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Daly BMS - how does it start balancing

Noordsolar

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Specs for my 16S Daly says it will balance at cell voltage of 3.50 V. The question is will it start balancing when the first cell hits 3.50 V or must all cells be above 3.50V ? What happens when 8 cells are at 3.60V and 8 and 3.49 V for example will it start balancing?
 
Did a test slowly - brought by 16S bank up to 57.1 V - all cells were between 3.505 and 3.634 . Left if for an hour and the highest cells did not drop voltage at all .
 
It could take days fot there to be a difference.
What is the balancing current of the Daly and what size are your cells?
 
It could take days fot there to be a difference.
What is the balancing current of the Daly and what size are your cells?
I know its tiny ( 30mA ) and 120 AH cell . However at 3.6 V i should start seeing a few mv drop as the cells are right up in the "knee region" . Am trying to work out if all cells have to be above the 3.5 V start of balancing voltage threshold or just one ( or two )
 
The BMSs I have observed balancing all start balancing when one cell hits the threshold. It would be ineffective if it had to wait for all cells. By then a runner could be at 3.8 volts.
Yes makes total sense thats , what I hoped but Chinese specs are often not what you would assume to be . I try not to make assumptions
 
I thought I would be able to see a change in voltage maybe up to 5 mV in a hour or two but nothing observed. even at 3.60 V the ineternate resistance is around 30mohm so nothing really observable . Need to find a low current clamp meter now
 
Is the charge current still on? Some BMS units will only balance when there is charge current. But with one cell that high, you really don't want to be charging any more. Maybe try less than an amp and see if anything starts to happen. You could also lift the balance lead and put an amp meter in series to see if it is pulling the 0.03 amp balance current. It really could take days for that to make a difference on a 120 AH cell.
 
Good day, i have the same sort of question regarding balancing as i have a daly 12s smart bms.
It looks like the balancing feature is only active while charging, but as the the charge cycle is complete in around 3 hours for me does it mean that only during that time the balancing works @ 40ma?
In other words i need like 50 charges before the cells are balanced as i have some cells that are off a few 10th's?
This is not solar related btw. Its for a e-vehicle but only info i could find was on this forum.
Thanks in advance.
 
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Sorry I can't help with the exact details of the Daly BMS. One thing you could try is wrapping the balance leads through the clamp on meter jaw several times. That will multiply the reading. 30 ma and 10 wraps would show as 300 ma and may read on a clamp meter. If the 2 cells on both sides are pulling though, it may cancel out and not show much.

If you have a large balance difference like that, you will probably need to do some manual intervention. My battery bank was made out of 3 different modules that were at different states of charge. I ended up using load resistors and a charger on different cells to bring them into a rough balance before I left it to the BMS to do the rest. I got them all within 10 mv, but it took 3 days of my spare time to do 28 cells of 180 amp hours. For me it was pretty important as I was paralleling 2 cells in each position. They need to be very close or you can end up with a lot of current flowing between the two parallel cells. For a series only pack you do not need to be quite as tight before starting a charge cycle. Just find the highest cell, and connect a car taillight bulb and watch it come down to about where the lowest cell is. Then move it to the next highest, and work your way down. When you take the bulb off, there may be some bounce back, so you might need to do it two or three times. And be there watching it as you do it. In the case of my 180 amp hour groups, I was checking the voltage every 15 minutes at first, to get a rough idea of how fast they were coming down. Then I went to an hour between checks until they were close. I was only pulling 2 amps, so I knew it would take a while. I plotted a few points and found 2 amps would pull down 180 amp hour cell groups about 15 mv per hour. Once I had them all pretty close, I used a 10 amp e-Bike charger to charge the 14S string. Again monitoring the cell voltages. At 10 amps of charge current, my 180 amp hour cell groups would climb about 56 mv per hour. Every type of cell will be different, and they do not stay linear when you are close to full or dead. Li Po or Li NMC and such are pretty linear in the middle of the range. LiFePO4 are not as nice like that. They hold a much flatter voltage curve in the middle, and it can take a very long time to see voltage change between 20% and 80% charge. But once they enter the knee above 90% they can take off fast. I have not dealt with a large LFP pack myself yet, but I may be doing one soon. My plan is to bring them all to 3.5 volts as close as possible. Then run them all in parallel. And charge the whole bank of cells at just 1 amp or so. And have it stop at 3.65 volts. That should be a rock solid top balance. Leave them all in parallel to rest a while, and top them 2 or 3 times with the charger.
 
Thanks alot. Wasn't hoping for that answer but expected it.
Think i need to manually top balance each cell pair (12s2p) and and go from there. Was hoping the BMS would charge the batteries, let it sit there for a while and let it balance itself out. Unfortunately this isn't the case as i understand.
Its all quite new for me. Learned a lot already but there are still some things i would like to now about balancing using this type of BMS. Problem with the chinese stuff is that there isn't really any detailed information available.
 
I have a daly BMS, its 16s 40A/20A charge/discharge. Used it for the first time starting yesterday on the bench, and today real-world. Its useless for anything but high/low voltage cutoff. Reasons:
Will not balance if no charge current <1.0A and bleed-off current is far too low. My multimeter doesnt respond fast enough to know exactly the rate is discharge, but it seems to average .012A-.020A, advertised specs are 0.035A. It appears to cycle rapidly to detect the cell votage then shunts through resistor, repeating this cycle rapidly. It would take many months for this to EVENTUALLY balance the cells, however, given that the unbalanced cells dont show their true colors until >3.42V, and also given that the BMS does not evenly report the cell voltages (its processor and update timing are off evidenced by the cyclic error) it only gets about 10 minutes at best to perform valuable balancing. This BMS is, for lack of better words allowed on this site, Absolute rubbish.
 
Nothing wrong with assumptions. Not testing them is a drag. Do you have any way to observe when your BMS is balancing.
Put a resistor and led lamp across the resistor, ballance resistor. 30ma will take a year to ballance.
 
Thanks alot. Wasn't hoping for that answer but expected it.
Think i need to manually top balance each cell pair (12s2p) and and go from there. Was hoping the BMS would charge the batteries, let it sit there for a while and let it balance itself out. Unfortunately this isn't the case as i understand.
Its all quite new for me. Learned a lot already but there are still some things i would like to now about balancing using this type of BMS. Problem with the chinese stuff is that there isn't really any detailed information available.
Yep top balance then hook up the BMS. The Daly can work perfect if you take the time to top balance. I've been utilizing one for several months with no issues. I did a proper top balance prior to hooking up the BMS. I'm running 8 280ah cells a 24v battery. I have a dumb BMS with no Bluetooth and it keeps the cells generally within 5mv. I don't know about the Bluetooth model but this dumb BMS works amazing as far as I'm concerned. I checked my cells every few days and they're always almost perfectly matched.
 
Specs for my 16S Daly says it will balance at cell voltage of 3.50 V. The question is will it start balancing when the first cell hits 3.50 V or must all cells be above 3.50V ? What happens when 8 cells are at 3.60V and 8 and 3.49 V for example will it start balancing?
You have the dumb Daly? Because that's the one I have and I'm almost certain it starts balancing at a much lower voltage. I rarely see my cells over 3.5 and yet my pack is always perfectly balanced. If you haven't Top balanced your pack. Top balance then add your BMS. They Daly only balances while receiving current which shouldn't be an issue if the cells are top balanced.
 
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