As always, the time until a major trip seems endless until…the trip is just 2 weeks away and the agenda is still full with calls and meetings and weekends are chock-full with other stuff.

Equally important is balancing a pack before setting out on 3 weeks of full-cycle discharges during long-distance daily trips.

Thanks to the fact that I have multiple battery workstations, balancing the 42 strings takes only about one day in total and – as mentioned previously – this exercise is also a very good indicator for cell ageing and cell health in general.

TW560’s pack is nearing 4 years of service and I’m curious to see how the cells are holding up. As it is a serious investment I’m trying to do my best to keep cell ageing and extreme use as low as possible.

Let’s see:

New pack cells slowly getting older...
New pack cells slowly getting older…

Good news: after balancing all cells in the pack and discounting some oxidized connection misreadings which were easily remedied with some isopropyl alcohol, all but one parallel cell string are still very well balanced down to minor 1-2mV variances. The string that was slightly lagging was easily brought back into line with some TLC from my battery workstation

TW560 is ready for an epic new adventure to southern Italy! (for which we are super thankful, as finally both Italy and Switzerland’s lockdowns are over and we’re longing to see some friends!)

 

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