Battery Conditioning

[flecc]

That's right cwah.

However, I doubt if trying not to discharge fully matters any more with good quality cells. Older Kalkhoffs which have had a number of conditioning resets are now in their fifth year or more of battery life. Tillson's oldest battery for example still has most of its original capacity at that age despite him doing resets at various times. Few e-bike batteries achieve that.

 

[cwah]

I think it does. I've tested various latest cells and the trends now seems to increase battery capacity and lower cycle life. Many new top notch cells are specified for 300 cycles to 70% capacity. Or 500 cycles at best.

Amongst them you have the Panasonic NCR range, LG ICR range, INR type and more.

It's really up to the BMS to manage the cells and make sure they are not charged to maximum. And also to user to be careful about it.


Of course, 1 or even 10 reset on a battery lifetime won't have much effect on a 300 cycles battery. And doing full discharge or meter reset from time to time is of course a good thing to do.

 

[flecc]

Of course, 1 or even 10 reset on a battery lifetime won't have much effect on a 300 cycles battery. And doing full discharge or meter reset from time to time is of course a good thing to do.

True.

Don't forget that the number of cycles possible is greatly increased when used with the most sophisticated systems though. The Kalkhoff batteries are specified for 1100 charge cycles and the users I mentioned are far beyond 300 or 500 charges since 2007/2008.

For them I doubt trying to do better than the bike's own careful battery management will achieve anything.

 

[davidw]

You do need to do at least one conditioning cycle on the Kalkhoff batteries David, but that's for the battery meter. This one has a sophisticated meter which needs to have an accurate zero charge point to register correctly both the charge content, and the capacity when testing the latter. Hardly any other e-bikes have this metering. The emptying doesn't have to be one trip, it can be two or to more to reach empty.

So ride the bike to as near to empty as you can and then recharge. It's fairly easy to determine when the very near empty point is reached on these since the power drops to a very low level with still a mile or so left.

The meter zero can drift out over time, so if you suspect that has happened the conditioning cycle can be repeated then to reset the meter to accuracy. However, don't do this in cold winter weather since reading low then can just be the effect of the cold on the battery.

The quality of the cells in the Kalkhoff-BMZ and Panasonic batteries used on these bikes means repeated conditioning at first or subsequently isn't really necessary. It's a left-over idea from the earlier days of lithium batteries when the cell content did not have the consistency of today.

Thank you Flecc. Concise and clear advice, as always.