I dunno! what I gather from reading all the bumph is to not keep letting your battery go into deep discharge and if you have a fairly long commute then carry an extra battery and swap before that happens. I agree with some of the writings in that article that it`s not a bad idea to keep an eye on your lights and give the battery a rest and allow it to recover.
Tony(onmebike) has just fitted an extra output cable on my Alien battery so that I can use it on my Alien and also on my Powertrek so that on my main distance bike (Powertrek) I can carry my spare Alien battery and swap them about. That should more or less double my range and also prevent those deep discharges.This is better than purchasing a new battery that can only be used on one bike when you take into account that batteries degrade with time as well
Image here
IMG_0462.jpg photo - david chilvers photos at pbase.com
Thanks Onmebike
Dave
Your most welcome Dave. Not sure your guarantee would be affected as any court in the land would judge me over qualified to do a simple conversion like that.
As you know I've been involved in building and flying model aircraft for many years. Battery charging and usage has always been an area of concern, especially with Lithium Polymer batteries which have a certain amount of risk involved in their use, over charging or discharging and you have a fire or small explosion on your hands as several friends have discovered, one losing his home another his workshop together with thousands of pounds worth of model aircraft including jet turbines and other equipment.
I'm not sure about the E-bike controllers but those used in R/C models are mostly programmable for the type of battery used, Ni-CD, Nimh, Lipo, Life or Pb [lead acid] and will cut off at the appropriate level before damage to the cells occur.
E-bike controllers do have this feature but are not programmable as far as I know. So, if the controller was designed for lead acid or Nimh's, changing to Lithium batteries would carry some risk of over discharge because Lithium batteries can't generally be discharged to the lower levels Lead acid and Nimh's can be and as set in their controllers. If the controller was designed for Lithium batteries then it should be perfectly safe to discharge to the cut off point set by the controller, which by the way is surprisingly high. I can't remember exact figures but on a single lipo cell of 3.6volts the cutoff is around 3.1volts so a 36volt E-bike battery will be in the region of 30Volts I would imagine. I actually think it better to use the battery until the controller cuts it rather than charge mid cycle. Its actually impossible to deep discharge these batteries under normal use, as in deep discharging Ni-cd's to overcome memory effect. Also never attempt to discharge Lithium batteries by any means other than the controller and normal use, never connect external means of draining the battery such as Light bulbs , resistors or the like.
Regarding charging, trying to speed up the process by fast charging beyond the capability of the battery can cause damage and it can also give false readings, an example of this is the charger can be fooled into thinking the battery is charged to capacity because the cells can't take the elevated charge rate. If in any doubt consult the battery spec sheet or manufacturer for advice.
By the way, Cyclamatics are back up to £499.00. What shall I do with the cheque?