WattCycle 12V 100Ah LiFePO4 Lithium Battery Review Teardown Group 24 Trolling Motor Battery

WattCycle Battery Review and Teardown.
Not what I anticipated with this unit.

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[takenpictures]

You nailed it when you said that the BMS shut the charging down when one cell went over 3.65. I have two of the 100ah minis. They do the same thing. You can see what is going on with the Bluetooth app. Have it open and watch what happens between 13.8V and 14.6V. Ramp up the voltage slowly with your power supply and watch it in the app. The cell voltages stay close enough until you're pretty much done charging and pack voltage is like 14v. Then you quickly get an imbalance. The balancer in these is something silly, like .01A or something like that.
The voltage difference that you see is because the BMS has shut down charging capability. In the App you can turn off charging and discharging independently of each other. When the BMS shuts down charging, it puts out a lower voltage.
I scratched my head and said WTF a few times trying to figure it out. I started charging mine up to 14.2V. The cells have held a better balance, the BMS doesn't do funky things, and I still get 103ah out of each one. Hope that helps

[tobisreallifeskillswithtobi]

Great tests and I'm happy it is not only me ;-) I think the Smart Mini has a similar behaviour which boils down to their BMS. When you open the App you can see there seems to be balancing happening. I had to let it balance a lot before I started my capacity test but forgot to mention it since it had been a while when I continued working on the video since I waited for the manufacturers feedback ... Really sad since the built quality is soo good except the BMS it looks like at the moment.... Thanks for the detailed video and mentioning my video 🙂

[michaelmorris]

I have some supposedly top of the line batteries, that are doing exactly the same... they refuse to top balance unless you literally very slowly charge them from 90% up to 100%, in which case they balance just fine, but if the sun is shining hard and they are getting 60+ amps (it's a 5KW 24V battery array), the BMS's will just shut down, and I even have a victron balancer installed exactly as suggested in "wiring unlimited". Kind of annoying, but I've just learned to adapt. Every week or so, I just top them off with a small charger in the evening, and watch them closely... and keep dropping the current as they get closer to absorption voltage... and they balance just fine. It's apparently all about trickle charging them those last few amps... certainly wish it wasn't that way, but I've had them for several years now, and just finally have enough solar to hammer them on really sunny days. I consider it a 1st world problem, so I try not to complain too much about it. I'll probably be dead before these batteries so looks like I'm stuck with it in any event. As long as they keep providing me with the ability to have normalcy for my Wife and I... I'll just live with it.

[HartFarmsGenetics]

Keep up the great work. We appreciate it. Peace

[SenatorPerry]

Just guessing, because I can't find documentation. The BMS is resistive. It is dragging one of the cells down by pushing it through a resister, which is dropping the voltage of a single cell or multiple cells impacting the total voltage. You can put an amp clamp on the balance leads to see if this is the case. When you reset the battery it took a moment for the BMS to reengage the resistive circuits, which dropped the voltage again.

The battery supports bluetooth. I believe it shows what is happening on the app.

[upcountryprepper]

Excellent video thank you so much! Glad I went with Grenerpower

[mannyfragoza]

Sometimes putting a battery connected to 3 other batteries can throw the cell balance off. LiTime sells a balancer for up to 4 individual batteries.

[budmartin]

What does the Bluetooth App for the battery show?

[tychlg]

Not seeing the big no load drop, but mine did balance well. I do see the Bluetooth/Trolling motor BMS exhibiting signs of higher resistance compared to the regular 100ah version. When running in parallel at 20-40a loads the regular one will take most of the amp load and eventually the TM version will catch up as the batteries deplete and contribute more than 50% near the end.

Measurements were taken at battery terminals with Fluke 8842a and rounded, both batteries had been fully charged for days and then ran an inverter at idle for an hour or so in parallel before testing. If anything the TM version had an advantage here as the regular model had been contributing 100% of idle current before the test thus the lower resting voltages than if they were fresh off the charger.

Regular 100ah resting at 13.26v, I saw 13.26v with a 1.8a load, and 12.55v at 100a load.
Trolling Motor resting at 13.26v, 13.22v with 1.8a load, and only 12.14v at 100a load with a BT BMS indicated 12.32v

[johnshaw]

Likely used cells if you can't get them to hold 3.6 volts manually. Despite that, do they give the correct capacity.

[graffixus]

I purchased one of these off Amazon and will mainly be using it to top off our solar generator when camping. Otherwise it will get charged and sit. What is the danger of these cells not balancing correctly, specifically for the way I plan to use it.

Very informative video, thanks for the detailed tear down!

[mattwhite]

Is it just a smart bms problem? Ive heard of other brands smart bms doing this also.

[blenderbenderguy]

Ouch! I should have seen this video a couple hours just bought 8 of these 🙏

[JaysDiecastCreations]

Man i just ordered 4 of the group 24 series (not the trolling motor) 12v 100ah for our 48v golf cart conversion. Im new to this and dont know jack but what YouTube has taught me. Im hoping i don't have this issue. Would a balancer added to the golf cart help keep this from happening or do yiu think the bms issue is its own issue? Also how is that charger you used? I see people knocking cheaper chargers and im not sure what to do. Id be surprised if we ever cycled these batteries more than 100 times in the life of it

Thank you for the work you did here. I learned from it and i appreciate that

[perspective]

Thanks for the video. I just got one of these. Do you think I should return it or do you think it will still work okay for at least 3 or 4 years?
Btw, after charging mine and letting it sit disconnected for 24 hours it drops each time to about 13.3 to 13.4v. So, I think it still has the same bms, etc, as yours.

[mrl]

Like HUMSIENK, Wattcycle locks their BMS and will not permit changes.

[WV-gtbd]

Love the video!. I am going to go ahead and return my Wattcycle that is resting at 13.2v while it is still in the return window as I don't want to risk getting stuck with a faulty unit. My concern now is I have a HumsiENK 12v 100ah on order rn and it is from the same parent company so I am worried it might suffer this issue also, If you can it would be very much appreciated if you could check the HumsiENK for this issue?

[Tri-Lobe]

Very interesting to find them being so far out of balance. Hopefully you hear something from Watt cycle and they can possibly explain what is going on. Maybe a batch of bad batteries. Please keep us posted if you find out anything else about them.