mgauthier711

I have two 7.4 volt lipo's; one is 350mah and the other is 850mah. Can I put these in parallel and treat them as a single 1200mah lipo?

jzrf6c

Yes, you can.

mgauthier711

Thanks, I thought I could do that but I wasn't sure if the different capacities would matter.

Dr Kiwi

I found this:


"3) Try to use batteries with similar current and capacity rating when you make a battery system.

In parallel systems it is obvious why the battery packs used should have the same voltage. Current and capacity may not be as critical for a parallel pack but could cause the system to go out of balance when a lower capacity pack drops voltage before the higher capacity pack."

-pkh-

My Feedback: (2)

When the packs are in parallel they are at the same voltage, so one won't reduce voltage before the other.

LSF2298

My Feedback: (4)

Then what is going to happen to the Voltage of the larger mah pack when the lower mah pack runs out of current and it's voltage drops to zero???

-pkh-

My Feedback: (2)

That's not how works.

mgauthier711

Okay, here's what I think I have found through reading for two days on the web. Lets say both the high cap and low cap batteries are both charged to 7.8 volts to start. At the start of current draw, both batteries share the current load equally because their voltages are identical. When the low cap battery voltage begins to drop more current will be coming from the high cap battery because it's voltage is now higher. In actual practice, it seems that both batteries share the current load as long as the voltages are equal, as soon as one battery begins to have a lower voltage, the other battery pumps out more of the load until that batteries voltage drops to the same level whereupon the current is provided equally by both batteries again. In a sense, the current then automatically shifts to the battery with the higher voltage resulting in both batteries being discharged (in terms of voltage) equally.