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tronic Posts: 20 Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2010 9:34 am

Sparkfun Battery Charge Current Question

by tronic Tue Aug 17, 2010 12:23 pm

Hey everyone - I have the 900mAh Li-Poly battery from Sparkfun (PRT-00341). I'm trying to interface it to a battery charger IC. My question is how do I determine the charge current for the battery? The spec sheet says the charge current is "Standard 0.2C5A Max 1C5A". How do I interpret that? What does the "C5" mean? Thanks!

Re: Sparkfun Battery Charge Current Question

by coyote20000 Tue Aug 17, 2010 1:39 pm

coyote20000 Posts: 329 Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 12:27 pm Location: Rahway, NJ

C stands for Capacity. Standard 0.2C5A Max 1C5A From what you typed, I'd say the charge current should be 0.2C. If the capacity of the battery is 5A (I'm only guessing by what you wrote) or 5Ah (5000 mAh) then 0.2C is (0.2*5Ah) or 1A. Dave

Re: Sparkfun Battery Charge Current Question

by tronic Tue Aug 17, 2010 1:56 pm

tronic Posts: 20 Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2010 9:34 am

Dave - thanks for your response. It's nice to know C stands for capacity. Except this battery is not 5Ah, it's 900mAh, so I'm still confused. I should also mention that the 5 is a subscript of the C.

Re: Sparkfun Battery Charge Current Question

by redwire Tue Aug 17, 2010 2:12 pm

"C" is the rated capacity of the battery in amp-hours. The datasheet subscript "5" usually means the time period used by the manufacturer to calculate C. C is usually measured with discharge over a 20 hour period (C20) but this datasheet uses a 5 hour test, so read C5 as "C over a 5 hour discharge time". Charging at 0.2C is (0.2*0.860) = 172mA. Charging at 1C is (1*0.860) = 860mA. Just make sure not to exceed 4.2V and at high charge currents the battery can overheat. When testing keep paper and stuff away from it.

redwire Posts: 95 Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2010 10:31 pm Location: Edmonton, AB Canada

Re: Sparkfun Battery Charge Current Question

by tronic Tue Aug 17, 2010 2:24 pm

tronic Posts: 20 Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2010 9:34 am

Redwire, great! This was the info I was looking for. You seem to know your stuff about batteries.

Re: Sparkfun Battery Charge Current Question

by coyote20000 Tue Aug 17, 2010 2:34 pm

coyote20000 Posts: 329 Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 12:27 pm Location: Rahway, NJ

redwire wrote:

"C" is the rated capacity of the battery in amp-hours. The datasheet subscript "5" usually means the time period used by the manufacturer to calculate C. C is usually measured with discharge over a 20 hour period (C20) but this datasheet uses a 5 hour test, so read C5 as "C over a 5 hour discharge time".

http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=23290[6/24/2012 5:21:07 PM]

SparkFun Electronics View topic - Sparkfun Battery Charge Current Question

Charging at 0.2C is (0.2*0.860) = 172mA. Charging at 1C is (1*0.860) = 860mA. Just make sure not to exceed 4.2V and at high charge currents the battery can overheat. When testing k paper and stuff away from it.

Red, just wondering why you picked .860?

Re: Sparkfun Battery Charge Current Question

by waltr Tue Aug 17, 2010 2:49 pm

waltr Posts: 1690 Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:07 pm Location: Philadelphia, USA

"Standard 0.2C5A Max 1C5A"

This isn't correctly printed. In the data sheet the "5" after the "C" is a sub-script and there isn't a 1 after "Max" but a square box that probable is an embedded non-ASCII formatting character. So the standard charge rate of 0.2C is 0.2 times 900mAhr or 180mA. There is a note near the end of the data sheet that states: "Charging current should be lower than (or equal to) 1C 'sub-script 5' A; So the maximum charge rate would be 800mA. But I would only use this rate if the charge controller also monitors the battery temperature. Here is a link to a pretty good LiIon tutorial. The charging technique is a the same for LiPo, just the state change values are different. http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-12.htm

Re: Sparkfun Battery Charge Current Question

by redwire Wed Aug 18, 2010 1:41 pm

The battery is labelled 900mAh, but the datasheet lists 860mAh... so I used that.
redwire Posts: 95 Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2010 10:31 pm Location: Edmonton, AB Canada

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