charged battery till volt meter read 58.3 charger was still charging but I stopped it there for worry of overcharging ...next morning it had dropped to 57.4 ...Should I have topped it off ? Thinking it needs a full charge for the battery's to balance ..I can charge a 1 or 2 or 5 amps using 2 amps and 1 amp for the last volt or so ...
Hi Don,
If you're fully charging the battery in order to balance the cells, you must allow the battery to complete the entire charge cycle.
Your charger should not be able to overcharge the battery as it's output should be accurately regulated to 58.8V.
The battery's
BMS should also prevent individual cells from being overcharged if some cells reach their maximum 4.2V/cell before the other cells.
Your charger initially uses constant current mode for the majority of the charge until the battery voltage reaches 58,8V. At this point it should continue to charge at a constant fixed voltage
(58.8V) to allow the cells to balance correctly.
During the constant voltage mode
(balancing stage) the current will automatically decrease until all cells are at the same ~100% capacity.
The LED will sometimes alternate between Green and Red
(might be Yellow or Orange instead of Red on some chargers) during the constant voltage phase until the cells are all evenly balanced and maximum capacity has been achieved.
When the charging current being drawn from the charger drops below a certain amount, the charger's LED should remain constantly on Green to indicate that the charging
and balancing has been successfully completed, unless you have a
North American charger that actually shuts off the charger's output when maximum battery voltage is initially reached
(or your battery has a faulty BMS like mine ).
Alan