Just installed my 2nd user enginer 4 kwh kit.

so if there is little use left below 3v why go to 2.8 or even worse 2.6.
I do agree with you on manual balancing as a method of keeping an eye on the pack but I can not do that all the time, I have too many hobbies allready and I would like to have something that does it every cycle
as for the kilawat, yes I got one this spring but I have not yet used it, the original pack had obvious issues, this new one I only pluged it in once and aparently had quite some charge in it allready as it finished within a half hour and I used it all day, still had some left ( mixed mode )
I do not want to put it back in the car and on a charge with the stock enginer system, for obvious reasons, so now that the cells have settled for about a day they are all arround 3.2 v the display showed very little capacity left, would you say they are no where near the bottom yet?under load a couple bearly made it under 3 v.
I am curently using your trusty method and bleading off the higher cells to get them all even, and in the mean time reaserching a better way to manage them.
the lowest was 3.20 highest 3.23, left bank 3.23 even all across, right bank about 3.21 even all across, however under load or charge its another storry, cell 9 and 14 showed higher throughout the discharge, 5 towards the end, 12 seemed to be the lowest, 9 and 14 are in the right bank which now at rest is lower than the left all together

 

I remember looking at these Hobby King Battery Medic System 6S last spring somebody on a ebike forum sugested them, looks like I would need 3 of them, thou they seem to be for lipo not sure if they would be of much use but just a thought but than again these would be on all the time, from what I gather, I need something that starte balancing at 3.45 vols say during charge.
this is where I get confused.
say if I were using the minibms, during charge and say the resistor load gets aplied at 3.45v to slow down the higher cells as the low ones carch up, when charge is terminated, do they still aply the resistor load to all cells above 3.45? same with those ghismos, I asume the resistors are deactivated once all cells are in balance.
so say I were using 3 of those I'd actualy have 3 packs in series say 5s, 5s and 6 s and while they would be balanced they would be at different soc among eachother, unless say I wired the first one 1through6, second 6 through 11, third 11 through 16, wonder if that would work as the middle ghismo has a cell from the outer packs.
I read they can be modded to have a 1 amp draw, but with all such devices, I wonder what hapens when the discharge cycle begins as even if the pack would be fully and perfectly charged, the voltages drop at different rates among cells/blocks, than what? do these devices start draining in an atempt to keep them balanced?
any thoughts?

 

Ideally I would like some device that once a cell reches say 3.45v during charge a resistor is activated to slow it down, 15 amps is a lot a 1 amp draw would not make much of a difference I guess, I really like the ideea of steping down the charge curent towards the end there, are there any such fancy chargers available?
as I read about the cell log mod I relise that you efectively replaced the enginer bms, thats all it was good for anyway and the cell logs would sut it down prior to the bms.
now I read about the relays that cut the charger off, how does it work on the discharge side?

 

well after reading up a bit it seems like the endeavour would begin with a proper charger, CV CC, I have yet to figure out how to go about that, my understanding is that first stage is CC, as the cells get close to full it goes into CV, where the ams drop to almoast nothing slowly toping off the cells while the full ones get shunted.
I still have to understand what shunting means, I asume aplying a resistor in paralel with the cell .
where do I dig up some info on the enginer charger, I asume it is not a such charger, also from the mini bms site I learned that idealy the bms sistem would not trip the charge the charger would do so I recon that if one is aiming for say 3.5 v per cell that is 56v, that is when the charger would finish? does the enginer chrger do that at all? what are the charger specs?

 

Hi 2007blueprius,

You should be able to reprogram your BMS16D to a HVC of 3.5v. See Sush who sells the MD-Tech kit, do a search of MD-Tech in this forum to find the thread that explains about this.

