ANCEL BS200 Super Starter Review

The great folks at ANCEL (official site link) sent me their BS200 which is a essentially a super capacitor capable of supplying sufficient cranking amps to start an engine with a highly degraded battery state.

Did you ever hear your refrigerator compressor kick on? The concept here is kind of the same. That compressor will not start without a powerful jolt of electricity stored in a very large capacitor.

As it is with the ANCEL BS200 Super Starter. It is a very simple device that connects to your car battery using two simple leads. A positive and negative lead connected to your battery terminals. Once that super capacitor gets charged it can supply enough amperage to start your engine with even the most degraded battery.

Quick Battery Primer

A healthy automotive lead acid battery will measure around 12.4 volts to around 12.8 volts. When the vehicle is running it will put out around 14 volts. That is the alternator tossing some extra electrons into the battery to keep it in a healthy state of charge.

Once you measure below 12.4 you can consider your battery to be degraded. A completely dead battery is around 10.4 volts or below.

ANCEL BS200 Limitations

The BS200 has a peak discharge current of 700 amps. My 2018 Toyota Tacoma has a starting amperage range of 600 to 850 amps needed. Their recommended starting amperage is 800 amps. Essentially, you don’t want to install the BS200 on engines above 3.0L. ANCEL indicated to me that it might work on my Tacoma but I do have the 3.5L engine. They also indicated that a larger capacity device was on the drawing board.

My wife has a Subaru Outback which it will work on but she was pretty adamant that she didn’t want me hooking anything up to the electrical system that wasn’t OEM and wasn’t done by Subaru. Hey, you try to tell her. I know how this discussion will end.

John’s Tech Blog Strikes Again!

Here at my blog I like to see if I can expand the use of some products. I own a Westinghouse 9500 gasoline generator that I have had for maybe 6-7 years. In those years I have bought a lot a Sealed Lead Acid 12 volt batteries for it. So in the interest of economy I indicated to ANCEL that I was going to hook it to my generator. The response from them was, “It should work but we’ve never tried it. Let us know if it works”.

SPOILER ALERT: IT DOES

Connection And Charging

There are two ways to charge the BS200.

• USB-C charging
• Connect directly to battery

Probably smartest to charge via USB-C before installation. If you opt to connect to the battery straight away it will charge pretty fast, even from a degraded battery.

Operation And Phone App

I made a quick video showing the BS200 installed and a quick run through operating the application.

Testing

ANCEL asked me to test for detection of startup and initiate discharge on my generator battery. To fully test that I want to install a dead battery in the device. To accomplish that I have remove a wheel, place a block or jack under it and then swap a dead battery in for testing. My generator is kind of stuck in place for the moment in snow and ice and a gate I need to pull the generator through has a big snow drift against it and will not open.

On a secondary note, historical data in the app indicates it capturing discharge current, discharge rate and cranking voltage.

Wrap Up

This really is a “set and forget” device. Will it start a degraded battery that otherwise won’t start? You betcha it will. Will it increase the life of your currently installed battery? You betcha again.

Also this thing is rated at 100,000 cycles. If you start your car 4 times a day, every day, it will take you 68 years, 5 months, and 12 days to hit its projected lifetime cycles.

There is a lot to love here.

JOHN’S TECH BLOG IS LEAVING THE ANCEL BS200 ON MY GENERATOR FOREVER!

Or at least for a couple of hundred years