Lipo storage
 

So I finally made the leap into lipo recently.. Purchased my first. A Thunder Power 3s 2250mah 45C. What a sweet little pack. It charges and balances so beautifully and running it to cutoff in my FX-R equipped Honcho with no loss of power the whole time, man no wonder everyone preaches these things. "thumbsup"

Anywho, about the storage aspect of them. My charger doesn't have a *storage* setting. I have a Duratrax Onyx 230. I have read and understand that it's not good to store them fully charged.. So should I just run it a little until it's down under 3.8v per cell? That's what I've done so far.. Or maybe the other thing I wanted to ask about is when I recharge it from cutoff, set my charger to only charge to 1100mah? Or would the voltage itself be too high at that point?

Those are good questions. Unfortunealty, I don't have the answers.

I can tell you what I do with mine. But mine are cheap Hobbyking batteries so I dont really worry to much about them.

After running mine. To LVC or not. I charge to full and set them on the shelf. When its comp time I grab them and go. Ive done this for approx. 50 cycles and still going with the same batteries. It has been my common practice from day one. It has worked fine so far. I will continue to do this practice untill I find evidence to change it.

Maybe this thread can provide that evidence. Or not.

I always catch flack for it when I say it, but i've been storing mine fully charged for months with zero issues. if they are going to be sitting for extended periods (a week or more, i'd consider droping them down a little) but so far this works fine for me. and a few other people I know.


beat me to it, the only thing I do differently then you is re-peak them the night before a crawl day.

(I do store mine in lipo sacks, that are in a large metal cookie can)

Just bring them down to 3.85v per cell and you will be fine. Some brand lipos are more unstable than others. As a good rule of thumb, if you are not going to use it for more than a few days, then put it into storage. Thunder Power are top quality and are not prone to being unstable, but cheaper ones are. Still you will never hurt a Lipo by putting it into storage.

Anywhere between 3.6 and 3.8v is safe for storage. While they can be stored fully charged, it wears them out over long periods of time. For most people that will replace a pack every year it isn't a big deal, but if you are looking for the most bang for the buck it is best to store them about "half" charged. Typically LiPo will have a two year shelf life at half charge and 70f storage. Beyond that they lose more than 20% of capacity and the internal resistance goes up to the point that they are no longer useful for the intended application.


I have been doing storage and stress testing on larger format lipos for about three years now, thanks to my ebike habit. I have some cells that were rated for 30 cycles that I have pulled close to 500 cycles from by charging to 4.1v per cell and discharging to 3.3v per cell at low rates. Store them in a cool dry place for winter, and they bounce right back when they are warmed up for the next season. The IR is higher than when new and the capacity has started dropping, but they are still doing what they need to do!