OK, ok, ok, you're right, you said this before it is true, sorry. All credit goes to you and not to Power Paul. He was wrong anyway 😂

But the Daly BMS only balances while it's charging anyway, so it will never drag the pack down to the individually set balance start voltage. This sort of feature is only really possible when it's incorporated into a BMS so it knows when there's charge current going in.

@@PowerPaulAu This comment makes no sense. Let's say If I have a pack with 4 cells at that when (mostly) fully charged look like this: Cell #1: 3.60v (102 Ah) Cell #2: 3.65v (101 Ah) Cell #3: 3.55v (103 Ah) Cell #4: 3.45v (105 Ah) At very high states of charge the BMS will be pulling current from Cell #2 because it's the highest cell. It's the highest voltage cell because it has the lowest capacity and thus hits 100% SoC faster than the other cells. Now let's examine this same pack again at say around 30% SOC. Now the voltages would look more like: Cell #1: 3.22v (102 Ah) Cell #2: 3.21v (101 Ah) Cell #3: 3.25v (103 Ah) Cell #4: 3.27v (105 Ah) Cell #4 now has the highest voltage because as the strongest/highest capacity cell it's voltage will remain higher as the pack approaches lower SoC. Now say my MPPT is putting out 50 amps and my inverters are drawing 48 amps, so I have a very low charge current of 2 amps flowing into the battery. This 2 amps will turn on balancing, and it will now cause the BMS to draw balance current balance from cell #4, which will actually work to unbalance the pack because it's cell #2 which reaches 100% SoC first when at high states of charge. This isn't some imaginary scenario either. I have spent many hours testing what voltages work best to start balancing. I've encountered this exact scenario when testing balancing at lower voltages. If you want to top balance you need to make sure you never draw balance current when the battery is at a low SoC. Saying "it only balances during charging" is not really a good excuse since the battery can (and is very likely to be) be at very low state of charge during charging.

@@JeremyAkersInAustin this post/video is just about how the Daly Balance circuit works. I think you're delving way too deep. As for my comment not making sense, that's ok, it's the fact of how it works, it's not up to me to make sense of it. If you want a better explanation, and you're that invested in it, I'd suggest you contact Daly and ask why they do it this way. Andy isn't asking why, he's showing what it does. And so am I. I can see you're upset about not getting a mention earlier on, but if Andy mentioned everyone that comments or helps, his videos would go on forever and would be much less fun. He's mentioned you now, twice at least, so we can all move on. As he has alluded to, there's more on this coming, so let's sit back and await some more findings. Just keep in mind, he's effectively reverse engineering a sealed black (and red) box with minimal test equipment and no real documentation. Things aren't always as they seem. If you want to provide better information than he is, perhaps it's worth starting a channel of your own, anyone can do it now.

@@PowerPaulAu "this post/video is just about how the Daly Balance circuit works." No, it's not *just* about that. He's *also* addressing the hundreds of comments he received telling him he needs to start balancing at 3.2v, which as I pointed out with a very easy to follow and understand example, can cause the Daly to unbalance your pack because it would allow balancing to occur in the lower and middle states of charge. Everyone should understand by now that balancing in the lower to middle states of charge regions of a battery can cause your pack to become unbalanced. The fact that the Daly only balances during charge doesn't change the physics of this. Charging (and thus balancing) would frequently occur during low and middle states of charge. There's a reason Daly asks you to set a balance start voltage because they don't expect you to balance the pack anytime a charger is connected. Since 3.2v is very close to fully discharged, setting balancing to start at 3.2v essentially means balancing would occur almost anytime charge current is detected at almost any state of charge. "I can see you're upset about not getting a mention" Huh? I was in no way upset and I absolutely did not expect him to call me out. I was just teasing Andy because he and I were just discussing this in another long comment thread like the night before this video aired. I in no way actually expected to be mentioned. If anything it just surprised me that he called out any one person when I saw several people tell him the same thing. "If you want to provide better information than he is" Again: Huh? I'm agreeing with Andy's own comments that 3.2v is too low and providing literal real world examples that I have actually seen first hand, as evidence to why 3.2v is too low to balance. Several other people who are experienced with LFP cells have jumped in in other comments to say the same. "perhaps it's worth starting a channel of your own, anyone can do it now" Ask Andy how many hours he invests into this every week. This is not something that just "anyone" has the time and energy to do. Taking the time to set up the cameras to get the correct angles and setting up screen readers and then going back and editing in the various shots from various camerasa and screen captures with the video. That's a LOT of work. I don't think it's fair to imply that this is so easy "anyone" can do it, because there's a reason that not everyone does. I have a lot of respect for the amount of effort Andy puts into this and there's no way I would have the time to put this kind of footage together. I have a full time job plus an infant and toddler at home which is another full time job in and of itself. I already find it hard to find the time just to *work* on my battery projects. Taking the extra time to film it all and edit all the footage, upload it to youtube and respond to people's comments? No way. I love that Andy's doing this and only hope that he finds my comments helpful since I've already done most of the testing he's done building my own packs.

