Electron Solar Power Battery Charge Management

I am developing a remote monitoring sensor that relies on a solar panel connected to the VIN pin on the Electron. So far, the Electrons have been able to keep a consistent battery level despite overcast days. My question is about battery health. If the battery charge is kept full, is this worse than letting the battery discharge and then charge to full again? Also does the PMIC take in to consideration the temperature of the battery when its charging. I have heard that charging a Lipo to full while its hot is a bad idea. I would like to be able to use the 2000mah batteries that come with the kit as long as possible without having to replace them.

The charging voltage is set low for the fact that it could be used in hot enviorments so no worries there.

They do make high temp LiPo batteries if you’re worried about it.

charging a LiPo to full often is not a problem if your cycling it every day.

Keeping the LiPo from reaching the lower SOC levels will extend its life cycle span.

A full cycle is considered removing the full rated capacity of the battery and then charging it back to full again.

The PMIC should stop charging based on Low Temp below 0F and above the higher limit also.

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Thank You! It sounds like it will be best to just keep the batteries as full as possible without trying to program the Electron to charge and discharge when it can.

Is there documentation of PMIC for the electron? All I can find is the PMIC section in the reference document on the Particle web site. That only shows the function names but no information on their use.
I suspect that my particle, running on solar, is halting charging when it gets hot in the middle of the day. So I’m looking for a way to check its fault status or the temperature, if the particle has internal temperature sensor.
thanks,
john

This is in the Electron Datasheet section in the Docs.

The PMIC is the BQ24195 which you can find the datasheet for here: http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/bq24195.pdf

And Here’s some source code that was shared with me ( by @BDub ) that breaks out the various fault and status flags on the PMIC

https://go.particle.io/shared_apps/59a72b29445c5324d900449f