Battery Voltage and Percentage Capacity Remaining

[AdamG]

Hi,

I found the charts that give you a rough guide to how the battery voltage relates to the percentage of its capacity remaining:

Per Cell:

Empty - 3.21
10% - 3.68
20% - 3.75
30% - 3.92
40% - 3.81
50% - 3.84
60% - 3.88
70% - 3.94
80% - 4.00
90% - 4.09
100% - 4.20

Does this only apply to a battery that is not in use? i.e. not during flight or under load? Just trying to work out if I can put my OSD 'battery voltage' reading to use.

Thanks.
Adam

[Billy_boy_2010]

I believe under heavy load the battery voltage will drop a fair bit but recover afterwards.

If you're just cruising at a low ampage the battery reading should be pretty accurate.

I rely more on the number of mA consumed on an OSD. I have found my ezosd to be surprisingly accurate for this. Within 1-2%.

It's not fool proof though. As a battery ages (either by storing it fully charged for too long, leaving it in hot conditions for a long time, or just through lots of charges and discharges) their capacity decreases- so the rule of thumb of using 80% of a batteries max capacity to keep it healthy may be pushing it with an older battery- where it may have lost 10% of its capacity already- so you're running it down to 90ish% of its max without realising.

[krikey]

batteries are funny things and in my experience you should not consider them like a fuel tank. if a car has 10% fuel left, it can still drive just as fast as 80% capacity, possibly faster but that's die to weight.

A 10% battery will not perform very well at all.




Krikey