Originally Posted By: spackard
Where does it dump the 400 watts of power?
Is that green circle thing a load bank?
Apparently so...
Where does it dump the 400 watts of power?
Is that green circle thing a load bank?
Apparently so...
Prolong Hybrid Battery Reconditioning
- Thread starter The Critic
- Start date
I went home for a late lunch at about 1:30, and the discharger was showing as completed. I am not sure how long it had been done, but it was long enough for the voltage bounce to occur. Total time elapsed was just over 6 hours.
After some consultation with more experienced people, based on my battery’s condition, I was advised that the risk vs reward of taking the battery down to 17V (for the third cycle) was not worthwhile. So, I will only be doing two charge/discharge cycles.
The charger is currently connected to the battery for recharge #2. I plan to let this one run longer to allow for the pack to become fully balanced. I am targeting 24 hours of charging for this charge.
When I left for work at 7:30am, the charger showed 240V.
As of 12:41pm, the charger only showed 236V, so the voltage may have peaked and then began dropping; I called it done as of 12:41pm. So, the total charge time for the second (and final) recharge cycle w/balancing was 23 hours and 10 minutes.
I reassembled the car and took it for a drive after an hour of wait time. So far, on normal routes, the battery maintains a higher state of charge (it has not fallen below 50% on routes where it normally dips to 45%). Acceleration from a stop is slightly stronger and smoother. Also, on long downhill sections, the battery would previously read 7 bars (full) quite quickly. Now, the battery maintains 5-6 bars on these roads.
Minimal benefit with a ROI that is difficult to justify. I did two more of those treatments with minimal improvements each time. The cost is really the issue here. I think the product does work as long as the pack is in reasonable health. But $600+ for the equipment is a lot of coin unless you share it.
My battery remains original at 211K.
Thanks. Good news is you still have the battery. I have an electronics background and from what I've seen online about reconditioning the batteries there are several flaws in this system.
First - the internal cells are in series so the equipment sees just 1 big multi-cell battery so there is no way for this qizmo to uncover bad cells. A bad or weak cell in the middle of the stack will be an impediment if it can't respond to this type of treatment. However if all the cells are in good shape then charging them to a higher voltage and draining them to a lower level than the car does will do what ever that does to restore cell capacity.
2nd - If you break the battery down you see that each "cell" or rectangular block is really 6 or 7 1.2 volt real cells in series. OK, you can locate a bad or weak block and replace it easily enough but you're not really finding the bad cell, just the block where it resides. But changing out the block cheap and easy. With the cover off you can find weak blocks with a volt meter easily.
3. - Balancing is done by other "re-conditioner" people by connecting all the cells in parallel and letting them sit and charge. I don't know how well that does but they seem to be in business. A bad block will have all the current of all the other blocks available to it. I can see how balancing would work in that setup because every block will be charged to exactly the same voltage. So when measured independently (under some sort of load) they should all be within a few millivolts of each other. If not you have a weak cell block. The point being that with the cells in series balancing is not really reliable.
Also - I agree with your assessment of the ROI. Too expensive. From what I can see the charger is a constant current charger which is not particularly expensive to make. I think the company relies on that most consumers, both professional or amateur, are not well versed in battery technology. It takes some study to know what's going on inside the cells and given that battery replacement is expensive and the car doesn't tell you the condition and the dealer can't either it's an easy sell to people who are worried about their battery.
I really appreciate that you went through the exercise to test it out. It's a hell of a lot of work take the battery apart to hook it up. Kudos.
First - the internal cells are in series so the equipment sees just 1 big multi-cell battery so there is no way for this qizmo to uncover bad cells. A bad or weak cell in the middle of the stack will be an impediment if it can't respond to this type of treatment. However if all the cells are in good shape then charging them to a higher voltage and draining them to a lower level than the car does will do what ever that does to restore cell capacity.
2nd - If you break the battery down you see that each "cell" or rectangular block is really 6 or 7 1.2 volt real cells in series. OK, you can locate a bad or weak block and replace it easily enough but you're not really finding the bad cell, just the block where it resides. But changing out the block cheap and easy. With the cover off you can find weak blocks with a volt meter easily.
3. - Balancing is done by other "re-conditioner" people by connecting all the cells in parallel and letting them sit and charge. I don't know how well that does but they seem to be in business. A bad block will have all the current of all the other blocks available to it. I can see how balancing would work in that setup because every block will be charged to exactly the same voltage. So when measured independently (under some sort of load) they should all be within a few millivolts of each other. If not you have a weak cell block. The point being that with the cells in series balancing is not really reliable.
Also - I agree with your assessment of the ROI. Too expensive. From what I can see the charger is a constant current charger which is not particularly expensive to make. I think the company relies on that most consumers, both professional or amateur, are not well versed in battery technology. It takes some study to know what's going on inside the cells and given that battery replacement is expensive and the car doesn't tell you the condition and the dealer can't either it's an easy sell to people who are worried about their battery.
I really appreciate that you went through the exercise to test it out. It's a hell of a lot of work take the battery apart to hook it up. Kudos.
Let me add that Prolong's pro setup has a harness to monitor and or test/recondition each cell block in the battery. But the system you used does not allow for that.
It seems to me if reconditioning a battery is as simple (in theory) as presented, i.e. charging and discharging several times past the limits set by the car maker that a car maker could very easily make that part of the system. But of course that would cut into sales of replacement batteries or it could provide a good argument for having long battery life. Just sayin' . . .
