EG4 PowerPro Internal Heater

[david.ledeaux]

Does anyone know if the heaters in the PowerPro batteries are drawing power from the batteries, or from the charging source?

I have some batteries that only turn on the heater when they are receiving power input so they don't drain the batteries heating something that won't be taking a charge anyway.

 

[wpns]

They draw power from the batteries. IIRC it’s not a lot compared to the battery capacity (200-ish watts?) and only to keep them from getting too cold.

 

[EG4_Jared]

Does anyone know if the heaters in the PowerPro batteries are drawing power from the batteries, or from the charging source?

I have some batteries that only turn on the heater when they are receiving power input so they don't drain the batteries heating something that won't be taking a charge anyway.

The heater when being used does draw power. This amount can be found in the specsheet provided below:

 

[SeaGal]

224W... Watt the f***?

My 21W of heaters keep my 14.3kWh battery pack @ 20C when it's -8C outside - I prefer to warm my LiFePO4's, not sear them.

 

[wpns]

IIRC there’s no insulation. Also no clue what the duty cycle is for various outside temperatures, though I bet someone at EG4 knows, that had to be in the design spec and it’d be trivial to test. But 14400WH/224W is about 2.7 days worst case. Or add another 5.4KW per day to keep them warm at the minimum operating temperature.

 

[kampto]

Can the heater temp range be configured or set to always off?

 

[robby]

Can the heater temp range be configured or set to always off?

If your not going down near to freezing temps then the heaters would never kick in.
I am pretty sure the settings could be changed but I am also pretty sure that no battery manufacturer would want the end user turning it off or setting it too high. So yeah that option is probably not available to the end user.

 

[SeaGal]

IIRC there’s no insulation.

I wondered that just after posting... but, to be honest, that's a bit bonkers, just throwing energy away.

But, commercially of course it makes sense - the manufacturer wants to tick the "heater" box to sell more products, but doesn't want to surround their cells with 2" of PIR and have a bulky product = why I prefer to DIY whenever possible.

 

[wpns]

I’d love to be able to disable it in hardware just so something doesn’t go wrong and enable the heaters (our minimum recorded temperature is 62F) but I understand why they’d be reluctant to do that. Maybe I’ll splice in a Sonalert.

The extra bulk for insulation would be a negative in my case.

 

[EG4_Jared]

Can the heater temp range be configured or set to always off?

I’d love to be able to disable it in hardware just so something doesn’t go wrong and enable the heaters (our minimum recorded temperature is 62F) but I understand why they’d be reluctant to do that. Maybe I’ll splice in a Sonalert.

The extra bulk for insulation would be a negative in my case.

I do not believe that the heater can be disabled. However, I will check on this.