|
Post by Bob Conley on Oct 7, 2020 22:21:08 GMT 11
I have had created and am now stocking and selling a proper 5 meter long cable with the correct 10A Australian plug which plugs into a normal Australian powerpoint and has a J1772 plug on the other end to plug into a Leaf. The price is A$395 including shipping. To order one, please email leafplugin@gmail.com or telephone me on 0403 153 999.
|
|
|
Post by brunohill on Oct 8, 2020 8:50:10 GMT 11
Do they have an EVSE in the middle of the lead and are you related to Sean?
|
|
jaginoz
EV Enthusiast
Posts: 47
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
|
Post by jaginoz on Oct 8, 2020 10:46:21 GMT 11
If I were smart I would have a funny comment to add, but all I can do is roll on the floor laughing. We have a 16amp cable and charging unit with the non CHAdeMo head but still waiting for the sparky to come and swap the power outlet from 10amp to 20amp. The 10amp is really trickle charge.
Edit: we've ordered one of those universal cables that lets us charge from any public charging station, keen to try that when down in the city.
|
|
bobc29
EV Enthusiast
Where can I get an aftermarket radio/navigation unit for my Leaf?
Posts: 11
|
Post by bobc29 on Oct 25, 2020 9:41:40 GMT 11
No, I am not related to Sean. Our cable has a box in the middle of the cord which indicates whether the charger is charging or not or if there is a failure. It was created for the Australia market that has 10Amp powerpoints in their homes. Yes, there are other charging cables available, but pricing is A$485 - $800. Ours is only A$395 including shipping!
|
|
jaginoz
EV Enthusiast
Posts: 47
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
|
Post by jaginoz on Nov 11, 2020 0:29:16 GMT 11
Update on the cable saga! Turns out that the NZ manufacturer/supplier of the charging unit and cable to the interstate dealer from whom we purchased the Leaf told the dealer DON"T change the caravan plug (for the 15Amp charging unit) because the temperature sensor for the charging unit is in the plug, and when that is cut, the unit records a fault and doesn't work. The NZ manufacturer kindly explained all this to us as our sparky was testing the plug in a 20amp switch. Which made the cost of the cable redundant (since sent back to said dealer with a refund request!) as well as the sparky's charges! Now considering whether to get a standalone wall mounted option that can be wired up to the PV inverter or into the house wiring. Needless to say still trickle-charging, which is fine if the batter state of charge doesn't drop too low, otherwise necessitates charging over two sunny days to hit 100% charge.
|
|
|
Post by tomkauf on Nov 11, 2020 13:10:41 GMT 11
Hi Jag, they apparently put a resistor in the head to bypass the temperature sensor. Or just get a good aftermarket one like the EVolution brand that we got as well. It is adjustable between 6,10,15Amp.
If your Leaf is a Japanese import, it can't charge AC on more than 15Amp anyway, so we're fine with the Caravan Plug and outlet (cheaper and more portable). But if we had a Leaf that does 7kW AC, then a wall-box is interesting.
|
|
jaginoz
EV Enthusiast
Posts: 47
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
|
Post by jaginoz on Nov 27, 2020 1:16:20 GMT 11
hey tomkauf, just saw your message, sorry for the late reply. Would you mind elaborating on the " can't charge AC on more than 15Amp anyway" please? Is this the equivalent of saying the onboard charger is 3.3kwH and not 6.6kwH? Checking this on the battery tomorrow morning...the display in the dashboard menu shows 2 charging options. cheers
|
|
|
Post by tomkauf on Nov 27, 2020 1:35:02 GMT 11
Hi jaginoz , that's ok. No problem. Yes, you're limited by the onboard charger. Japanese Leafs are almost all 3.3kW, but 6.6kW may have been an upgrade option from the factory. Aus Gen1 Leafs all got the faster 6.6kW onboard charger as standard. 15Amp at 240V is 3600W (3.6kW), which is often written as 3.3kW - after losses etc. That's what our 30kWh Leaf X is, so our Caravan Plug is already the max we can AC charge at. Since you have 2 charging options in the dashboard, you probably have the 6.6kW. Ours does not have that.
