I’m planning to connect the T200 to a 2-person ocean kayak. Ocean kayaks aren’t the sleekest hulls and having 2 people won’t help either, so I figured a 5S might help get a little more speed out of the thruster.
I saw that the T200 is rated for 16-20 volts, so 5S would be just slightly out of that range when fully charged. With that in mind, I have two questions:
Will a 5S battery actually improve the performance (speed) at all?
Will the added strain on the motor outweigh whatever performance gains a 5S may provide? I know this is subjective, so I guess what I’m really wondering is how quickly I might fry the motor.
I read that thread before posting my question – I’m still a bit confused about whether a 5S battery is really considered to be > 20 volts since the nominal voltage is 18.5 and it would only be over 20 volts for a brief period while nearly fully charged.
Is that still enough to push the thruster beyond its limits?
Officially, the maximum supported voltage of the T200 is 20 V. The fully charged voltage of a 5S battery is beyond this at 21V, so it does exceed the spec and pushed beyond official limits.
This is a somewhat difficult question to answer, because there is no hard line of “good forever at up to 20.000V” and “immediately blows up at 20.001V”. As noted in the above link, above 20V you are exceeding the official spec and entering a gray area between officially supported and edging towards diminishing the lifespan noticeably. For the sake of practicality we had to draw a line somewhere and chose to draw it at at 20V- if you exceed this only you can answer how much more of a trade off with longevity you are willing to make.
That being said, under practical conditions like you noted a 5S battery will be at 21V for a relativity short time as it discharges, and there will be voltage drop on the way to the thruster anyway depending on your power distribution setup.