My 100AH LiTime lifepo4 battery won't charge

[BeerBrewer]

I bought 2 LItime 100ah batteries last November and they've been in storage in my basement ever since. I had planned to install then in my trailer over the winter but, I injured my wrist and needed surgery. So I'm ready to install them and I measured the voltages. One measured 13.4 and the other 2.0 volts. So I put the low one on the charger for 4 or 5 hours and it only went up to 7.2 volts. The other seems fine and appears to accept a charge. Did I kill my new battery? is there something that I should do?

Your help is appreciated!

Bob

 

[doityourself2021]

Hi Brewer, Tell me a little more about your batteriers, besides Lifepo,, 100ah.. need Voltage normal ops range and brand.. There is a storage life to these types.. need to know a little more if you care to share. .7 months in storage. tell me about storage.. in what kind of temperature climate where stored..and current temps now.. Winter time now summer.. I suppose as I do not know where your located.. I am south of the equator and I am now in fall winter,, so it would be helpful to know this.. as well. Regards- ric sorry about earlier Typo, looks like you have some great replies , as 50ShadesOfDirt replied..

 

[50ShadesOfDirt]

You'll want to:

- read all the LiTime materials on storing and charging their batteries (this is how you know what was supposed to be done)

- use an appropriate battery charger with true LiFePO4 charging technology (LiTime's, or someone else); don't use any old (FLA) battery charger

- leave the battery on the charger for one or two cycles, per the true LiFePO4 charging routine's measure (and their instructions); sometimes, there is also a separate "wake the battery" function, and you can try that as well.

These steps should bring the battery back to life, as it sounds like it discharged too low over storage, without proper maintenance charging every few months or so.

Is the battery model a version that has bluetooth service? If so, the battery itself might be able to tell you what is wrong.

If all of the above fails, then you can investigate warranty service with LiTime, as perhaps the built-in proprietary BMS they use has had an issue, and after some back & forth, they might swap a battery out for you.

Hope this helps ...

 

[BeerBrewer]

The batteries were stored in the basement, which is heated. So they never got below 60 degrees and never over 70 degrees. I'd periodically checked their voltage and it was where the manual said it should be for storage. Both batteries were always with .01 volts of each other.

Below is the link to batteries

https://www.litime.com/products/litime-12v-100ah-tm-deep-cycle-lifepo4-battery-for-trolling-motors

I'm using a Noco Genius10 charger that has a lithium charging mode. When I connect the battery, the lithium light comes on and after about 5 second it starts blinking. Which the charger manual says it means that the charger is slowly pulsing on and off because the charger senses the battery is charged less than 25%. I've left it in this mode for a a few hours, then removed the charger and tested the battery voltage to be 7.25V. Then I'll come back hours later (without the charger on it) and retest the battery voltage and it measures 2.84V.

I sent an email to LiTime about the issue and this was their reply.

"Thank you contacting LiTime service, it's Ricket, i am pleased to help.
Since the battery has been under voltage, do you try to connect the charger with the activation functions to activate this battery ?
If you don't have the charger with activation function, then the 18-36V solar panel connect with this battery for 10-30s without the controller in a sunny day also workable."

Unfortunately, I don't have solar panels, nor do I have a power supply. All I've got is the NOCO Genius 10 charger.

 

[doityourself2021]

Hi Brewer, Tell me a little more about your batteriers, besides Lifepo,, 100ah.. need Voltage normal ops range and brand.. There is a storage life to these types.. need to know a little more if you care to share. .7 months in storage. tell me about storage.. in what kind of temperature climate where stored..and current temps now.. Winter time now summer.. I suppose as I do not know where your located.. I am south of the equator and I am now in fall winter,, so it would be helpful to know this.. as well. Regards- ric sorry about typo intro

 

[twrlp]

Unfortunately, I don't have solar panels, nor do I have a power supply. All I've got is the NOCO Genius 10 charger.

A standard 9-volt battery across the terminals (+ to +, - to -) can sometimes wake up the BMS without hammering the low battery with too much current. ( a deeply discharged cell should be charged as slowly as possible to minimize damage)

 

[doityourself2021]

Hi Brewer, LiTime gave some very good info.. maybe a Panel, which could be less than the cost of the proper type charger.. myself would suggest the investment in a charger..however since I have not looked into the costs.. But I'm sure the value of the batteries are worth the investment..

 

[50ShadesOfDirt]

I have both a LiTime charger and a NOCO charger, and wouldn't hesitate to use either ... the former because it's LiTime's own (one specific 24v battery-bank), and the latter because I use them everywhere (mostly 12v batteries), with their LiFePO4 and wake-up functions.

If LiTime gave you that reply (the english was horrible, and I don't recall ever getting service emails like that), then go ahead and say "battery doesn't respond to any recharge or wake-up method I have available to me", and ask for a swap, as the built-in bms clearly isn't responding well.

NOCO's "activate" function is the "wake-up" function ... I did use this once to wake up a LiTime battery, but after several rounds of this effort, they agreed that we should swap the battery out, which they did on their shipping dime (a few years back, now).

You may have to send some pics of multimeter readouts & such, but LiTime will hopefully come through for you and arrange a swap ...

LiTime should service it out of one of their USA shipping locations ...

Hope this helps ...

 

[BeerBrewer]

As stated above my NOCO Genius 10 has pulse mode charging for lifepo4 batteries. How long does this process take? Are we talking about minutes, hours, days or longer? I'm wondering when to toss in the towel.

 

[mikefitz]

So I put the low one on the charger for 4 or 5 hours and it only went up to 7.2 volts

Try 'to waken it up' with a dumb charger, power supply, or car battery.

 

[brucey84]

You can try to wake up the bms with the other working battery you have. You will need to wire in parallel. Caution there will be sparks.

 

[IGBT]

Curious, have you tried to put a small load on the battery? I had the exact same batteries and they came shipped with a terminal voltage of 3.25V. The BMS is in a "off" state. Placing a load (in my case a small 12V fridge drawing 4 amps) on the battery and the terminal voltage immediately rose to 13.25V and the fridge came on.

edit: Sorry, I think the load thing is when the battery is reading 12.xx volts, like a high impedance state. The load will cause the battery terminal voltage to jump to reality. What you likely have is a BMS that is sleeping. I had this and I woke it up with a voltage and current limited lab supply I happened to have on-hand. I set it for 14.4 volts, applied it to the battery terminals and in 2 seconds the battery terminal voltage went from 3.2v to 13.25V.