3 Ways To JUMP Start And WAKE A DEAD Lithium LiFePO4 Battery FAST!

The Professor shows you 3 quick ways how to recover a totally dead lithium LiFePO4 / LFP battery in seconds with basic tools.

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00:00 Introduction
01:20 The Charging Problem
04:15 The First Method
07:05 The Second Method
08:18 Killing The Battery
08:47 Making Sparks
09:11 How To Avoid Sparks
10:56 The Final Method
13:30 Summary

[buckfutz]

I NEVER comment on YouTube videos, but I just wanted to send a giant THANK YOU for all that you do! I've learned so much over the years (and helped reduce my bank account balance) and it is absolutely appreciated. Keep up the fantastic work!! 😀

[TheEscapeShroomPerspective]

Great video! Not only did you give a lot of options to bring the battery back, but you also showed how to do each one!

[twiki]

Method 1) 6:38 - Is the -VE clamp just momentarily on the NEG terminal, or do I leave it clamped?
Method 2a) 8:02 - Aren't we supposed to connect the +ve and then touch the -ve terminal?
Method 2b) 10:00 - This just worked for me! Thank You HT!


The Li Time manual suggests two methods for waking the battery up.

1) Using a "zero volt charger". How many of us actually *have* a 0V charger?
2) Connecting a 12V solar panel + charge controller.

Clearly, it is not "0V" that does the trick, since the panel+SCC obviously put out 12V, and not 0V.
Someone on another YT video suggested that the battery was shipped with the BMS disabled. I doubt this is the case, as my battery does not have Bluetooth.

Also, when it was 'jumpstarted', my charger showed 11.9V.
It's now being charged at 0.05C (5A).

[jasonbroom]

Excellent video, as usual. It's worth pointing out that the battery voltage never was zero. The cells inside, usually in a 4S configuration, were simply down to whatever voltage (often 2.5v each) that the BMS is configured to shut off at. The battery cells were at 10v but the BMS turns everything off to avoid discharging the cells too low, which will damage them. All it takes is a small amount of forced current to bring the voltage above that threshold, waking up the BMS and enabling the charging mosfets to feed current into the cells. I learned this lesson with a portable power station that "died"...2 mins plugged into the automotive accessory charger in my car woke up the BMS and charged the cells enough that the AC wall charger could do its thing.

[jstar]

My son just got back from a 2 day river trip and killed his lifepo4 battery after two days of using a trolling motor. I put it on the charger and nothing. I watched this video and then connected a 12v jump pack for a few seconds then connected the charger back up and BAM! Up and charging like a Boss. Thanks brother.

[ryan]

You absolute legend! I thought I was up for a new battery after dusting off 3x life po4 batteries, which had spent 4 years doing sweet fa. 2/3 came to life charging but the last was spitting an error on the battery charger. Used the jump trick here... 3/3 straight back to life and charging up. Much appreciated good sir.

[chipmeister]

For anyone with a 24V system...

I connected (2) 12V AGM batteries in series to jump MY 24V system that was showing me 2.5V. Ran jumper cables with one positive clamped onto a resistor as shown in the video. No sparks and it took about 20 seconds for the inverter/charger to light up and begin charging.

Thank you for this video, it was s great help.

[jodienickypops]

Thank you so much, you gave me the confidence to jump start my van’s lithium battery and helped me restore my power! 👍🏼

[oneguy]

I left my disconnect on in the RV and both my lithium’s died. I hooked up the generator and thought they were charging. Batteries only lasted for 2minutes.

The dealership had a great tech that said they needed to be hump started. Thanks for confirming!

I’m back online ;)

[winstonsmiths]

I have a cheapo 60v 5a charger that I use to jump my LiFePO batteries when needed. I use wall power but have also used my EcoFlow River Pro to power the charger. Most chargers need the source of input voltage to be ~5v about that of the deleted battery. I needed the 60v charger to get my LiFePO going. Works like a charm.
I also make multitude of connectors for many scenarios. M4 connector to Anderson PP (APP), APP to cigarette lighter, etc. I use my chargers with ring connectors and M4 connectors to charge through my DIY solar generator setup using its solar input connection.

