Lipo Charge Rate
 

Hello All.
A couple of quick lipo charging questions.
I have a new 2s lipo rated at 6500 C. My charger will only charge at a max of 5.0 mah.
Will I still be able to fully charge the battery but it will just take longer?
Will I damage the battery, shorten its life or reduce the performance with charging at 5.0 mah?
Thanks,
Mike

It will be fine. It will just take a bit longer to charge.

Depending on the model of charger, there might be a capacity limit or time limit, intended for safety, that may prevent a full charge on a larger pack. If it allows the correct capacity to be entered it may be taken care of automatically, or may need manual adjustment. At the worse may need to restart the charge.

Oh great, now manufacturers are quoting 6500C on their batts :lol: but in all seriousness, it is OK to charge at lower than 1C rate, just takes longer.

I think the default is two hours and as I understand you kind of set what the max can be fed to the battery, the charger will do its own thing to some degree as it nears balance on the pack tuning the charge rate down to a trickle.

As for the time limit, that is to protect from overheating. If you hit the limit, most often a default of 120 minutes, you can start the charge cycle back up again after giving things a moment to rest and cool off.

Thanks to all for the feedback !

It’s my understanding the capacity and time limits are for some degree of safety for the pack being charged. In case something goes wrong, such as a pack with an internal short, or a weak cell that won’t charge, the charger doesn't just keep driving current into a questionable situation. Some of the better chargers monitor the pack throughout the charge, looking for abnormal behavior, providing an additional safeguard.

I believe you are correct the time limit is commonly two hours for a 1C lipo charge rate. The chargers I’m most familiar with will adjust the time depending on the charge rate and capacity setting.