Thanks a lot, Paul. Without your initial comment and thought around that, we wouldn't have 'cracked the secret' 😂. Team effort 🤝 So your balance start voltage of 3.2V makes actually sense in combination with well matched cells. Hence you test them all individually before putting them together in your packs.

Thanks for sharing Trev. The initial top balancing is indeed important and the BMS has only little work to day afterwards. Hence these balance current of just a few mA could be enough to keep your pack balanced.

@@OffGridGarageAustralia It's ironic that a little charger designed to fast charge RC "toys" in the field has the kind of features that are so lacking on most mains chargers - To be able to activly balance as you charge - set charge currents and terminal voltage and warn of any critical malfunction automaticly shutting down - max 30amp charge continuous charge is good too.

You should get an active balancer, look at the Heltec units. Passive balance is so slow it’s pretty useless on large battery packs. With active balance you pull power out of high cells and push it back into low cells at the rate of several amps. It’s way faster than draining high cells to make heat.

so now that they are balanced, did you change the balance settings?. what did you change it to?

My personal experience for the last 6 months have shown that even a small passive balance it works flawless. I can almost guarantee if you take the time to put the daly on you 280ah cells you'll see it works just as good as any other BMS.

That is great, Riley. Thanks for sharing. I think this reassures people that Daly BMS are actually working. What is the start voltage for your balancing?

If cells are matched then a small balance current is enough. Not sure what happens when you have 3 ones that are not like the other 16. I think Andy 1st pack have something like this

Thanks very much James. The GOAT 🐐

You will see in the next video... I have shown the QUC in this video

Yes, you're absolutely correct, Jonathan. It'll be in the next video.

I did this with grade b cells too. Ir was all over the place and so was the capacity. One cell was 10% less than the others! But I just bottom balanced, set absorption, then cycled. No issues at all.

This will take a long time to do.... and besides its good to balance your cells, mostly to prevent voltage sag underload and having your inverter reach its low voltage cut off. I've noticed that its when the pack is at 15 to 80 percent state of charge that all the cells are around the same voltage how ever its the amp hours that each individual cell has inside of it that will make the difference when underload. That's when you see some cells hit their minimum voltage... if just one of them is "bad" then due to the charge curve it will bring the pack voltage way down... Having said that, I do agree with you 100 percent you can hold a pack in balance for 6 months easily... but but why not put the best bms on your battery pack?

i found that if the battery is not pulling and charging with excessive of energy the cell drift will be minimal. i charge the battery with constant 100a and the discharge is 100a ~ 200a, i can see the voltage different less than 30 cycle.

@@wenhaowong5549 whats the total amp hour of the battery pack? Also the charge/discharge rates in relationship to the total capacity of a battery is called its "C" rating. The lower the ratio this is the lower the charging/discharging "C" rate you will have which is what you want.

@@raymondcasso7966 yes, i know that, my battery bank are 202ah, so charging c rate was 0.5c, i have try to increase the battery bank to 404ah so the charging rate is just 0.25c, however the cell drift is still noticeable.

I really needed to know how it works and show everyone so they can make their decision which way to go.

@@OffGridGarageAustralia Love love love your channel and content. 👍❤️

Thank you Ed. I've seen these other BMS from Daly with higher balance current. I wonder why they have increased it if so many people said 30mA is enough 🤔

I think the Daly BMS's with the fans have the higher balance current. There's such a lack of real data and information on these, it's a big downfall in my opinion.

I can confirm that my Daly 200A BMS uses ~200mA balance current on all cells, ONLY while charging, and ONLY when the voltage is above the setpoint. You have cleared up SUCH a huge mystery for me. I am still using Lithium Ternary ( Li-Ion/Cobalt ) chemistry, so I have my BMS setup to charge between 3.10 -> 4.2V and begin top balancing the charge above 3.7v since the daly ONLY BALANCES WHEN CHARGING. Man, that's such a game changer for the way I have been treating my battery stack. Knowing it only cuts in during charging means I only have a slight loss of charge current, and only if the cells are outside of the 50mV margin I set. Now my battery regularly stays within 5-7mV top balance!

