Lithium Ion Battery for GA...

[carusoam]

http://www.truebluepowerusa.com

Has anyone seen this for a Mooney?

I was unable to find an application chart.

Best regards,

-a-

[stevesm20b]

Would be nice if they had one to replace the G-35.

[bonal]

No thanks those stupid things are unstable. Just look at the fun Boing is having with their 787's. Lead acid may be heavy but they are reliable and predictable.

[N201MKTurbo]

Two years ago I designed and manufactured a 100 bay Lithium polymer battery charger for our customer. The batteries we were using were about 3x1x1/2 inches and had the same energy capacity as 8 Duracell alkaline D cells.

They have an amazing energy density, but they are finicky. You can kill them by over discharging them, you can kill them or set them on fire by overcharging them.

If you had a charging system specifically designed for the lithium battery it would be great. It would need to disconnect the battery if the cell voltage got too low. And it drops rapidly at end of discharge.

There would need to be electronics and safety features built into the battery to make it a drop in replacement.

My RG battery works great, I think I will stick with it.

[aviatoreb]

Two big 35map batteries in the tail of my plane are required for my plane to make balance.

[carusoam]

Erik,

Do you have any ballast back there as well?

Best regards,

-a-

[neilpilot]

True Blue Power is a division of Mid-Continent Instruments, a company who knows GA.  According to their web site, the TB17 has built-in circuitry to address many, if not most, of the LiPoly concerns.  I'm not ready to be the first to switch, but it does seem like they have their act together:

 

• "Overcharge, over-discharge, over-current, short circuit, over-temperature, under-temperature and charge current limiting protection"

[N201MKTurbo]

It seems that they only have 24v batteries. How much are they? $$

[orionflt]

We used a couple do lithium batteries in the race plane for Reno, they were very finicky. The plane had 2 batteries installed but we removed one because it didn't want to charge. The battery has good power for starting but not much longevity if you lose an alternator (we ran one race on just the battery). Also if you over discharge them you can get then to recharge but they are basically shot, they won't hold a load very long and seem to deteriorate rapidly. I will have to say I didn't mind pulling the batteries to do maintenance but for reliability I will stick with my AGM until something better is developed.

Brian

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Seth]

787 . . . if Lithium Ion batteries are exposed to the normal earth atmosphere and not sealed - sparks and fire usually erupts.  (787/tesla/other examples?)

 

However, I think it would be cool to harness this power and save weight.  Sadly, just like Erik, it won't benefit me as I have two batteries in the rack on pushed down the tailcone for the Missile conversion for weight (instead of Charlie weights).  Get use out of the weight instead of dead weight.

 

-Seth

[tony]

TAD has an issue paper on the use on lithium batteries. They are even concerned on the use of those little quarter jobs used to retain memory.  There have been so many issues with these things that I don't think the technology has matured enough for safe use on aircraft.  The technology needs more maturing.