Odd charging blips

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benswing

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 5, 2013
Messages
47
Location
Montclair, NJ
While my iMIEV was charging it sometimes cuts out for a while, then goes back about its business of charging. Has anyone else noticed this? Is this the "charging may stop before a full charge" that is identified in the manual?

For example, on March 3rd I plugged in at 5:30pm and the car began charging on a level 1 outlet at about 835W.

At 7pm, the charge basically stopped and the charger was drawing only 7W.
At 7:20pm the charge picked up again at 835W.

Then at 3:25am charge dropped to 7W again.
At 3:35am the charge picked up again and continued to charge until the battery was full.

Here is an image of the charging graph.
8528280865_724a670423_b.jpg
 
benswing, this is normal. The charger stopping charging with a brief timeout is normal practice with sophisticated systems as the BMS assesses the amount of sag of every cell's voltage during this zero-charging time. If everything is deemed ok, the charge resumes. I believe that's what the iMiEV BMS is doing. I have never seen two timeouts during one charging session, but judging by the charge duration perhaps your pack was pretty well depleted when your commenced charging. The original iMiEV timeout was right around ten minutes, but after the CMU update this seems to have decreased to six minutes, although I've seen timeout durations as long as 20 minutes.

Timeouts are not to be confused with charger stopping charging prematurely altogether, which is believed to be a third-party EVSE compatibility problem and perhaps linked to Remote operation. I note that your 120vac must be a bit low, judging by your wattage.
 
My Kill-A-Watt meter shows that the phantom power of the OEM charger is 5W. That's very close to the 7W idle you are seeing. Guess the car has to take a breath or two while charging. It would be interesting if you see any increase in the number of spikes compared to the ambient temperature...
 
aarond12 said:
My Kill-A-Watt meter shows that the phantom power of the OEM charger is 5W. That's very close to the 7W idle you are seeing
Click to expand...
Another advantage of getting the EVSE Upgrade modification done to your OEM EVSE is that it also reduces the Phantom draw of the unit to 1.6 watts - If you usually leave the unit plugged in 24/7 like I do, the electrical savings alone could one day pay for the cost of the mod . . . . well, maybe it you left it continuously plugged in for about 25 years :lol: :mrgreen:

Don
 

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