JimmyG

The new lipo's that are going to be released soon have a charge rating of 2C and 3C. Who makes a charger that will charge that high? Battery technology is evolving fast, but the charger technology isnt. The new life cells are even higher rates. Might as well go down to the autozone and buy a 50 amp charger for those

So has anybody heard from the manufacturers of new chargers coming out or do we need to yell in a loud voice to them..Get me a new charger!!

What is everybody's thoughts..

UltegraSTI

iTrader: (20)

eh, i like my house as it is. no need to burn it down.

personally, as long as they run now. i'll wait for it to come around again. no law against a 2nd pack either. granted up thru 2007 most of us showed up to the track with at least 6, 2 doesnt sound so bad.

R

acerpower

Yes, basically I've just been running multiple packs.
My lipo charger only charges 2.5 amps and I have been running 5000-6000mah packs, so charging already takes forever.
At least the packs have some decent runtime.

Duster_360

iTrader: (21)

Hyperion lipos with 5C charge rates have been out for a while, so to some extent, its already here. I haven't seen any real response from the charger side. When lipo 1st came out there was a lot of graphs presented that showed cycle life as a function of charge rate and as you went above 1C, cycle life suffered. I think there's some concern still left about how/if cycle life is affected by these higher charge rates.

JimmyG

The new lipos due out by orion are a newer technology. Says to charge at a 3c rate. 5200mah pack is 5.2 amps, x 3 =15.6 amps. Orion could at least come out with a charger for them.

Cell life is not a issue for me. Ive been charging my Scooter packs at 2c since day one. Its been 1 year now, and they still run awesome.

Somebody needs to make a better charger...

Duster_360

iTrader: (21)

Hyperion 0720iNet charger will do that now, its rated to 20amps and 250watts. iCharger has one also that will do 20amps (rated for 350watts).

The power doesn't get to be an issue until cell count starts going up, then power jumps a bunch - 2S at 15.6a = 131watts, 4S at 15.6a = 262watts, 5S at 15.6a = 328watts, 6S at 15.6a = 393watts.

I was watching some giant scale elec planes and those guys are using 12S and bigger power systems (+50v system) and they're flying 5 -8 min. Wonder what they're doing for chargers??

chiro972

iTrader: (10)

Are these max charge rates? You don't have to charge your Lipo's any harder than you want right now. It just takes longer and lower currents. The performance isn't any different. It's not like the old NiCd days where charging them hard and dead shorting them after use would give you more punch. We already have more punch than most of us can use anyway.

JimmyG

Thanks for the info on the chargers. Ill be looking into those further.

john stu

iTrader: (21)

this is the huge issue?


i have been using hyperion g3 battery's for about a year and they charge at 5c......and i use the 0720iNet and charge at 20 amps (4c) i don't see the issue?......i guess the only issue is other charger manufactures need to catch up to hyperion with there built in balancers and high outputs

Duster_360

iTrader: (21)

Guess you only run 2S...not much of an issue, charger has enough power to get it done. What about those running 4S - try charging a 4S 5000mah on your 0720 at 20amps ans see how long it takes before charger cuts the rate - 4S is 16.8v and at 20 amps that's 336watts. Your 0720i will cut charge rate to stay under its 250watt output limit. It'll only charge a 4S at 14.88amps which is only about 3C.

iCharger will charge it at 20amps since its rated to 350watts. But how about those using 5S or 6S?

Dave H

The ramifications go past the charger (& power supply), at least for racing. What about trackside power & generators? The typical octopus of extension cords and power strips are already pretty stretched at times. Breakers sometimes blow at big races, low voltages, some guys use fairly small generators outside & share, etc. Granted the overall power requirements don’t go up, but the peaks undoubtedly will.

Personally I’m with the guys that don’t see a need to push (no pun intended) the batteries as there doesn’t appear to be a performance increase. Besides lipos keep getting better, and in many cases cheaper, I’d rather spend there instead of on bigger chargers.

Of course I understand non racers may look at it differently, with no clock to follow. Might be a little ironic to see the racers with the ‘little’ chargers for a change. I suppose we will see some charger power wars accompanying the battery charge rate skirmishes.

JimmyG

The icharger will do 8 cells, or even 6 cells, but you would need 2 of their 15 volt power supplies to make it work. My old Victor charger was the same way with voltage of the battery getting close to voltage of the power supply. With victors multiplexer you would need 18 volt power supply to make it work correctly, otherwise it would split up the matching to 4 and 4 (multiplexer did 8 cells).

icharger sells the 15 volt 23 amp power supply for 70 bucks. Thats inexpensive when you look at others on the market. The charger can take an input of 32 volts on the 8 cell unit and 28 volts on the 6 cell unit. Not bad if you want to charge your packs correctly.

I will be buying the icharger in the future. Ill buy the 8 cell version and maybe get the 15 volt power supply. With the new cells coming out and higher and higher charge rates, it will be worth it.

Thanks everybody for the info!!