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Author Topic: Parallel Charging  (Read 691 times)

Offline David Hoover

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Parallel Charging
« on: October 12, 2013, 07:41:08 PM »
I just watched a little video on Progressive RC where they were parallel charging packs of different capacities - same number of cells but different capacities.  Is that for real?  I thought that the packs had to be the same capacities and similar states of charge.  Also, I'm completely baffled as to how the cells get properly balanced when the balance leads from up to 6 packs come to a single connector on the charger.

Thanks.

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Offline Russell Bond

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Re: Parallel Charging
« Reply #1 on: October 12, 2013, 10:39:38 PM »
Yes, I know what you mean.

But it does work!!!!!
I always parallel charge and they are balanced well every time.
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Offline RC Storick

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Re: Parallel Charging
« Reply #2 on: October 13, 2013, 10:51:50 AM »
Think of it like this. Each wire coming out of the charger is allocated to one cell. Attach 2-6 batteries to the balance board and each of the cells are combined. It balances the total capacities of the cells attached to each wire. I hope this makes sense.

That's why you can have different capacities but not different cell counts. Of coarse there is voodoo involved with magic smoke. If you just plugged the batteries into the balance board and not start the charger and left overnight the cells would balance between batteries. (not recommended)
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Offline Howard Rush

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Re: Parallel Charging
« Reply #3 on: October 22, 2013, 09:25:35 AM »
Parallel charging might be OK if you have all good batteries.  Even if the cells have different internal resistance during charging, the weak ones should catch up during the constant-voltage charging phase.  I would worry, though, that a battery could have an undetected bad cell that would show up in an overhead eight.  Also, hooking up these powerful, low-IR batteries in parallel seems like a bad idea to me.  I checked battery voltage before hooking two in parallel and still one pair of cells was sufficiently different to smoke a trace on my board.  Then there is the issue of having a live, exposed male connector while you're connecting them.  Parallel-hookup boards for LiPo batteries should have some monitoring circuitry.
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