Because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., TI E2E™ design support forum responses may be delayed from November 25 through December 2. Thank you for your patience.

  • State TI Thinks Resolved
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 5 replies
  • Answers 2 answers
  • Subscribers 65 subscribers
  • Views 1642 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Support feedback
Options
Options
Similar topics

This thread has been locked.

If you have a related question, please click the "Ask a related question" button in the top right corner. The newly created question will be automatically linked to this question.

BQ24166: BQ24166

Anil Ananda
Expert 3590 points
Part Number: BQ24166
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: TPS2413, TPS2419

Hello All,

One of our customers wants to use BQ24166 for his design and he has the following questions

1. Can it be used without a battery? There are some cases where he does not want the battery connected and just use it like a switch mode buck from the supply to feed to system load.

2. In same cases, he wants to use several BQ24166 in parallel to charge batteries (1 battery per charger). Will he encounter any problems by paralleling these devices?

Are there newer devices or better devices in your mind that can accomplish this application?

Best regards

Anil

  • 0
    TI__Guru**** 152646 points

    Anil,

    Regarding 1, yes, the bq24166 can be used without a battery.  Simply pull /CE high.

    Regarding 2, by paralleling do you mean only the IN/USB pins or SYS and BAT pin?  SYS pins cannot be paralleled as each charger will try to regulate to different voltages and potentially drive uncontrolled current into one of the batteries.

    What are the input sources that require dual input charger?  What is the battery capacity and charge current?  bq2416x family are the only dual input switching chargers that TI offers.  We can turn a single input charger into a dual input charger using external components if that is an option.

  • 0 in reply to Jeff F
    TI__Expert 3590 points
    Hey Jeff,
    Thanks a lot for your reply on this.

    Are there devices in our Battery charger portfolio that can parallel system pins too? if not, what can be a solution if the batteries are to be paralleled with system pins?

    On some applications, the customer has one battery charged over WPC. And then on some other applications, the customer uses two or three batteries and would like to have a bq24166 for every battery. The input power of the all the bq24166 would be the same and the VSys would potentially be the same too.

    Best regards
    ANil
  • 0 in reply to Anil Ananda
    TI__Guru**** 152646 points

    Anil,

    I am not aware of any powerpath chargers that can have their SYS pins tied together without using (ideal) diodes in OR configuration to prevent current back flow from on charger SYS output to the other.  TI makes ideal diode ORing controllers (TPS2413 and related family) that control external FETs to make ideal diode OR. 

  • 0 in reply to Jeff F
    Prodigy 20 points

    I have a similar question, dealing with putting two bq24166 devices in parallel.  Is it possible to equally share the load for the VSYS between two bq24166 devices?

    For example, I have a load that could potentially be as high as 3A.  The Li-Ion battery can source the current according to the vendor's datasheet on discharge rate (though it won't last for a terribly long time).  I am planning on splitting the load between two bq24166 devices, and putting the outputs in parallel for SYS, using a dual parallel charging as shown in Figure 3 of the "Faster, cooler charging with dual chargers" article located here:  

    The following figure from that article shows the two devices' BAT pins connected to a single battery, while the "SYS" is only powered from a single device:

    If a similar architecture is used, with a TPS2419 ideal diode OR on the VSYS line, as shown in the following image, is that acceptable?

    Thanks in advance for your help!

    - Jonathan

  • 0 in reply to Jonathan Curran
    TI__Guru**** 152646 points
    Jonathan,

    You will need the ideal diode OR when tying the SYS pins together. The resistor in the ideal OR will help but completely ensure equal sharing because one converter will always be regulating to slightly higher voltage than the other.