Battery suddenly not charging?

[DanielSweden]

Last night I plugged in my car as I always do. I had no schedules set for charging during the weekend.
After I've plugged the socket, I could hear the sound I always hear, from a relay of some kind.

I started the app on my iPhone and the symbol for charging seemed ok. It didn't show any "time left until charged", but I thought that couldn't be any problem and went inside.

This morning when I started it, I was chocked to see that it hadn't charged at all. The battery was still on some few percents, as I left it last night.

Anyone experienced similar problems? Any ideas??

 

[gwatpe]

Hi Daniel,

looks like forum members have not noticed abnormal recharging.

The recharging of my PHEV at home is recorded with my house power monitoring system. My PHEV does stop the recharging for periods of about 10 minutes, usually sometime within a recharge.

I have not had no recharging at all. The power level drops from about a constant 2.3kW down to about 100W constant, for the 10min or so time period, and then back up to the constant 2.3kW level, before the tapering down charge period. Charging is terminated by the PHEV at around 450W, at the end of the tapered charge rate.

Here is a graph of what has happened on my PHEV.

A typical recharge is like these

I like to manually control the recharging, by direct connection or time clock. I have not used the timer in the car as this disables charging at other times. Maybe the timer charge had been set for another time on that day ??

 

[maby]

Could it be cutting the charge for several minutes to let the battery cool down?

 

[user 422]

Last night I plugged in my car as I always do. I had no schedules set for charging during the weekend.
After I've plugged the socket, I could hear the sound I always hear, from a relay of some kind.

I started the app on my iPhone and the symbol for charging seemed ok. It didn't show any "time left until charged", but I thought that couldn't be any problem and went inside.

This morning when I started it, I was chocked to see that it hadn't charged at all. The battery was still on some few percents, as I left it last night.

Anyone experienced similar problems? Any ideas??

I did experience something similar:-
As you said you didn't have a charge time set for that day - did you have a time set for any other day and scheduled charging activated?
If you did the car would be waiting until that day to charge !

If you want to charge when ever you plug in deactivate "Charging" on the home screen.

 

[gwatpe]

The off peak tariffs are sometimes time clock controlled and other times, time of use without time clock. If the time clock is in place, then no point in using the car timer. However the time of use charging [smart meter] will benefit from an external manual time clock control. I am not that confident the PHEV system is flawless. Would not want to recharge from the peak rate by accident, or dumb luck.

Hopefully the problem was only a glitch.

 

[DanielSweden]

I did experience something similar:-
As you said you didn't have a charge time set for that day - did you have a time set for any other day and scheduled charging activated?
If you did the car would be waiting until that day to charge !

If you want to charge when ever you plug in deactivate "Charging" on the home screen.

That could be the case!!

Thanks!!

(The reason for using timer is that my electricity is cheaper at night.... But, however, the difference is quite small and if I have one or two days with no power due to wrong timer, i will loose the few money I save... )

 

[gwatpe]

Could it be cutting the charge for several minutes to let the battery cool down?

Hi Maby,

The recharging rate with the standard charging cord is only 2.3kW. The battery cells are really only seeing 10A and I believe the batteries are 40Ah. The charging rate is only about 0.25C. If this causes the battery to overheat then the battery is unsuitable for EV applications. I do believe that if there is a problem with battery cells, then the car systems will then adjust recharging to attempt to fix the problem. My car has trouble with REGEN and hills. Even with just over half the battery, the B5 setting is unable to hold the vehicle speed and the car accelerates down the hill, and the brake pedal has to be pressed to use the mechanical friction brakes to maintain the speed limit. The B5 seems to be more effective in general traffic on the flat. I thought the REGEN would only be ineffective with a full battery. Possibly a topic for another thread discussion.