People want a fast calculator to help on their custom battery design, however, since things are complicated with different voltage and capacity of each cell, we think people designing the battery packs should know some basics of lithium battery design.
Battery packs achieve the desired operating voltage（ie: Total Battery Pack Voltage） by connecting several cells in series( S in short ); each cell adds its voltage. Parallel( P in short) connection attains higher capacity by adding up the total ampere-hour (Ah).
to help you further understand how it works, see below explanation:
#1 For the series connection, batteries with same(almost) voltage and capacity are connected to raise the voltage of final battery packs. The positive terminal of the first battery is connected to the negative terminal of a second battery and so on until the desired voltage is reached. The final voltage is the amount of all battery voltages added together while the final capacity(Ah) remains unchanged.
#2 While for parallel connection, batteries with same(almost) voltages and capacities are connected together to increase the capacity of the overall battery pack. The positive terminals of all batteries are connected together, or to a common conductor, and all negative terminals are connected in the same kinds. The final voltage remains unchanged whilst the capacity of the assembly is the sum of all individual cells together for such parallel design.
let’s use Samsung 3.7V 2.6Ah( mAh) for example.
1S1P pack that’s 3.7V 2.6Ah battery pack
2S1P pack that’s 7.4V 2.6Ah battery pack
1S2P pack that’s 3.7V 5.2Ah battery pack
2S2P pack that’s 7.4V 5.2Ah battery pack
Many battery packs may consist of a combination of series(S) and parallel(P) connections.
For Laptop batteries with 11.1V 4.8Ah battery pack, it commonly has three 3.7V battery cells in series (3S) to achieve a nominal 11.1 V rechargeable battery and two in parallel(2P) to boost the capacity from 2.4Ah to 4.8Ah. As you can find it will be a configuration is called 3S2P, meaning three cells in Series and two in Parallel.
When size limitation was considered, there is much more we need to consider, see below picture.
Stop here and check if you can figure them out.
and here is the answer:
very easy, don’t you?
You will get efficient and thoughtful service from SINC.
Let’s now calculate another 11.1V 100Ah battery pack, let’s see how many cells would be needed: 11.1V/3.7V=3, so that’s 3S 100Ah/2.6Ah=38.5 so we can use 38P(98.8Ah) or 39P(101.4Ah)
people mostly will use 3S38P so that’s 114 cells in total(3*38=114)
is all clear to you now?
What If I drop the mAh rating from 2.6Ah to 2.2Ah(which is more common for type batteries), I now need 135 cells in total with 3S45P configuration to get the same total capacity of 11.1V 100Ah(actual capacity is 11.1V 99Ah).
PS: 11.1V/3.7V=3 100Ah/2.2Ah=45.5
The calculate is still on—
What if we use Lifepo4 cells(which are rated 3.2V 1.5Ah)? we would need 264 cells in total with 4S66P configuration to get the same total capacity of 11.1V 100Ah(actual capacity is 12.8V 99Ah).
PS: 11.1V/3.2V=3.5 people normally use 4S to boost voltage,
100Ah/1.5Ah=66.6
Let’s roll the ball on.
what will happen if Watt/Hour(Wh in short) are involved?
If you have, for example, 2Ah lithium ion battery cell then each of those stores 7.4Wh (3.7V*2Ah=7.4Wh) of energy and you need 136 of them (/7.4 ~ 136) for a 1kWh battery. 136 in parallel will give you a 1kWh battery with a nominal voltage of 3.7V.
If you want higher voltage, and you probably will, you have to put them in series as well. 7s is a typical minimum for a Home UPS battery. 136 cells can’t be evenly distributed over 7 packs in series, you then need 140 cells for a 7s20p setup.
All of above are just examples, there are plenty other possibilities. It would be very hard to put this into an automatic calculator which then provides meaningful results because almost all of this depends on variables the calculator doesn’t know or that have to be put in in the first place. It is easier to calculate this yourself.
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