Energypak 625 not working or charging

[Zola]

@Zola you could try charging the way I did above. Connect the positive and negative terminals of the charger directly to the positive and negative terminals on the discharge side of the battery. When I did this the battery was recognised by the charger and it started to charge and illuminate the LEDs same as a good battery when charging the normal way.
The 5th stage in you diagnostic test is possibly showing the amount of charge cycles the battery has done. Try doing a double push on the button and see if you get the same result of 1 LED flashing which indicates 50-100 charge cycles from memory. Refer to attached manual.

Thank you for your reply .. regarding using another ( non smart battery charger) … would you connect it to the BMS Red +( small .5mm sqd wire) and the Black - ( again .5mm sqd wire) ? Does this then still use the BMS to still be “active” ? …. Or not …. ? Would you recommend going directly to the main battery posts ?

 

[Jpirga]

Thank you for your reply .. regarding using another ( non smart battery charger) … would you connect it to the BMS Red +( small .5mm sqd wire) and the Black - ( again .5mm sqd wire) ? Does this then still use the BMS to still be “active” ? …. Or not …. ? Would you recommend going directly to the main battery posts ?

I personally tried going off the main battery posts directly to the battery and it did charge to 41v but when push the battery button it only displayed 3 bars out of 5 for charge. I later charged via the discharge wires and it fully charged the battery and appeared to wake up the BMS so to speak as LEDs incrementally climbed to show charging in progress.

 

[Zola]

I personally tried going off the main battery posts directly to the battery and it did charge to 41v but when push the battery button it only displayed 3 bars out of 5 for charge. I later charged via the discharge wires and it fully charged the battery and appeared to wake up the BMS so to speak as LEDs incrementally climbed to show charging in progress.

Thank you… I’ll try that … btw Mine has this wiring arrangement. Do you mean these are the discharge wires ? … the larger red and black to the output black connector ?

 

[Jpirga]

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Thank you… I’ll try that … btw Mine has this wiring arrangement. Do you mean these are the discharge wires ? … the larger red and black to the output black connector,

Thank you… I’ll try that … btw Mine has this wiring arrangement. Do you mean these are the discharge wires ? … the larger red and black to the output black connector ?

View attachment 149507 View attachment 149508 View attachment 149509

Correct, those thicker wires. Keep us posted

 

[Zola]

Wired up charger to discharge port … it charging @ 0.8 A …. The voltmeter is connected to the main battery posts ..35.0 volts … I’ll monitor it to see how it behaves.

 

[Zola]

Wired up charger to discharge port … it charging @ 0.8 A …. The voltmeter is connected to the main battery posts ..35.0 volts … I’ll monitor it to see how it behaves.
View attachment 149520

 

[Zola]

View attachment 149522

Has increased to 1.5A

 

[Zola]

Has increased to 1.5A

Battery appears to be fully charged….. but the leds on the battery don’t appear to show state of charge .. what is the button press sequence for getting the charge of battery status? Thank you

 

[Jpirga]

Battery appears to be fully charged….. but the leds on the battery don’t appear to show state of charge .. what is the button press sequence for getting the charge of battery status? Thank you

View attachment 149603 View attachment 149604

 

[Jpirga]

 

[Zola]

View attachment 149605

Does it only show the battery state … whilst charging? Or

 

[Jpirga]

Does it only show the battery state … whilst charging? Or read both lines on the page.

Says whilst and without charging. Holding the button down goes into test mode. Double pressing shows how many charge cycles completed.

 

[Zola]

I get no battery charge status leds , with the charger on / off ( the non smart one that did charge ok) … battery voltage is now at 42v . Does this function only work with the BMS woke up and a working comms via the giant “ smart charger “ ? . I disconnected the non smart charger, plugged the Giant charger in to see if there’s any change …The Red led on the charger just flashes as before… !

 

[Zola]

Hello,

I know it's a bit late but here's what I found out about Giant batteries. I usually repair all kinds of electronics so I got a couple of faulty giant intube batteries to play with. I thought, even if I don't repair them, I will keep the cells (which in most cases are intact) which are high quality Panasonic 18650GA which if used correctly will last for many years.

