A detailed question-and-answer guide to drone batteries

With the development of drones in recent years, more and more people are beginning to use drone maneuvering as a hobby. Drones are lightweight to camera-equipped models, but in most cases they use lithium-polymer batteries, which are best used on drones. And drone batteries, as a source of power for drones, do many people really know about them?

What does the discharge process of a drone battery be?

For drones, drone batteries are usually made of lithium batteries, which we call lithium polymer batteries every day, in LiPo. The voltage of each LiPo battery is typically 3.7v to 4.2v, which means that the nominal voltage for each lithium battery is 3.7 and the full voltage is 4.2v. Lithium batteries discharge better than ordinary nickel hydride or nickel lithium batteries, so they are also popular with drone enthusiasts. The voltage value of the discharge process from full to empty battery is not linear, that is to say, the voltage value of the drone battery during discharge is not a line of proportional time change, but a curve, as follows:

According to the above curve, we can clearly see that the speed of voltage decrease of uav battery is close to linear change when it starts discharging. It gradually flattens out at the later stage of discharge and lasts for a long time. At the end of discharge time, the voltage decreases rapidly. As can be seen from the typical discharge graph, the larger the battery discharge current, the smaller the discharge capacity, and the faster the voltage drop.

How many volts does a drone use?

But 4.2v voltage is not enough in practice, so people think of multi-cell lithium batteries in series to increase the voltage. For example, a battery with only one lithium is called a LiPo1S battery, a battery connected by two lithium batteries is called LiPo2S, and a three-cell, four-cell or six-cell battery is called LiPo3S, LiPo4S, or LiPo6S. In addition to the number of cells, the nominal voltage of most drone batteries sold on the market is also indicated. Such as: 1S3.7V, 2S7.4V, 3S11.1V, 4S14.8V, 6S22.2V. The higher the voltage of the drone battery, the higher the motor can be driven to turn. The use of small multi-rotor drones is usually 1s or 2s lithium batteries, usually toy drones. The medium multi-rotor sits usually on 4s, 6s batteries. 12s batteries are commonly used on larger drones, such as cargo drones, agricultural drones, mapping drones, and so on.

How long can a drone flying without recharging?

When buying a drone battery, we can see that there is a label on the battery, which is the 6000mah, 10000mah, 16000mah or 22000mah commonly used. It shows how much power a drone battery can store. Discharge C-rate usually have 15C, 20C, 25C or 30C, and so on. It represents the rate of discharge. As to how much of the C-rate it discharges during the actual flight, it mainly depends on the power of the electric conciliation and the motor, that is the current consumption of the load.For example, we have a 10000mah 20C battery.

1. Discharge for 1 hour at the discharge rate of 10000 mah per hour.

2. Discharge at a rate of 5 times, that is, discharge at a rate of 50000 mah per hour for 12 minutes (60/5).

3. Discharge at a rate of 10 times, that is, discharge at a rate of 100,000 ma per hour for 6 minutes (60/10).

4. Discharge at a rate of 20 times, that is, discharge at a rate of 200,000 mah per hour for 3 minutes (60/20).

What factors affect the drone battery’s capacity ?

The higher the discharge current of the drone battery, the less capacity the output will be. The discharge temperature of the battery is reduced and the output capacity is reduced. The discharge cut-off voltage of the battery is set by the limit of the electrode material and the electrode reaction itself, and is generally 3.5V or 3.2V when discharged. After the drone battery is charged and discharged several times, the discharge capacity of the battery will be reduced due to the failure of the electrode material.

Learn more about drone battery

Technology for future improvements in lithium ion drone battery

Keep an eye on Grepow’s official blog, and we’ll regularly update industry-related articles to keep you up-to-date on the battery industry. 

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