I saw these potentiometers but they didn't do anything when I twisted them. I'll have a closer look, I quickly tried only one without success. Thanks for you tip and confirmation.

@@OffGridGarageAustralia They are real fragile, but should make them more sensitive.

I was reading thru some comments and saw where you wanted to dump extra power. I'm doing just that. I use a adjustable voltage sensing relay and a solid state relay both bought from Amazon. They were not expensive at all. The voltage sensing relay doesn't carry much amps so it wouldn't work by itself but it triggers the solid state relay which carries plenty of amps. The solid state relay then turns on my heating element in my electric water heater. The voltage sensing relay is very easy to set up and works great.

The Daly does its job. If your cells get out of balance at the top charge, just get one of these little active balancers as well to help it out there.

@@OffGridGarageAustralia considering it's for a Li-Ion pack that will be quite heavily used in an off road vehicle, i'll have to see what it gives once i complete the build. thanks for the vids!

Thank you. I guess their technique comes from Li-ion batteries where voltage is linear to the SOC. This method does not work with LiFePO4 though as once the voltage is rising, the cells are already full and charging stops soon. So does the balancing then.

Thank you for these information.

Thank you!

Greetings from Germany, too. All daly bms above 200A will Balance with 200mA

Thanks 👍

Don't say that out loud! 🤫

Absolutely, if you do your initial top balance correctly, they will just work. I personally still don't like this method though as there are better ways of doing it these days. But that's just me 😉

@@OffGridGarageAustralia sure, but charge transfer between cells requires a matrix of capacitors, which will all eventually fail. I like long-lived resistance based balancing the way this works... it's simplicity is also longevity.

I know, hence I made this slogan much better 😉

Hahaha, thanks Dan. I had so much fun during making this video, couldn't help myself when I got closer and closer to actually find out and show how it is working 😂 I definitely prefer the active balancing of other BMS' as this is the way to go these days. Passive balancing seems a bit cheap and outdated.

Thanks Michael. If you already have a Daly, keep it and get an active balancer if your cells are drifting. That is a good combination. Yes, the QUCC has a relay and cuts power in both directions, you got that right.

Michael Hood, Daly works fine.

Because Paul may be still correct and it balances only the highest cell, not all. I didn't pay attention to pos or neg 🤦

Hi Andy, I wanted to leave the conclusions up to you, but that's exactly what I've been thinking about.

Yes, that is absolutely correct. The initial top balance will equalize all cells first and the BMS balances little variations during usage.

Wow, thank you 😉

With the Daly BMS? Yes, I would start early at around 3.25V or 3.3V. The balance amount is tiny, it will take a long time until it works.

Hi can you help, Is that over 200a discharge or charge current? where did you find this info? I have a 250A smart one (still in its box), but it has 250a discharge 125a charge current printed on the front of it. I can only find the data sheet showing 30ma.

@@garys-half-baked-offgrid-dream in my spec sheet it don’t state any size it but on there web site it’s hidden away in one of the spec sheets that lists all of them in a table I tested my one and seems to balance at 158ma but my pack is fairly well balanced.

@@robben8704 Cheers Rob I will chexk it out.

Thanks for sharing, Rob. Wow, great project with the Raspi and Daly. I did another test with the Daly and found... well, it's in the next video.

@@garys-half-baked-offgrid-dream The Versions of Daly BMS with the fan are the ones with higher balance current as far as I know.

So 2 sets of wires would be better :)

It does not measure the voltage accurately anyway as the balancer only works while charging.

The numbers don't matter. It was more to show current is flowing or no current is flowing.

Thank you. The test shows the principle how the BMS works, a few mA less or more does not matter for that. I don't know how large the shunt inside the multimeter is and what voltage drop that would cause.

I would recommend the JK BMS. Go a few videos back and watch these video. It's a fantastic BMS with active balancer and great app.

Yes, absolutely and a perfect combination with the Daly.

Oha, wait for the next video then...

Yes, that is correct.

Yeah, Daly is still not great. The balancer function and efficiency/effectiveness is their weak point.

....and then at the end of the video you punch it in the face and point out that it can only punch back with 23mAmps against your 14.4kW battery.

Hahaha, yeah outsmarted by the BMS 😂😂😂

That was a 12V car light bulb, Alan.

Hello 👋

Charging shows positive numbers, discharging negative numbers on my app. Yours is reversed?

This is something I've seen for a while now. Different versions of the Daly BMS report the current flow differently. It's weird and annoying, I wish they would settle on a "standard" of some sort.

@@OffGridGarageAustralia yes,so does my 24 volt 250 amp daly that i just installed last week.

Ha ha 30 seconds further into the vid you found that out.