[khaled]

Many thanks for this helpful video.. i have braille g20 lithium ion battery 2 month old only, i left the car for 45days, trying to start it but the battery looks dead, checked it 0.16V, i have lithium jump starter, before i jump start it I contacted Braille technical services, they said "You will immediately kill a lithium battery if you jump start it from another battery", so I was very confused, i watched that video and i take the risk 🥲, the car is running now for 4 hours then switched off and on .. looks great, i really don't know if i damage it or not😂😢, but i think this professor he knows what he is doing ❤

[junkerzn]

The wall adapter method works great. It doesn't even have to be a battery charger or battery or whatever. Two clip leads and a little pokery-jiggery and you are done.

Nearly all wall adapters for the misc devices you might have lying around the home are either 5VDC or 12VDC. And all such adapters are current limited (usually from between 300mA to 2A or so), short circuit protected, and typically 'hicup' on a short (retry every few seconds continuously).

So just find an appropriate wall adapter lying around in the house, read the label to make sure the output voltage is reasonable, and you can connect it directly to the battery without any resistors or anything else to jump start it. If you happen to have a little 300mA current limited wall adapter, It is literally impossible to damage anything.

(The voltage varies a bit on these wall adapters, so use a multi-meter to check that its reasonable even if the label says 12V. But hey if the battery is dead and below 10V, then any "12VDC" wall adapter will do the job).

[Trevor]

in one case I had to break open the sealed case, disconnect the BMS and connect the battery charger directly to the battery bus bars. Once it reached 12V, I reconnected it all up again and the battery continued to charge to 14.4 V.
I then re-sealed the case.

[Silodrome]

Just tried this with a dead lithium motorcycle battery and it worked! Thanks, you're a lifesaver. I used the stripped ends of a 12v wifi power cable I no longer needed!

[jeffrunyan]

Educational AND entertaining! WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR????

[MichaelCzajka]

Li-polymer batteries suffer from the same problem.
You can jumpstart a dead 9v exactly the same way... but it's much easier... as all you have to do is touch the terminals together for a few seconds.
The best solution is to make sure every charger you buy from now on includes support for lithium ion batteries i.e. Won't assume zero voltage means the battery is dead.

BTW: You get less failures on these 9v batteries if you slow charge them.
Fast charging is convenient but the failure rate roughly doubles.
Whichever charging method you prefer (slow or fast) try to stick to it... as switching methods all the time accelerates battery failure.

Glad someone is talking about the problem and explaining it... as a lot of people seem unaware that it exists or is an issue e.g. My ReZap slow charger doesn't support Lithium batteries and despite being programmable the manufacturer has not bothered to update the charger to support it... and appear to have no plans to do so. They said lithium ion batteries (AA/AAA/C/D/9V) are not very common. So why design a programmable charger? Maybe they'll change their minds eventually? In the meantime you're forced to use other cheaper chargers to jump start the charging process before switching to the slow charger. That's annoying.

🙂

[BSerrell]

Thanks for showing all these options. I was away from home and had to scrounge a way to do this to my ‘house’ battery in our van camper, using items scrounged from my son in law’s garage. He had one of those ‘dumb’ circuit testers with the light and alligator clip, and I had a separate small 12v 5aH battery. Made it work by tickling a wired-on 12v outlet while the solar panels were hooked up and ready to charge via a different connection. Bravo! Saved my bacon.

[christophelaverdure]

Thanks for this video, I had a strong suspicion that my bluetti wasn't really dead dead but just needed a little jump start. Saved me a lot of money!

[retrozmachine]

There's a wide selection of solar chargers that will 'wake up' a lithium battery where the BMS has gone into low voltage protection. It's not something a lot of people consider when buying, but at the top shelf end of things Victron will do it and at the mid range tier Renogy branded chargers will if configured appropriately.

[GoodyshzToo]

I have all of this stuff except for the Jackery. But since I didn't know about these, I used a 100-watt 18-19v solar panel and connected it directly to the LPO4 battery and it immediately took it over 10v even though it was cloudy day. But HAD I KNOWN I would've used the handy little jump starter. So much easier than moving the battery around. So thank you so much.