 

thank you, I read about firmware updates, no no clear mention of beeing able to reprogram HVC/ LVC I asume the later can be changed too, that would make things so much simpler and do away with cell logs and other ghismos,
what is the story wit the balancing function on these, good Idea gone bad or bad idea from the getgo?
If the balancing is hopeless I can live with it, or I can put together a zepher board, spoke with one of the guys this morning somebody in the uk is making a batch of boards

 

my charger says 55.5 v at 15 amp, the setup you describe is what I would like to acomplish I know it can get pricy so within reason, I found the thread that mentions adjusting the HVC, but all it says that is posted on the enginer forum which I have no access to, I tried signing up several times, aparently I can not put the puzzle together well enough to pass bot check.
can one of you track that down and copy paste it here? I saw Anthony looked into it and yet he went the cell log route so that leaves me wonder

 

Changing the firmware is the only way to reprogram the B!S16D. Once the firmware is updated it needs to be recalibrated with 16 x 3.00 volt cells. Then balancing should be ok.

 

oh goodie, so how does one go about that? I came across a thread mentioning ecothonics of Troy, MI, I am relatively near by, wonder if they still do it, so what is the procedure that sush described on the enginer forum? at first sounded like something I could do, still did not find any info that describes the process, looking arround

 

ok so I managed to sign up on the engined forum, they had letters today, but than it dawned on me:

I posted the method how to do this on the Enginer Installers forum, HVC to 3.65V. If you want it lower please send me an email.

Regards
Sushp

Read more: http://priuschat.com/threads/md-tech-phev-conversion-kit.119469/page-2#ixzz2lQEE1Obe
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is there a different installers forum, how do I get my hands on the info mentioned above

 

here are a few pics of my bms, I wonder which version is it exactly, and also forgot how it goes with the pin that is supposed to disable the balancing

 

so I took the charger apart to have a look, looks rather similar to a pc power supply it the way it is build , again I do not know much but I am tinkering with it to see if there are any mods that I may benefit from, does anybody have any teck info on these 2 components available? like a sckematic or something, does anybody know more about this charger, does it put 55.5v @ 15amp all the time? has anybody ever measured the amps going into the battery throughout the charge, my only experience with it some cells bearly made it to 3.3 before the bms tripped HVC

 

here's a couple of pics, that first one I belive has all the control circuits, hard to tell what I am looking ar without a diagram and very little experience with electronics, but I can solder if only I can figure out what resistor to replace with a turn pot

 

Hi All.

i recently (2 weeks ago) bought a 2006 G2 Prius that has an enginer plug in kit installed (4kwh one).

the car itself if perfect. i bought it fully aware that there may well be problems with the plug in kit, and i was right.
the batteries are toast, and the BMS is flaky, and unreliable.

i am currently in the process of buying new batteries, and now i need a better BMS.
i have looked at the orion BMS, but it's not cheap, and isn't an easy swap over.
i have also looked at the PacificEV BMS for the enginer kits, and this is my preferred option,
but i have been unable to find out if it will run on 240V mains input....

i have sent pacificev 2 emails now with no response to either one, so before i go giving up on them,
does anyone know if the Pacificev BMS can run from 240V ?

i only have 240V 10A mains available in my country.
using a step down transformer isn't really an option, as it would be very inefficient to say the least.

are there any other options that people have used to replace the enginer BMS ?

the car is a 2006 G2 Itech, with factory leather and sat nav / reverse camera.
it's in excelent condition too. even the interior still smells of leather.

i really want to get the kit up and running, as even without the kit running, im getting 70 mpg around town.
can't wait to see what i can get with the kit working....

this is my first hybrid also, and im loving it so far....

Jason.

 

Jason,

The 240V input to the charger is not your issue. I've not researched the PacificEV BMS, but in general, the BMS systems I've seen connect across individual cells and not the pack as a whole.

The charger I use on my PIS PHEV system puts out ~265V to the pack. However, the BMS cell boards I use never see more than about ~3.7V at any one time because they only connect across a single cell.

hope this helps

 

MJFrog

thanks for the response, but the pacific ev BMS does indeed see mains voltage.



it connects to mains and has some form of charger control built in.
seems like it will not work for me



glyndwr,

thanks for the tips about the pluginautos BMS. and the info about the pacificev one too....

i will send them an email tonight.



Jason.