|
|
|
Post by coulomb on Nov 27, 2020 10:32:29 GMT 11
Aus Gen1 Leafs all got the faster 6.6kW onboard charger as standard. Did you perhaps mean Gen 2? My Australian-sold gen 1 Leaf has a 3.6 kW on-board charger. I believe that all the Australian-sold gen1s are like that.
|
|
|
Post by tomkauf on Nov 27, 2020 11:49:44 GMT 11
Did you perhaps mean Gen 2? My Australian-sold gen 1 Leaf has a 3.6 kW on-board charger. I believe that all the Australian-sold gen1s are like that. Oh really? My mistake. That's just what I had heard. It made sense, since Japan has a much lower percentage of garages in homes, where people can AC charge. That's why our JDM Leaf has almost exclusively had CHAdeMO charges in its lifetime. And Australia is a much bigger country, so a faster AC charge is more important.
|
|
|
Post by brunohill on Nov 27, 2020 13:13:40 GMT 11
The 2013 Leafs on wards had 6.6 kW chargers except for japan. Australia did not have any 2013-2017 Leafs.
|
|
|
Post by tomkauf on Nov 27, 2020 13:55:34 GMT 11
The 2013 Leafs on wards had 6.6 kW chargers except for japan. Australia did not have any 2013-2017 Leafs. Ah ok. Thanks for the clarification.
|
|
|
Post by EVangelist on Nov 28, 2020 22:19:04 GMT 11
Aus Gen1 Leafs all got the faster 6.6kW onboard charger as standard. Did you perhaps mean Gen 2? My Australian-sold gen 1 Leaf has a 3.6 kW on-board charger. I believe that all the Australian-sold gen1s are like that. A few years back my previous employer had a Chargepoint AC charger installed in their staff carpark and I always used it when I drove to work (I was the only EV owner in the company). I don’t think I’m mis-remembering, but I’m pretty sure the Chargepoint display showed charging at 6.6kW (using the J-1772). I have a Gen 1 Nissan-sold LEAF.
|
|
jaginoz
EV Enthusiast
Posts: 47
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
|
Post by jaginoz on Nov 29, 2020 10:09:38 GMT 11
didn't luck out with the onboard AC charger - battery says 3.3kw. It seems that the two options on the dash are for charging at 240 or 110, because of Japan's weird(ish) charging system. But talked with praxidice today and think the 10kW CHAdeMo DC portable charger is a good alternative option. That's more money than buying the 15amp AC cable from one of the EVSE suppliers but also a lot faster than the 15amp AC would recharge, even with having to slow down the draw on the 35amp from the 6kW inverter. Now if only the weak cell in the battery can be swapped out soon, the range from a solely home rapid charge should be enough to go to and from town (at least until the SOH starts to decline).
|
|
|
Post by tomkauf on Nov 29, 2020 10:51:24 GMT 11
didn't luck out with the onboard AC charger - battery says 3.3kw. It seems that the two options on the dash are for charging at 240 or 110, because of Japan's weird(ish) charging system. Interesting - I didn't know that was an option on them. Although we had our Instrument Cluster concerted at compliance, so I never got to see it original. Good luck with getting the weak cell replaced - sounds like it'll be a lovely car once that's done.
|
|
|
Post by johnmath on Dec 5, 2020 9:11:33 GMT 11
The dashboard just shows estimated charging times at 240 and 110 volts, but these may or may not reflect actual conditions. The charging rate is set by current, not voltage, and the current available is signalled by the EVSE to the on-board charger, which then attempts to draw that current from the supply. If the EVSE says 10 amperes is available, then it is 10 amps at 110, 240, or 220, or 170, or 136.45 volts - whatever the actual voltage is that is being supplied. Most houses in Japan have 100 volt 3-phase wiring, and can be wired for 200 volt for faster car charing. (BTW a 6.6kW on-board charger was an option for buyers in Japan.)
