Replace Li-Po Packs

batterieslipo

I have this battery with it's own charge/discharge circuit. There are 5V out and 19V. The total capacity is 42000mAh @ 5V with 6 cells inside. (4.11V/4.12V each, fully charged). I don't know the capacity of each cell.

Green PCB showing three white battery packs with yellow tape and a USB stick device displaying 0.32A

Can I keep the PCB and replace all of theses cells for biggers, to increase the total capacity of the battery, knowing I need both (5V and 19V) output?

Best Answer

If you increase the capacity of the cells, a well-designed charging circuit should handle them just fine, increasing the charge time as necessary. Decreasing the capacity would be more dangerous because the charge current would be too big for the new cells.

Whenever this particular circuit is well-designed or not is quite impossible to tell from the photo.

Some battery packs also estimate the amount of charge remaining in the cells. For such estimation current cell voltage is not enough, because individual cells have slightly different curves of voltage vs charge. To improve the estimate, your battery pack may use a hardcoded capacity value and/or estimate it during previous charge/discharge cycles.

Hopefully, this charge estimation doesn't affect the charge process, otherwise your cells may stop charging prematurely and you will never use their full capacity.