Battery management

[Paul]

Does anyone know what is the best way to look after the battery ?

Somewhere in the packaging there was a note to say not to charge the battery until it was nearly empty however this goes against the knowledge about lithium batteries I learned from having some lithium powered model helicopters. The perceived wisdom from them is that a lithium battery is happiest at a state of charge between 30-80% so it is desirable to charge as often as needed to keep it in that window. The real no-no is to fully charge them and then not use them for more than a couple of days. Obviously these are ideal world figures and it is inevitable that the battery will discharge nearly completely quite often.

It could well be that things have moved on with laptop type batteries – my helicopter info is 2 or 3 years old now so does anyone know how best look after them.

 

[Franzli]

I don’t know the best recipe either, but from what I know the middle charge states are indeed the best for lithium batteries. I have also heard advice that it can be useful to do a deep cycle with letting the battery run down and then charge it all the way up every so often (not more often than monthly), but not sure what’s in that. Allegedly that helps to reset the controller so it knows the maximum charge or so.

These links might explain things much better:

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries

 

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