Rebalancing my LFP battery bank to add a 17th cell.

 
Well I just spent the last two days rebalancing my LFP battery bank, and what a chore it was. I had to rebalance because I added a 17th cell, which I originally bought as a spare, and balancing the bank a few weeks ago didn't go as well as I would have liked. I think I was just in too much of a hurry, and to do it properly takes time. Anyway, this time, I first brought the 16 195AH cells slowly up to an average of 3.8 volts while bleeding off voltage from specific cells with resistors as they started rising faster than the others. I did this with a 58.4 volt 10 amp charger and two 3.3 ohm 10 watt resistors soldered to wire with large alligator clips ( a trick @Simon told me about). This took about 8 hours.

The next day I charged the 17th cell up to 3.8 volts with a 3.65 volt 10 amp charger then disassembled the bank, wired all 17 cells in parallel and connected the 3.65 volt 10 amp charger to the parallel bank and began charging. I had to move the charger connections around about every 15 to 20 minutes to keep voltage of the connected cells from rising too fast. All the cells slowly increased in voltage until they reached 3.6 volts. At this point this 3.2 volt nominal 3315AH battery was drawing a little less than one amp. I stopped charging and left them connected in parallel for another 4 hours. The bank is now top balanced at 3.6 volts.  This took about 10 hours all together.

I disassembled the parallel connections, reassembled them in series, connected the bank and brought the system online.
This was tedious and I am glad this only needs to be done every two or three years, or maybe not at all if the possibility of using resistors to adjust cell voltages works to maintain balance. In any case, I certainly think that a two day investment of time and effort that gets me a trouble free no maintenance battery is well worth it. I just thought I'd share my two days of fun with you guys and anyone interested in the process. 

Rick