LiPo question

[James-2007]

Hoping someone could help me regarding discharging of LiPo batteries.

I purchased a SkyRC 6x80 charger today to charge my LiPo batteries but reading through the manual confused me a little. I got a couple of batteries from my dad which he had lying around and wasn't sure if they would be any good to use. The part that is confusing me is I am currently in the process of discharging a battery at a rate of 1C on a 2200mAh 25C 3S battery which should be 2.2a. I set this on the charger but am only getting a discharge reading of 0.7a. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks, James

[Grumpy]

Hi James,

No, you aren't doing anything wrong. Your charger only has an 8 Watt discharge power, it says so in the specs:

Discharge Current Power:8W Discharge Current Range:0.1-5A

Current in Amps = power/voltage. The voltage of a charged 3s pack is 12.6V, so:

Max Discharge Amps = 8/12.6 = 0.64A

So you are hitting the discharge power limit of your charger. To be honest these smaller chargers are a bit of a waste of space when it comes to discharging. You might look at something like this: AOK 3 in 1 50W Charger Discharger Voltage Tester Balancer For Lipo Battery Sale-Banggood.com which gives a lot more useful 50W of discharge power.

FWIW if those batteries have been stored for a good while and fully charged they are almost certainly toast anyway... You shouldn't store LiPos fully charged.