LG HG2 batteries from a local store

In the spring, I ran a capacity test on a pair of batteries and mentioned that they had arrived along with three LG HG2 cells. I finally found the time to post a short review of those three batteries.


As a reminder, these batteries and the previous ones were sent by one of my readers and bought at the Batterex store in Kharkiv.

I tested the batteries back in May, about 4 months ago, but somehow kept putting off writing the review. Then I decided to try running a capacity test with them, and first put together a short review so it would be clear exactly what we were testing.


All three batteries have unique matrix codes, and their part numbers also have different suffixes, which is another sign that they are genuine. They were made on day 300 of 2018, i.e. around the end of October.


I’m including photos of the contacts, dimensions, and weight mostly out of tradition, since there’s nothing new to report here.


I started by testing a pair, as usual, but then decided to run the third battery too, "so it wouldn’t feel left out".
A basic charger showed 3100 mAh at a discharge current of 500 mA.


During the tests, the batteries were charged at 1C. The charge cycle took 1 hour and 13 minutes in this mode.


And here are the more accurate tests. These were run at load currents of 0.2, 0.5, 1, and 2C, and 15 and 20 A. I also ran a test at 10 A, but for some reason the results were lost, so that graph is missing.

Nothing new, really: they fell just short of 3000 mAh, but overall that’s fine.


Here are the temperatures at 10, 15, and 20 A. As you can see, the heat buildup is quite significant at the maximum current.


The second battery is essentially the same, except that I tested it in seven modes: 0.2, 0.5, 1, and 2C, and 10, 15, and 20 A.


And the temperatures at 10, 15, and 20 A:


I hadn’t originally planned to test the third battery, but I’m thinking of running a short capacity test on all three cells at once to see how much their balance drifts. For that, they need to start out in the same condition, so I had to bring the third one up to the same state as well.

The test ran automatically, but I have measurement results for the same discharge currents as for the previous batteries.


I only ran a separate test at 20 A. Here are all the results in a list:
0.2C - 2974 mAh - 10.85 Wh
0.5C - 2903 mAh - 10.51 Wh
1C - 2856 mAh - 10.22 Wh
2C - 2849 mAh - 9.97 Wh
10 A - 2835 mAh - 9.684 Wh
15 A - 2810 mAh - 9.341 Wh
20 A - 2775 mAh - 8.945 Wh



Temperatures at 15 and 20 A:


The internal resistance measurements turned out a little different from usual. I normally report the results as received, after "conditioning", and after testing. Here, I have results from when they arrived, after testing, and after 4 months "on the shelf" fully charged. In other words, the second result was taken after charging them four months ago, and the third 4 months later.


That’s about it for this mini-review. In short, everything looks fine. The only thing I can really fault is that the batteries were made a year and a half before I received them.
All that’s left is to assemble them into a battery pack, solder on the protection board, and decide which mode to use for the test.