Anyway, battery construction is space proof They could easily save some weight using a thinner case and also what I don't like, the whole pack is potted with some silicone compound, including BMS board. That makes things more complicated and also significant weight "bonus" but I took the following approach:

I've tried to remove the silicone from the BMS board, without blowing SMD components. It was quite a nasty job and only 2 components were removed in the process but but I thought doing this I might isolate the common failure point of this battery and on the next one I will only remove the silicone where I needed. Also I have the board to reverse engineer as much as I can at least from the hardware perspective.

The pinout is as follows:

1. GND (-)
2. Wake up /Charge control (2.5v, if put to gnd the battery will power on and give a voltage on discharge port P+ for powering the rest of bike electronics)
3. Can (L/H)
4. Can (H/L)
5. Charge port (C+)
6. Discharge port (P+)

You mentioned in this thread that you have 32v. This means your battery has charging port failure (mosfets shorted) which exposes battery voltage directly on pin 5. The same thing I measured on my faulty batteries I bought. First, I thought that it was a control voltage (high impedance) for the charger or something. But then, I saw I could pull a higher current than a control signal needs and still it supplied the same voltage. So this was a low resistance signal that shouldn't be present when the battery is off/standby.
Also, in your case, at 32V, the BMS assumes the battery is empty, that's why it wouldn't work on the bike and because mosfet failure, it won't charge.

Anyway, after I remove the silicone on the first battery, I analyzed/measured different things, including the charge/discharge mosfets. Bingo, charge mosfets were shorted. Anyway, when accidentaly damaged some smd components in the silicone removal step, I software locked the BMS. This is a project for another time as it might take a while...if possible at all.

So now, back to the second battery, I only removed the silicone around charging mosfets, changed the mosfets while the BMS was still powered and what do you think. The battery behaves as it should. On pin 5 there was no voltage. Charging now works, discharging also works. So I have one good battery out of 2.

It seems it's a common failure point.
Besides this thread there's another in which someone has 3 batteries, all with Vbat on pin 5. Why that happens so often? Maybe because some will charge their batteries off the bike, and the charging adapter can be put backwards (not completely maybe just as to make contact with some battery pins). Also the order might be important. In their manual, giant have the following procedure.


1. Plugin the charger to the bike/battery.
2. Plugin the charger to AC outlet.

When charging is complete:
1. Remove the charger from AC outlet.
2. Remove the charger from the bike/battery.

Usually it's the other way around, I think most people plug in the charger to AC then on the bike/battery.

Another fault (when the battery won't communicate with the bike) I discovered is that on can bus lines there are some protection diodes, on one of the batteries one was shorted (one can line didn't have idle voltage of around 2.5v when powered on).

I've posted a photo showing where the charging mosfets are or the protection diodes on can lines and also can transceiver (which might also fail, I've seen it in smart chargers).


Energypak 625 has a completely different PCB layout, also potted in silicone (transparent). I didn't have time to look at it but I have one faulty 625Wh battery It's a 2 board (stacked) design. It seems to suffer the same fault (charge mosfets failure) but it's impossible to get to them without removing all electrical connections as they are on the bottom PCB. I need to find a way not to software lock the BMS in the process. For 500Wh it's not necessary to remove any connection from the pack to the BMS.

 

[Jpirga]

I get no battery charge status leds , with the charger on / off ( the non smart one that did charge ok) … battery voltage is now at 42v . Does this function only work with the BMS woke up and a working comms via the giant “ smart charger “ ? . I disconnected the non smart charger, plugged the Giant charger in to see if there’s any change …The Red led on the charger just flashes as before… !

I’m not too sure about the charger. Not something I’ve dabbled with yet. Try looking up the charger model and what the red flash means. I have an old charger but have seen there’s a newer one that does storage mode. Make sure you aren’t set on that as it will only charge to 60%
Does the battery now power the bike?
To check the battery health you can connect the app to your bike and read the battery charge status, cycles and health.

 

[Zola]

The non smart charger

I’m not too sure about the charger. Not something I’ve dabbled with yet. Try looking up the charger model and what the red flash means. I have an old charger but have seen there’s a newer one that does storage mode. Make sure you aren’t set on that as it will only charge to 60%
Does the battery now power the bike?
To check the battery health you can connect the app to your bike and read the battery charge status, cycles and health.

I’ll check tomorrow

 

[Zola]

Battery capacity is 9% on the bike ! … that was with 41.8 vdc …. changing to the green light lit on the non smart charge … looks likely that the cells are not charged! Any more thoughts?