of the 100V batteries. These things have been on the market since 2010 so I find this quite strange.

Does anyone have any experience or pointers regarding the 100 volt Honda IMA batteries? Any reason why I couldn't just use the principles laid out by 99mpg.com for instance? What I want to do is install a grid charger.

Also, are there any feasible ways of testing the current health of my battery, or monitoring it with some sort of an external measurement device? The "instrumentation" Honda provides is disappointing for an engineer.

Will work fine except one of the 48V PS will likely cycle in and out. I'd use two of these:

APC-35-350 Mean Well | Mouser

The LED supplies regulate their voltage and supply 350mA. That will give you 112 to 200V. With 84 cells in the pack, you should expect a peak charging voltage as high as 124V (1.475V/cell).

If you leave the pack in the car for grid charging, you will likely need to devise a PWM controller to drive the fan. HCH1 and on are PWM fans. I would assume the Jazz is as well. If you remove the pack, a simple box fan blowing through it will suffice.

The Jazz uses essentially the same system as the G2 Insight. Hybrid Automotive looks like they may be developing a charger for the Insight. I would expect it to adapt to the Jazz readily.

Regardless, the bulk of all information concerning grid charging/discharging IMA NiMH batteries would apply to the Jazz except scaled appropriately for the lower number of cells.

Steve

[Trinost]

I have been thinking of breaking out of the 350mA after all the reading I have done and the grid charge and discharge I performed. It worked for about 2k miles, but than the IMA light came back. I am thinking need a stronger charge to deal with the resistance in the cells something like a Mean Well LPC-100-500 either at Powergate, Mouser Electronics, or I think Newark is another vendor? What are your thoughts on that?

[S Keith]

If I'm going to push a lot of current through 120-132 D cells in series, I'm not too inclined to push a lot of Amps.

IMHO, better to use the big-ass charger in the car. Do your DEEP discharge, <2V for the whole pack. Grid charge for a minute or so until the pack will hold 120V or higher. Reset the 12V and rev it to charge at several amps. Repeat 12V reset a total of 3 times until the car registers full SoC, then top-off with 350mA grid charge for another 5-8 hours.

With this method, you know overheat or overcharge can't be an issue.

[Trinost]

I did grid charge and deep discharger (took it to .78v) using someone else's charger at 350mA. It cured the 1449, but only got me about 2000miles before got lesser 1447. I read here I should have maybe let it sit for some time after charging it first to let it soak in THEN a day or so later top it off and continue with discharge. Oops...

I feel like the grid charger in all honesty is just a bandaid to the real problem, which is the cells/sticks not working as intended less than 5.8ah (no longer hybrid worthy sticks just good for hobbies and robotics I've read.), high IR maybe? Still figuring out how to do this on a stick level.

I know I have a general idea on some of this, but I am just grasping still off what I have read and learned online. I am by no means an electrical minded person. I did purchase the book "Getting started in Electronics" by Forrest M Mims III on amazon. Its helping fill in some of the gaps. Anyways the grid charger is after I figure out which sticks are the trouble children (lol) and if can find a way to replace them first. I want to fix the problem it then maintain the pack with grid charger later. I am thinking more of a single power supply too that way it is cheaper and simpler. I need to figure out how to make a discharger to connect as well. Lame not much information about how to do that...money greedy people being stingy with information. :P

S Keith not certain what you mean by big ass charger the one my new insight buddy has is from hybrid auto or something. He likes it, but I'm not paying $400 for something I can do myself.

...Idea's on where to find good performing (6.5ah) fair priced used sticks?

[mixu-]

Originally Posted by Trinost

I have been thinking of breaking out of the 350mA after all the reading I have done and the grid charge and discharge I performed. It worked for about 2k miles, but than the IMA light came back. I am thinking need a stronger charge to deal with the resistance in the cells something like a Mean Well LPC-100-500 either at Powergate, Mouser Electronics, or I think Newark is another vendor? What are your thoughts on that?

I wouldn't use 500mA for balancing but that's just me. Going from 350mA to 500mA you will generate 60W of heat instead of 42W (at 120V).

500mA is probably perfectly fine for normal charging as long as you make sure that you stop when the first cells start to hit 100% SoC. After all, the IMA has 10kW maximum output, which is about 80A at 120V. It charges at least at 10A current in maximum regen, probably more.