How to Tell If a Lipo Battery Is Fully Charged?

Lipo batteries, serving many industries and being used in almost all the portable devices are the latest inventions of science. From the smallest devices like rechargeable mp3 players to biggest speakers, cellphones, laptops, car batteries, and solar powerhouse batteries, the use of Lipo batteries can be seen everywhere. Due to being extra efficient and great at service, these lipo-batteries require more care than the other normal and conventional batteries.

The biggest problem that occurs in a lipo battery is when it is charged more than the capacity. Such as, when the lipo battery gets fully charged but not disconnected from the source, this thing affects their overall life. Batteries start to get swelled and their self-discharging process also increases. This thing not only affects the quality and efficient working of lipo battery but can be the reason for some devastating incidents. We have got many reports where overcharged lipo batteries started sparking and became reason for house fire. By looking at this thing and letting our readers know about the risks and ways to avoid these risks, we have brought this complete guide about lipo batteries, their charging time, charged signs, and how to keep them safe after usage. So let's start:

How do I know when my battery is fully charged?

To understand the charging time and when is the battery completely charged, you to find out the capacity of your battery. Different lipo batteries come with different capacities some have less capacity while the others have more. Capacity denotes how power a better can hold on a normal basis or how much power it can store in it at one time. You can simply call capacity the fuel tank of your battery. More is the capacity of fuel tank, more power it can store, and so it can work for more time. Now, the measuring unit with which you can figure out the maximum capacity of a battery, it is mAH. mAH stands for Milliamp Hours, and it is the system international unit of battery power.

It helps you to determine the running capacity of a device where battery is attached to work. You can figure out how long a battery would work after each charge. The more is the capacity, the more power it can store. You can find different standard sized batteries for different devices designed and manufactured by different industries. The standard size doesn’t mean that battery power for same sort of devices or products is going to be same. It varies according to the size and capacity of devices. Such as, batteries for airplanes and helicopters come in variant sizes due to the variant sizes of these both vehicles.

Moreover, the physical size of the battery also determines its capacity. Such as, batteries that come in huge sizes have more capacity than the smaller sized batteries. Such as, batteries for solar energy saving are huge and they can power all the appliances at home while the batteries of cellphone are tiny as they are responsible to run only one single tiny cellphone.

Well, the reason for discussing battery capacities and sizes in such details is that battery size and capacity matters a lot to determine charging time. The more is the capacity, the more time a battery will take to recharge. However, we cannot tell exact time in which battery is fully charged without using some external devices like voltmeter.  Voltmeters can be used to determine if the battery is fully charged.

How long can I keep a LiPo battery fully charged?

To keep your lipo batteries fully charges, you need to have voltmeter and a good charger. By using voltmeter, you will get indication of the power capacity of a battery. If it shows battery power less than 3.7 meters, you need to recharge it till it reaches its maximum capacity.  By recharging your lipo batteries in time, you can keep it fully charged.

Moreover, hot batteries can drain power quickly, so to cool down you have to keep them in refrigerators. The cold inside the refrigerator will help your battery to cool and store its power for longer periods of time.

When the power is stored for longer periods, it will stay charged for long time. So, by keeping your batteries cool you can extend their charging time.

Should LiPo batteries be discharged before charging?

Well, it is not recommended to store the power in a lipo battery for too long. When lipo batteries are fully charged and you don’t use their power and let it stay charged. The self-discharging of a charge battery increases. Therefore, you are advised not to keep a fully charged battery for more than three days.

If you have a charged battery yet you need to go somewhere and there is no source by using which battery power will be used, then it is recommended to drain all the power or at least 50 percent battery power before storage. The power storage unit of a lipo battery capacity is mAH that stands for milliamp hours. But, as milliamp hours has more hours in it, so to convert it in one hour power we can use following formula:

1000mAh = 1 Amp Hour (1Ah)

It will help us to configure how much power capacity a battery has. Such as how much power we need to put on a lipo battery in order to drain it completely and quickly. Moreover, same figure will let us know how much power we need to apply on a battery for fast drainage.

When you have drained your battery to 50%, it is now safe to store for a minimum period of one week. If you will store a charged battery its quality and health will be affected. Therefore, it is recommended as a must to discharge a lipo battery before storage and charging. Otherwise, battery will be overcharged and it will get swelled or bloat up physically. In worse cases, it can spark and become cause of fire and worst damages.