
If you use a device that draws more charge at a time, you could damage the battery. Discharge Rating (C)Īlso known as the “C” Rating, the discharge rating is the amount of charge/load you can continuously drain from the battery without damaging it. Secondly, if the motors run for too long without cooling down, they may catch fire and even damage the entire drone. While a battery with more capacity seems like a good idea since you get to use a drone for longer, you also need to consider the effects on the overall system of the drone.įor one thing, more capacity means more weight, and most drones can’t function as well when they’re too heavy. Our battery above has 5200mAh, but you’ll find some batteries with capacity as high as 12,000mAh, and some with less than 5000mAh. The capacity of a battery is measured in milliamp-hours (mAh). So, when speaking of batteries, it means the amount of charge it can hold, which translates to how long the battery can last. Now, the capacity will be the amount of water the tank can hold at a time. Simply put, the more pressure/force a tank has, the more powerfully it will eject the water. The voltage I just described is the pressure of the tank. To understand capacity, let’s use the common water tank analogy. The more voltage the battery has, the faster the motors rotate and the more power the drone will have. For instance, a 2S battery will produce 22,200 RPM. So, if the quadcopter has a 3000 kV, you’ll have to multiply that by the battery’s voltage. KV actually stands for RPM (rotations per minute) for every volt.

At first, I thought, and some users did too, that kV stands for kilovolts. You may have come across quadcopters with motors labeled as kV. So, what is the importance of knowing the voltage? It translates to how fast a motor can rotate, which then translates to the power and speed of a drone. But such batteries have been phased out and replaced by the newer models.
#Quadcopter battery overview series
You may come across older batteries labeled as 2S2P, which means there are four cells 2 in Series arrangement and 2 in Parallel structure. For instance, a 2S battery has two cells, so the total voltage will be 7.4V, 3S batteries like the image above will have 11.1 V, 4S batteries will have 14.8, etc… To get the total voltage, you add the voltage of each cell. But that doesn’t mean “Cells.” It means Discharge Rating, which I will discuss in a minute. You’ll notice that there’s also a number denoted by C on the battery. These numbers refer to the number of cells of the batteries arranged in a series form. You will find most batteries labeled as 2S, 3S, 4S, or 6S. And when you’ve discharged them to the minimum, they should have a 3.0 Voltage. For instance, the nominal voltage of most LiPo batteries is 3.7 V, but when fully charged, LiPo batteries have a 4.2 voltage. It should not be confused with the rated voltage or operating voltage. Nominal voltage is the “named” voltage, or the voltage of a battery when at rest. I will be referring to the image below throughout the article. Now let’s look at some of the main concepts that make up a LiPo battery.


The polymer and the ability to enclose it in a soft cover make these batteries suitable for RCs since you can form them into different shapes, unlike with hard shells. LiPo batteries have a soft shell casing, unlike ion batteries that have a hard shell. In simple terms, instead of using a liquid form of electrolyte, LiPo batteries use polymer, which is more of a “sheet” that stores a charge and transmits power to the device when necessary. LiPo stands for Lithium Polymer or Lithium-ion polymer, which are rechargeable batteries made of polymer electrolytes.
#Quadcopter battery overview how to
It’s important to know the ins and outs of your drone batteries to get the most out of them, so I’m going to discuss everything you need to know about LiPo batteries, including how to safely store them and dispose of them off if they get damaged. However, they pose a potential fire hazard if not handled properly. These qualities are essential for longer flight times. Lipo batteries are the best thing that ever happened to the drone community and other toy and hobby communities because of their smaller size and larger capacities. Why is this type of battery the most common choice? These batteries are most commonly used in toys, drones, RCs, and even model airplanes and trains. What battery does your drone use? It’s most likely a LiPo battery.
