At some point, the 3.6 V of a single lithium ion battery just won’t do, and you’ll absolutely want to stack LiIon cells in series. When you need high power, you’ve either got to increase voltage or current, and currents above say 10 A require significantly beefed up components. This is how you’re able to charge your laptop from your USB-C powerbank, for instance.
Or maybe you just need higher voltages, and don’t feel like using a step-up converter, which brings along with it some level of inefficiency. Whatever your reasons, it’s time to put some cells into series.
Notation Confusion
The common notation for battery packs in parallel or series is XpYs – as in, the battery consists of Y cell “stages” in series, where each stage consists of X cells in parallel. So, putting three cells in series is 3s1p, a single cell is technically 1s1p, and two cells in parallel is 1s2p.
A less precise but more popular notation is just showing the pack voltage – either the final charge voltage (4.1 V to 4.3 V) or the nominal voltage (3.6 V to 3.8 V) of a single cell, multiplied by the amount of series stages. For instance, if you see 12.6 V pack voltage, it’s exceptionally likely to be a 3s?p pack (4.2*3), and if it’s 14.4 V, it’s likely a 4s?p pack (3.6*4). This notation is less precise, because you don’t know the number of cells and you have to deduce cell voltage was used for calculations, but it’s the one that’s most often actually put on product and battery labels.
On one hand, the labelling is great. On the other hand, 6000mAh ( 12000mAh/2P ) 18650s don’t exist.
This obviously becomes a ..
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