DIY Grid Reconditioning Charger

Hmmm. These power supplies are quite affordable here in the US: $45 delivered.

There's another active thread where a member is trying to diagnose a persistent ICE starting/running problem. He's now at a point where the traction battery is so depleted that it can no longer attempt to start the ICE -- leaving him with no way to replenish the charge on the traction battery. One of these would come in handy in a situation like that.

A couple of questions:

1) The specs say the output is 257vdc max. When the current is adjusted down (via the potentiometer) is the voltage reduced too?

2) If you connected two of these in parallel, would the resulting charging current be 700mA?

 

Hehe, that's what I figured. Don't you love it when you can justify your collection of junk?

Thanks Abarnabe, now I understand your reasoning. I think that is a reasonable precaution in the case of uncertainty. Now I am also uncertain whether the Prolong max. voltage was specifically chosen for safety or other battery technical reasons, or if it is a more or less arbitrary byproduct of the components of the charger.

The basic principle of top balancing (as I understand it) is to force a small current through the battery regardless of the voltage. When the individual cells reach their maximum charge, they "leak" current through, thereby self regulating the voltage. As long as the current is small enough, there should be little danger of damaging the battery.

But if there is some sort of defect in the battery, which causes the voltage to be extremely high, then of course the voltage should be limited to a safe level. I would not consider the 257V maximum of your power source to be extremely far above the self regulating voltage of the battery, so the diodes are probably not necessary. But they do no harm as long as the charger max. voltage is above the normal battery self regulating voltage. If the max. charger voltage were less than the normal maximum battery voltage, then the battery might not be completely balanced.

 

Was the grid charger still connected for the additional 10 hours?

By the way: I ordered an HLG-80H-C350A from Digikey, and a box of various diodes from Amazon (link).

I haven't wired in any diodes yet, but did check the output of the power supply and it's spot on at 257v DC.

 

Thank you so much for sharing your findings on this.

 

which blocks should I replace? thank for your help.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

You have a metal-case power supply with a ground connection (indicating that it is NOT double-insulated), but you have spliced the original power cord to a two-conductor power cord, meaning that that metal case is no longer grounded. I hope the unit does not develop an internal "hot"-to-case short and give you a nasty jolt or worse.

 

Thanks again, I would like some advice for installing the cells. I ordered 8 battery cells from ebay.

1- How to balance the voltage of the old cells against the new cells?

2- Is it necessary to recondition the 20 old cells with charge and discharge cycles? if so, which charger would you recommend? Would a cheap ibmax 80w charger do the trick?

I thought you just had to take the low performance battery cells apart and replace them with the new ones, and nothing else?

I ask you these questions because I wish there is a huge difference between the old and the new cells.

In short, what is the right procedure? Repair is very expensive for a professional here. I have some notions in electricity and I think I can do it myself.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

i have diagnosed my cell block with Hybrid-Assistant. I know the faulty cells and I ordered 8 refurbished cells from eBay.
Now I only want to take the block apart from the car and then replace the weakest cells.

I don't want reconditioning the pack of cells with charge-discharge cycles.
I just want to dismantle-replace-assemble and finally start the vehicle.

Tell me if this procedure will work knowing that the voltage levels of old cells is different from new ones?

Someone advised me to balance the voltage, but how do I do it?

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

+1

You can get the power supply from Digi-key for $55 delivered: LINK

My itemized order:
Items in Order: 1

Subtotal: $38.60

Shipping: $10.99

Tariff: $3.86

Sales Tax $2.34

Total: $55.79


And the Diodes from Amazon foro $10 delivered: LINK

 

Great work Abarnabe. in regards to the discharge set up using light bulbs:
1. Are you using generic household light bulb sockets? the ones that require 120 Volts AC? wouldn't you have to charge halve of the battery pack at a time? since we are dealing with about 220 volts DC? or are you using some kind of inverter? thanks.

 

Thank you for your post, @Abarnabe, I'm getting very inspired by your charger and discharger system and probably will make my own soon, since I can't afford the price of the Prolong system with shipping costs from USA to Spain and additional customs taxes (I think it would go up to nearly 1000€).

At this point (and after trying to understand Prolong's instructins) I still have few questions:
I see you are using 6 bulbs that work at 240V, but how many watts is each of them? At what voltages did you remove each bulb? At what voltage did you stop discharging and started to charge back?

Thank you so much!