I've been doing some tests on an 8S LiFePo4 pack of which one battery is a bit worse than the others: it holds ~20% less charge.
What I've found is that balancing the pack early is about 15% cheaper (i.e. less energy is converted to heat) than with diybms's fat-fingered (IMHO) "bypass ON when over X millivolt" setup. Now most battery packs are far better matched than this one, there's a reason for the large TEST label on it, but the fact remains that balancing your cells early, or at least early-ish, wastes less energy.
I've been doing some tests on an 8S LiFePo4 pack of which one battery is a bit worse than the others: it holds ~20% less charge.
What I've found is that balancing the pack early is about 15% cheaper (i.e. less energy is converted to heat) than with diybms's fat-fingered (IMHO) "bypass ON when over X millivolt" setup. Now most battery packs are far better matched than this one, there's a reason for the large TEST label on it, but the fact remains that balancing your cells early, or at least early-ish, wastes less energy.
Is anybody working on improving this?