How to activate the Li-ion battery when it “starves to death”?

People tend to have some bad habits, such as not taking out the battery from the electric mobile when leave out, and not turning off the air switch. After several months, the electric car runs out of electricity and cannot charge normally. Even if it can connect with the charger, the light of the charger is always green but it doesn’t work. The voltage of the battery is too low to charge because of the huge difference between the output voltage of the charger and the battery.

The situation above is usually called that the battery starves to death. The voltage of one of this kind of battery is around 5.6V, not over 6V. It is suggested to replace with new batteries, but a battery pack costs a lot, especially the battery that just after maintenance. 

Here are five tricks to deal with this kind of “dead battery”. Not all batteries can be helped, but most of them.

Series connection: 

Connect one more 12V battery in series in the battery pack. For example, if the electric car uses 48V-20AH battery, we can connect a 12V-20AH battery in series. The voltage of a full charge 12V battery can reach around 13V, and it can increase the voltage of the battery pack after series connection. Then charging with the original charger, the red light of the charger means the battery pack is rechargeable again. Take away the battery in series and charge the battery pack as usual.

Parallel connection:

This method is little bit complicated. For example, if the electric car uses 48V-20AH battery, we can connect a 48V-20AH battery in parallel. The voltage of parallel circuit is equivalent. Current transmits from high voltage to low voltage. It is the method that is widely used by battery dealers to test the battery without little electricity. Then try to charge the battery pack again. This method is similar to the method of series connection by increasing the voltage of the battery pack.

Low voltage charging:

Charge the battery by a smaller scale charger. For example, the original battery pack is 60V-20AH, and then we can replace with 48V-20AH charger. It is rechargeable under most circumstances. The theory of this method is also similar to the first method, decreasing the differences between the voltage of the charger and battery.

Single battery charging:

Charging the single battery by 12V motor charger can activate the battery, but this method will take a long time, nearly over 7 hours can gradually help the voltage of the battery back to 12V or so. If charge every single battery in this method, it will take very long time.

Special charger:

Tianneng battery can identify the voltage of the battery automatically. No matter how many the voltage of a battery pack, it can not only verify automatically, but also is rechargeable. For example, the original battery pack is 60V-20AH, but it still can charge the battery pack with a voltage of less than 30V. As the increase of battery voltage, the charger adapts to the new voltage and continues charging again. Tailg, Lvjia electric car and Jinpeng tricycle have matched with Tianneng charger.

This article will show how to activate a dead Li-ion battery, especially laptop battery or mobile phone battery.

Activating the battery is called “power gauge calibration” on Lenovo power management software. When use Everest to test the power on PC, there is a “design capacity” followed by “completely fully charging capacity”. If they have the same value, we can see the “battery consumption” is 0%. Normally, the “completely fully charging capacity” of new battery or battery without maintenance for a long time will be less than its “design capacity” and the battery consumption is 1% , which means that the battery hasn’t charged fully and needs to be charged and discharged fully (keep charging for over 12 hours after full discharging) so as to release its potential abilities. And this full charging and discharging process is called activating the battery. The power management software of Thinkpad of Lenovo has similar function as “power gauge calibration”.

It’s better to activate some battery with older technology. Theoretically, Li-ion battery needs to be activated because of the SEI protection course on the cathode. Actually, this process has finished during production testing phase. This activating service may due to the misunderstanding of the consumer.

You need to activate the mobile phone battery when you can’t turn on the phone nor charge it. So-called starving battery means that the battery is out of electricity all the time, or cannot recharge the battery due to low capacity. There are two methods to activate the battery: one is to charge the battery for about 20 minutes with a universal charger. The other is to activate the battery by professional power supply of higher voltage (maybe 12V) in mobile phone service shop, charging the battery by connecting the anode and cathode of the power supply and the battery for dozens of seconds or several minutes. Then the battery can be charged as usual, but we have no idea whether this method will affect the cycle life or not.

Charging by devices:

Activate the battery by stabilized voltage supply if the method above doesn’t work, or there is nothing wrong with the battery. Connect the cathode of the battery with black wire, connect anode with red wire, and charge under voltage to 3.8V. It is not necessary to charge for 12 hours for the first time.