Just Another HV Battery Thread and Experiments

Fred,

I honestly like that idea. Unfortunately, I don't have a grid charger/discharger set up and I'm not able to take my car out of service for that amount of time. BUT, I have enough spare parts that I could do this even after its removed from the car. I'd just construct a rig to hold the battery, ductwork and fan on a workbench. Do one full cycle and then put it back in the car for testing. Then do it over again but maybe three cycles. Doing it on a work bench would even allow visual inspection. I could easily set the fan up to pump air into the bottom plenum so the cover could remain removed for the entire cycle(s)

Anyone have a charge/discharge setup they'd like to volunteer on a temporary basis? We could have some (almost) real time independent data. I could even do this on a couple batteries. I'm pretty sure I have some untouched Gen 2 batteries in the shop. I'd even pay for the shipping both ways.

 

I originally ran into the same problem. I have a company issued iphone, so I gave my Galaxy S3 to my son when his phone broke. Then a fellow forum member I was working with suggested these apps to me. I'm not a hi-tech phone app kind of guy, but he hooked me up with a refurb S3 that was unused and got me started. I bought a high capacity battery for it, loaded the apps and started playing. There's a lot more out there that I haven't tried yet, but I'm slowly working toward it.

 

I have at least two 2009 Altima/Camry batteries that are 100% untouched since removal from wrecks this summer. It would be easy to use those modules to build a couple Prius batteries to do some before and after testing. 100% independent and everything posted. I have no dog in this fight.

 

Another interesting thing is that I have two other batteries I could use for standards. I have a 2013 from a Prius V wreck that had 20,901 miles on it and I have a ~24k(iirc) mile 2016 prius battery. I plan to build Gen 2 batteries with them anyway, so it would be easy to get the info from them to use for comparison.

I'll mention one AMAZING thing while I'm here, that has just blown my mind. I have a 2006 Prius battery that I acquired well over a year ago. The modules are 102H8A13xxxx It has one bad module. I did 4 or 5 cycles on the modules at that time and put it on a shelf (tagged on 10/14/2016), intending to part it out. I never got around to it. I took it off the shelf and started cycling it a day or two after I installed the Falcon battery in my car. These modules averaged 2855 mah on the initial discharge, AFTER SITTING ON A SHELF OVER A YEAR !!! They averaged 6265 mah on the first full cycle and 6404 mah on the 5th cycle. Those are great readings for any year modules, much less 2006. The battery installed in Pete's car was built using 2013 modules which averaged 6216 mah. And that battery rocks.

I have a 2009 battery I cycled about a month ago, that had been sitting in a parts car quite a while. The modules averaged ~1100 mah on the initial discharge, 4259 mah on the first full cycle and 4749 mah on the last full cycle. These are the kind of modules that are perfect for doing individual/low multiple module replacements on batteries that aren't able to be balanced prior to putting back in service. They are very likely to be close to the average capacity of a typical used battery. Maybe I should install one of them in block 9 of our experiment pack to see if that block becomes more in-line with the other 13 blocks??????????? Sometimes a lower capacity battery can actually make the assembly more reliable.

I think my work list just got bigger..........sigh..........

And my wife wonders why I drive my Prius around with no interior panels in the rear and only the bottom of the back seat installed?

 

It is NiMH. The manufacture date on the modules is Feb 2016 iirc. They are externally identical to the Gen2 and 3 modules.

 

The first four digits of the serial number printed on the module.

The first 2 digits are the days of the month. (1-31)
The second digit is the month (1-9, X,Y,Z = January through September, X=October, Y=November, Z=December)
The fourth is the year. A (1999) through R (2016) and so on

So, if the first 4 digits of a module is 131R it would be January 13, 2016

The Gen 2 battery housings also have a similar code on the outer sticker, except the Year code is 2 years earlier. "L" on a module is 2010, but "L" on a case sticker is 2008.