$99 Battery

[tangent]

My $99 battery has arrived from BMSBattery. It is dscribed as

"Li-Ion NiCoMn shrink tube electric bicycle battery pack. Included 2p7s 6665143 cells, 1pcs 10A continuous discharge current smart BMS."

It comes with a 1.8A charger, with a 2 pin, probably American plug. I will cut this off in due course. It came well packaged, taking 11 days from the order date. P&P was $37.77, for a total of £87.25, using payPal's exchange rate. No extra duty requests, possibly because the documentation claimed the contents were worth $20.

I have checked the weight and it is just under the claimed 1.7kg at 1.68kg.

2 sets of shrink wrapped wires are protruding from one end. A thick pair trminated in red and black powerpoles. Another slightly thinner pair, terminated in red and green powerpoles is presumably what I plug the charger into (it has matching red/green powepoles). I do not have any powerpoles, but BMSBattery have thoughtfully included a red/black pair. No instructions, but the charger is labelled as taking 100-240V AC 50/60HZ, so it should be safe to use.

I have just measured 28.9V across the connectors. Is this fully charged?

Should I plug in the charger for a while or wire it up to the bike as it is?

 

[Fordulike]

My 24v Li-Ion aluminium cased battery reads 29.6v fresh off the charger, so it may not be fully charged.
Does the charger have an LED indicator on it, coz looking at the picture on their website i can't see one.
You'll have to keep us informed on the abilities of this battery, as it's a cracking price.

 

[tangent]

Just put a proper plug on the charger and plugged it in to the battery. The label on the charger indicates that it should output 29.4V, but I am only measuring 29.1V. Should be good enough though. There is an LED on the charger and the label says "Red Charging/Green Finished". At the moment I am getting a solid green, so I think it must be fully charged.

I cannot believe the size and weight of this thing compared to a 9Ah NIMH pack of seriesed up D cells it is sitting next to. It is half the weight.

 

[Scottyf]

It is a very good price, two of them in series cheap way to get 48v battery.

Keep us posted on how you get on with it.

 

[tangent]

I knocked up a powerpole to deans adapter cable last night to allow me to use the new battery on my Lafree. I routed it through my little watt meter. Results on the journey in were encouraging. Starting voltage 28.9V, voltage now 26.83V after about 7.5 miles. I usually get through about 3Ah, but I do not know how much I used this morning as my watt meter reset itself just after I got in. I may have done a poor job on my adapter cable. Very odd though as I did not feel any loss of power. Alternatively, do BMSs switch off and go to sleep if the load resistance is very high? I got very strange results just after unplugging the cable between the watt meter and the bike.

 

[tangent]

Back home again, another 7.5 miles and the battery down to 25.4V with 3.1Ah used. Peak current was 21.8A! No descernible heat generated inside the battery. The power seemed every bit as good as my 9Ah NIMH battery which has had about 100 charge cycles.

I still think there is a problem somewhere, possibly with my lead. I do not have a powerpole crimp tool and I am not at all confient about my effort connecting these. I ordered some more last night so will have another go.

On charge now. Will be interesting to see what the final voltage will be.

I have noticed that BMSBattery have stopped the $99 special offer, the price going back up to $129. Still a good price though, provided the battery does not turn out to be complete junk.

 

[tangent]

I sorted out the problem I had. As I suspected, my hastily put together powerpole to deans lead was the problem. I cut off the powerpoles and put new ones on more carefully last night. I was very pleased with the journey in this morning. Only 2.5Ah used and the bike did feel more powerful than it does with the NIMH battery. This was helped by a SW wind though.

I will try to keep a proper tally of the number of charge cycles and report back on how it lasts.

I have noticed that BMSBattery are now doing quite good value LiFePO4s, based on prismatic cells. Perhaps increasing production and competition will start to have an effect on the standard battery prices.

 

[jbond]

Bizarrely, BMSBattery have no LiNiCoMn batteries on their site today. It does seem like every time I look at that site, their stock has changed. All a bit strange as a lot of it seems to be held by ecitypower and they're just doing retail and shipping.

 

[NRG]

Correct, they don't hold stock, they seem to be an Ecitypower shop window...

 

[Deleted member 4366]

It does seem like every time I look at that site, their stock has changed.

There are at least two BMSbattery websites. They both look very similar, but do have different items. I found this out when I used different links. One of them has some extra letters in front of BMS in the URL. Also, what you see depends which links you use within the site and how you browse to the item you want, depending on what branches you use. So if you don't see what you want, try a different route to it and it might appear by magic.

 

[jbond]

This thread got me thinking about a shrink wrap LiNiCoMn 36v battery. Something like 36v15AHr. Any ideas on where to buy such a thing? As above ECityPower seem to make them, BMSBattery seemed to sell them for a short time but they've disappeared.

 

[banbury frank]

Hi

Send a email to Annie at Ecity tell her what you want and that is was on there web site I have seen all there prices have gone up about 20 %
She may be able to supply she will then send you a paypal invoice

UFO-Lily Ye <sales2@ufo-battery.com>

Frank

 

[tangent]

Update on battery - 75 cycles

I have now recharged the $99 battery 75 times and have not yet observed any degredation in performance or capacity. I use between 5.5 and 6.5Ah each day and so have not strained the battery. I think the most of I have drawn is about 7Ah.

 

[amigafan2003]

That's encouraging Tangent. I'm awaiting delivery of one of their 36v15ah shrink wrap batteries and it's nice to know other having a good experience of their batteries.