One way to safely discharge a Lipo 

Thankyou so much! I'm learning so much about lipos as a first timer😁

For $13 you cant beat the "AOKoda 150W 3 in 1 RC 2s-6s Lipo Li-Fe Battery Balancer LCD+Voltage Meter Tester+Discharger", they are great and upto 150W discharge, set your cutoff voltage, plus it is a 8n1 meter, plug it in, hit start and it does everything, no need to worry about killing your lipo by over discharging it, check them out.

That is always a great idea!!💡 In fact I might start doing that, with an alarm plugged into the Balance Port of course! Being cautious NOT to sound condescending (being sincere!!), that's such and old RC trick, that most people have forgotten about it by now. 😉 It was the go-to plan back in the 80's with NiCd Batteries. NOT FULLY discharging a NiCd, would cause the Cells to develop a "memory". Whereas... If you ran your Battery down to 2.5 volts (any number really), frequently, the Battery Cells will start to see 2.5V as EMPTY. So then it takes 4.7V to top it back up to 7.2... Do that enough times, and no matter how you charge it - the Battery itself will "learn", and see 4.7 volts as FULL! Nobody really understood how or why. 😲😖 Occasionally, one could cycle the Battery - SEVERAL times, from zero to 7.2 - 7.3.... But it will never be as efficient again. In a Competition setting, that was BAD. So the Battery was then considered Junk! SO...... To prevent that from happening... After every run, we would plug the Battery (similar to what you just did), to 1156 Automotive Bulbs. But we soldered about 6-10 Bulbs in parallel. After plugging in, that Battery wasn't touched, until the lights were COMPLETELY out, and the Battery was cool to the touch. Some even hooked up a Volt Meter, to make sure that it read 0.00 volts! 😖 You could not believe how ECSTATIC we were, when the NiMH Battery was introduced!!! 😁 No more Memory. ..... Yes my Friend, at one time, the NiMH was considered a Godsend!! {We STILL did a full drain on our NiMH Batteries. Out of habit, and it was a little healthier for the Batteries} 😉 Lipos are a quantum leap from NiCd!! The NiMH was just as significant back then. YOUR HISTORY LESSON FOR THE DAY! Have a great Week! 😉

You just need to add any load to the battery and can simply be done with a resistor. Same as the lightbulb but you can buy heaps of resistor for the price of one bulb and if you wanted to get fancy. Find the optimal discharge rate of your battery in watts and just buy a resistor designed for that amount of power. Resistors will radiate heat much faster than the lightbulb but unlikely to cause any concern. You could add a small heat sink with a fan but I highly doubt it's necessary. So long as the circuit (battery, wire, resistor, and return wire to battery) is somewhere fireproof worst thing to happen is the resistor cooks. Also, I've only used a lipo in one project and found this because I found an old lipo puffed up so discharging reduces some of the potential harm. What I'm getting at is I thought discharging too fast had potential to also ruin the battery. I switched to lithium ion since weight isn't an issue and way less temperamental than lipos. I found a small dc motor I think requires 1.5-3v somewhere in that range drawing milliamps. Added a few "blades" of electrical tape to increase resistance to the motor shaft. Which looks kind of cool and easy to see when the battery is mostly depleted. Time to time I see lipos and discharge them before I either store them or take them to a disposal facility but is there a ampere draw too high or too low that is dangerous. I'm not asking specifically my battery but is it common for lipos to have like a datasheet with range of safe output or charge?

Hello sir thank you so much for sharing this with us. I have further question tho. I have this 20.000mAh 65W li-po powerbank and kinda swelling. I'm so afraid it'll combust anytime soon, can I use this same method to discharge it? or what should I do? Thanks in advance

Most charges don't discharge all the way to 3.8 for instance Traxxas live easy peak charges discharge the 3.9

How long does it take to discharge a 3s lipo

Can i discharge by running engine

Thanks for posting on this. What is the best volts per cell level for lipo storage voltage? There are varying opinions on this. Have seen anywhere from 3.4 to 3.9 volts.