Have you been riding your electric bike and noticed that the battery is running out of you faster than usual or maybe you want to check the health of your battery that you have been using for years.
If you want to check your electric bike battery in this case I will be happy to share my experience with you on how to check the battery of an electric bike whether with tools like a multimeter or with no tools at all.
1. How To Check Ebike Battery With No Tools (Road Test)
As a general rule, the best test you can do to verify the health of any ebike battery is to try it in a real road test experience as this test will show you the actual range of the battery
In order to make a good & fair test for your ebike battery, there are some points you need to check before taking your ebike on the road.
Below is a step-by-step guide for how to do a road test for your ebike battery.
1. Fully Charge your Ebike battery
In order to do a correct test, the electric bike battery must be fully charged, and it is preferable to put it on charging overnight before doing the test because this will help us to ensure that the battery is fully charged and ready to be tested.
Now that your bike battery is fully charged, let’s move on to the next step.
2. Check the Battery Original capacity
The easiest way to know what is the original capacity of your ebike battery is to calculate it by using this simple equation
Battery Voltage * Amps = Watt-hours
Example:
52V Battery with 10 ampHR will give you the capacity of 510 watt-hrs
Now you know the original capacity of your ebike battery but what about the Rang?
to know the average range of your battery you can look at the battery screen or ebike controller screen which should give you the average watt-hr for a mile
Normally the average watt-Hr per mile is from 15 to 20 Watt-Hrs with pedal assist.
However, if you depend on throttle only this will raise the average to be from 20 to 25 watts hrs
So,
in the previous example: if you use the full-throttle this should give you a range of 25.5 Miles which is the result of dividing the total capacity of the battery by the average watt-hours per mile 51020=25.5 Miles.
Check out this amazing Multimeter, I love & I think everyone should have it (Get it on Amazon From Here)
3. Natural Road Test
As we mentioned earlier, the best way to check the health of the bike battery is to test it on the road so we will test the bike battery on the road with the full-throttle so we can rely on the battery with no other assist.
Testing Steps
- Take the ebike on your car to a flat road
- Better to choose A day with mild weather Not too hot or too cold as the weather temperature will affect the battery performance.
- choose a road that doesn’t have much traffic to make sure that the capacity of the battery was consumed on the miles with no stops.
- Start riding at full speed.
- better to start riding halfway in each of the road directions so you can compensate for slight incline & the wind.
- Ride tell the battery completely finish.
4. Road Testing Results.
Now after you finish your road testing it’s time to tell how good or bad your battery is? taking into consideration the average original capacity for your ebike battery.
the best way to know how good or bad is your ebike battery is to follow this equation.
The distance covered by the bike in the test*100battery original capacity
Example:
If you covered 20 miles during the test with your battery so in this case, the percentage of the battery health is 78.43% (which is 20Miles * 10025.5 the original battery capacity= 78.43%)
2. How To Test ebike Battery With Multimeter?
The main goal of this test is to check the current voltage of the battery using the multimeter and compare it with the original voltage of your ebike battery
First, you should know how to use the multimeter.
You can check this nice short video for how to use the multimeter?
Check out this amazing Multimeter, I love & I think everyone should have it (Get it on Amazon From Here)
Below is a step-by-step guide for testing an ebike battery using a multimeter.
- Take out your ebike battery from the ebike.
- based on your ebike battery model & type you will find the negative parts & positive parts highlighted on your battery.
- turn on your multimeter
- set it to DC Mode
- use the negative proper on the negative battery side (usually the black one)
- use the Positive Prope on the positive battery side (usually the red one)
- See reading on Multimeter
- if the reading same as the battery voltage means that the battery is capable to produce the correct voltage.
Note: if you have a softback battery you could test the charging ports as well using the same testing method.
3. Other Ways To Check Ebike Battery
There are some other methods you can use to check your electric bike battery.
The first option is to check the battery screen reading, which often gives you information about the number of charges you have charged, as well as the voltage readings and the remaining charging levels, and this information is useful in many situations because as it gives you quick information about the status of the battery.
The second option is to check the temperature of the battery during charging, as it is normal for the battery temperature to increase slightly during charging, but if the temperature is so high that you feel hot when you touch it this means that there is something abnormal.
In this case, it is preferable to start first Change the charger and then check the battery voltage and also the charging port in the battery.
The third option is to use a spare battery to compare the performance between the current ebike battery and the spare bike battery (this option may be useful if you have a battery that has the same capacity in which case you will be able to compare apple to apple) If you have a spare battery of a different capacity this option will not be practical.
Conclusion:
As a general rule, you can check your ebike battery using the below methods
- Using a Multimeter to check the battery voltage
- Doing a road test to check the range of the ebike battery & compare it with the original battery range.
- Checking ebike battery information screen.
- Check the temperature of the ebike battery.
- Compare an ebike battery with a spare battery that has the same capacity.
Finally,
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