Welcome To HRLENERGY

The battery is a bit mysterious to people. They are not completely electronic, so you don’t have to program time on them. However, they all have strange markings that the battery manufacturer wants you to understand. For example, most Li-PO battery packs have a C rating. Usually it looks like 20C or 20C-30C. So what does it mean?

C rating background

C Rate is derived from Coulomb’s law developed by French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb. C-rate is a control measurement of battery charging or discharging current. For example, the posted battery mAh has a 1C rating. If the battery is marked with 2000mAh, its 1C rating is 2000mAh.

For simplicity, the battery should provide 1C current for one hour. In our example above, the current for one hour is 2000mAh or 2A. This also applies to the 0.5C rating. Using the 2000mAh battery again, it can provide 1000mAh or 1A of current for two hours.

Example of battery C rating

The formula for this example is simple. If for any reason I did not make it clear, please comment to explain further. The following example is based on the first row in the table. 1600mAh battery with a rating of 10C.

Continuous discharge

(mAh / 1000) x C rate = continuous discharge current

(1600 / 1000) x 10 = 16A

Safe continuous discharge

operation hours

60 minutes / C-Rate = running time 60 minutes / 10C = discharge 16A for 6 minutes

Using the above formula, there are common amperage battery and C rate examples in the table.

As you can see in the graph, a 3500mAh battery will produce a higher continuous discharge than a 5000mAh battery. However, the current provided by the 5000mAh battery is 33% longer than that of the 3500mAh battery. So which result is more important to your application. Longer running time or higher continuous current discharge. If your battery is in an air gun, you may be looking for runtime. If you use an e-cigarette battery, then you may need a higher continuous current.