It seems to me if reconditioning a battery is as simple (in theory) as presented, i.e. charging and discharging several times past the limits set by the car maker that a car maker could very easily make that part of the system. But of course that would cut into sales of replacement batteries or it could provide a good argument for having long battery life. Just sayin' . . .
Interesting thread!
However, I'm not a good candidate for the Prolong system due to living in a apartment and having nobody with whom to split the capital cost. My original battery probably has deteriorated in capacity, but not a lot, so far. I try to keep the dash charge indicator constant, to the extent traffic, hills, and stoplights allow. I'm not sure whether that's best.
However, I'm not a good candidate for the Prolong system due to living in a apartment and having nobody with whom to split the capital cost. My original battery probably has deteriorated in capacity, but not a lot, so far. I try to keep the dash charge indicator constant, to the extent traffic, hills, and stoplights allow. I'm not sure whether that's best.
Thanks for the update! On another note, the vehicle itself could probably be programmed to condition the battery and this would eliminate the need for external equipment.
Those who play with batteries often notice that some cells can be brought back to life with some management tricks. I think the risk is that some cells just do not recover.
Those who play with batteries often notice that some cells can be brought back to life with some management tricks. I think the risk is that some cells just do not recover.
- Joined
- May 30, 2021
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- 134
Judging from my experience from RC Airplanes, Boats and Cars, discharging and charging the battery does not do much but balancing the individual cells can make a battery perform like new.
I have balance chargers and some times I get a battery that even then won't balance 100% and I have to balance them manually and then its fine.
How much is a balance charger for the car ?
I have balance chargers and some times I get a battery that even then won't balance 100% and I have to balance them manually and then its fine.
How much is a balance charger for the car ?
Looks like you were wise to do this. I very recently bought the reconditioning kit for the family Prius V, and the new discharge limits are 134V, 101V, and 84V (see photo below). They may have also changed some of the current levels since it took me around 9 hours to run a discharge cycle alone. That being said, my experience with this kit (with just one discharge cycle) has been much more positive than yours. We'll see how long the benefits last, though. I think that the main drawback of the kit is how long it takes to run a reconditioning cycle (charge/discharge/charge)(> 24 hours). Apparently though, about 80% of the benefit comes from the first cycle (https://priuschat.com/threads/recon...es-prolong-system.179364/page-32#post-2695142).
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It looks like some changes have been made to the system. With that said, the benefits were somewhat short-lived. My original battery remains functional at 226K, but I regularly see "episodes" of abnormally quick charge/discharge behavior, so I do think the end is near. Then again, I have been saying that for the last 50k+.
I wanted to follow up on this, as it has been a while. I wound up buying new batteries after nursing my old ones around for another 10,000 miles or so on the Prolong system. So, ultimately, not a very good deal, and a lot of time spent reconditioning.
Every battery pack will age differently, so I'm sure that my experiences will differ from many others. The short-term benefit (really good, up to 54 mpg best case - no traffic, no AC, no highway) of full reconditioning (charge/discharge/charge cycles) seemed to last only around 100 to 200 miles on my battery pack. Then, it would settle down to 50-ish mpg (best case) for the next 1000-2000 miles or so (let's call this an intermediate benefit). Then it would drop again to the mid 46-48 range (best case).
After some experimenting, that intermediate benefit seemed to come from the rebalancing phase alone (just extended charging), so that's what I wound up doing over and over. Saved a lot of time, but it was still time consuming. Again, a particularity of my battery pack, probably.
At any rate, I'm getting 56 mpg best case with the new batteries. A side benefit is that there is much less brake dust on my wheels now due to more effective regenerative braking.
Every battery pack will age differently, so I'm sure that my experiences will differ from many others. The short-term benefit (really good, up to 54 mpg best case - no traffic, no AC, no highway) of full reconditioning (charge/discharge/charge cycles) seemed to last only around 100 to 200 miles on my battery pack. Then, it would settle down to 50-ish mpg (best case) for the next 1000-2000 miles or so (let's call this an intermediate benefit). Then it would drop again to the mid 46-48 range (best case).
After some experimenting, that intermediate benefit seemed to come from the rebalancing phase alone (just extended charging), so that's what I wound up doing over and over. Saved a lot of time, but it was still time consuming. Again, a particularity of my battery pack, probably.
At any rate, I'm getting 56 mpg best case with the new batteries. A side benefit is that there is much less brake dust on my wheels now due to more effective regenerative braking.
As a purely outside view: I can't honestly see the point of this service. I service MANY, MANY Prius', the majority of which are the Gen 2 models. At this point, it's very rare that I see one with less than 150k miles on the clock yet I've only had to replace maybe a half dozen HV batteries over the years.
Sure, they show signs of degradation long before they actually set codes in the HV module but that process is so slow that 99% of owners don't notice the difference in performance as the things age.
Sure, at this point an OEM HV battery from Toyota makes little sense. That being said, the refurb market is full of options that are in the $1,500 range. The HV battery is easily swapped by a competent DIYer that buys the proper PPE that's needed: rubber insulated gloves and the like.
Sure, they show signs of degradation long before they actually set codes in the HV module but that process is so slow that 99% of owners don't notice the difference in performance as the things age.
Sure, at this point an OEM HV battery from Toyota makes little sense. That being said, the refurb market is full of options that are in the $1,500 range. The HV battery is easily swapped by a competent DIYer that buys the proper PPE that's needed: rubber insulated gloves and the like.
