Newb Asks: Can we charge a BMW PHEV single cell module with a bench power supply? Topic is solved

[Gregski]

and just for completeness here is what it looked like set to a hard 4 amp DC limit

[Gregski]

and finally at the max of what this PSU can put out, 5 amps DC

so one thing we notice is that when we crank this unit to the max on the amp dials (coarse and fine) it actually goes a bit above 5 amps

[Gregski]

and here we are after charging for 1 hour

[arber333]

Just yesterday i noticed my 4th module of 16S was riding 0.5V lower than other cells. I connected 5A 16S charger to it WHILE IN THE PACK OF 104S. Charger had no problem bringing that up in 1/2 hour.
It is not a problem as long as you observe correct polarity and wear gloves and eye protection...

[Gregski]

Just yesterday i noticed my 4th module of 16S was riding 0.5V lower than other cells. I connected 5A 16S charger to it WHILE IN THE PACK OF 104S. Charger had no problem bringing that up in 1/2 hour.
It is not a problem as long as you observe correct polarity and wear gloves and eye protection...

thank you for sharing that, what battery pack are you using that's 104S I thought 96S were pretty common

[Gregski]

captured the current dropping gradually as the battery got closer to the max voltage this PSU could spit out

[mjc506]

Is all this because you're upset with that Chevy charger? I can just imagine half a dozen Ali-express bench PSU's strapped in the back of your truck!

[Gregski]

ha ha, no this is something I've been meaning to try for a while now, and the charger is working fine it's the converter that needs a bit of an attitude adjustment, and when I built my electric motorcycle that's exactly what I did I bought six baby charger before going with a Zevan I think it was called

[Gregski]

so this is where we were at the two hours mark

[Gregski]

and I guess charged as much as we could to 61 volts after 2.5 hours

[Gregski]

alright-then-lessons-learned.jpg (102.62 KiB) Viewed 18649 times

so although technically you can charge using a bench power supply, the 60 volt unit is just not high enough to fully charge this cell module, if we go off that spec sheet we need to reach 66.33333333 volts to be fully charged or 4.145 volts per cell and we only reached 3.825 but it was fun and scratched an itch I had for a while to try this, thanks all for following along

and as far as in the truck charging I will either be using my Tesla Model S second gen charger or the first gen Chevy Volt one

[arber333]

thank you for sharing that, what battery pack are you using that's 104S I thought 96S were pretty common

Jaguar has 108S, but i had to use 104 because my inverter wouldnt work with more than 420Vdc

[jnsaff]

and finally at the max of what this PSU can put out, 5 amps DC


IMG_2803.JPG


so one thing we notice is that when we crank this unit to the max on the amp dials (coarse and fine) it actually goes a bit above 5 amps

So the efficiency of your PSU is a little over 50%? 110v 5A in ~60V 5A out.