Someone is building me some bike lights and insisting li-po is the way forward in the dark. However, I’ve been reading about all the things you have to be careful about, and watched all the exploding li-po batteries on youtube etc, and I’m just not so sure. I’ve bought a balancing charger thingy, and got an LED which tells me when to unplug the battery, but I’m not going to invest in the battery yet, until I’m convinced it won’t go BANG! in the middle of an enduro or some such event when it’s neatly tucked away in my camelbak… Anyone able to provide any further pro’s/cons?

Cheers.

The Ay-Up systems use li-po cells in hard cases for protection, and I’ve not heard of anyone having problems with them.

However, when I was looking at a battery system, although li-po did seem the cheapest and most powerful option, the numerous horror stories of packs catching fire/exploding during charging or being damaged meant that I went the 18650 li-ion route instead.

Cheers, Rich

Someone is building me some bike lights and insisting li-po is the way forward in the dark.

If its a custom build, and if you’re paying. Then I’d have thought that you get the last word on what batteries you use.
😉

And as TF has indicated, best, perhaps, to stick with whats tried and tested as appropriate for the task.

fire proof battery bag £3.50 ?

A good ‘balancer’ circuit wouldn’t hurt 😉

Been using them for years in other applications. As long as you balance charge them (really good charger is Imax B6, about £30-40 on fleabay), don’t damage them and don’t discharge beyond the safe level for the pack they aare fine. Nice and light too.

I noticed Four4th use Lipos but they insist you carry them in a rucksack and not on the bike – slightly weird but runtimes seem good.

I have two lipos for an RC car (one 11.1v and one 7.4v) and I treat them VERY carefully. Charge them in a fireproof lipo sack and always keep any eye on them – if damaged or charged unbalanced, they can blow up in a pretty dangerous way. The biggest danger is if one cells voltage drops more than the others but damage is also bad news – they bulge then go up in flames.

I can see lipos eventually being adopted but for now, treat with care!