The actual "charge rate" is the kilowatts going in, which is amperes multiplied by voltage. 15 amperes at 230 volts (the current standard for Australia due to world homogenisation) is 15 x 230 = 3.45kW. This is over the maximum for for the 3.3kW charger commonly in Australian and Japanese Leafs, so the actual current drawn is ~14.4 amps.
Of course, the range is affected by battery capacity, so manufacturers of BEVs keep a large % of capacity "in reserve". As the SOH of the battery declines, the depth of discharge and height of recharge is progressively expanded to reduce the loss of range that otherwise be obvious after every charge cycle. It is only after perhaps ~40% of loss of original battery capacity that range starts to be impacted.
Remember when people were evacuating from fires last year in the US and there was concern about how BEV owners who didn't have a full charge were going to get out? Tesla did an over-the-air firmware update to increase the range of their vehicles by something like 10%. What Tesla did was allow greater depth of discharge of the battery!
The charger in the Leaf is not particularly efficient being in the low 80% range, so for each kW of power put into the car, only about 0.830kW is stored in the battery. All these factor make second-guessing about charge rates and times difficult. And the way that Leaf's dashboard Guess-O-Meter Gen 1 range estimate bounces around like a madman's yoyo makes that feature rather useless. I only look at the battery % remaining when concerned about range.
Because high charge current is a significant factor in battery capacity loss, I charge at 6 amps unless I really need to charge faster.
|
|
jaginoz
EV Enthusiast
Posts: 47
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
|
Post by jaginoz on Dec 5, 2020 12:39:46 GMT 11
tomkauf- thank you. Hopfully! johnmath thank you for this post. We have in the interim turtled the car and recharged via DC 50kW. That helped reduced the mV differential between the weak cell and the rest of the battery cells (from +200 mV at low charge to back around 50mV at 15-16% charge) and allowed a recharge of 210km (this was using LeafSpy as the detection software, not the onboard software) where at home on the slow mo 3.3 AC 240 v <10 Amps we never end up with true 100% and always in the range of 150km. Battery heat climbed to 43 deg C during the DC charge (which takes no more than 20-25 mins). Both Nissan and a few other commenters seem to suggest that in the Gen 2 battery (this is a direct import from December 2015 and confirmed as a Gen 2 by the chap from NZ that does the head unit swap outs (shortly using SD cards apparently through the Australian partner) is less sensitive to the quick charge (since apparently this is related to the heat?). The battery SOH is hovering around 83%. DC charging is at 132 Amps for 50kW chargers, considerably more than 6 Amps. So we googled the effect of amperage on the battery and this paper came up (it is not directly on topic but gives some pointers www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590116819300116 ). We are thinking about not just having the portable 10kW DC charger (range anxiety) but also installing a 20kW DC charger on the the solar panels. SETEC have quoted what seems to be pretty reasonable - including freight, around USD6,300 (discounted if we leave out the OCPP 1.6). That's probably a lot of overkill for most people, but charging at night at home isn't an option for us, and fast charging during the day (eg a scenario where we need full charge and leave quickly) is important. Does anyone know more about the specifics of AC vs DC in terms of effect on battery state of health? And if our understanding is correct that it's related to amperage? Cheers
|
|
|
Post by tomkauf on Dec 5, 2020 17:15:07 GMT 11
Hopefully the weak cell will now stay a bit stronger. I'm not sure how weak cells usually behave long-term, but that's a bit of good news. 200mV difference is very high. We usually have around 17-25mV. And that's already high compared to eg. Teslas.
Correct, the Gen 2 'Lizard' battery is supposed to be better at coping with heat. Our Leaf should have a Lizard battery. But we did a trip in summer last year, where we had to fast charge twice in a day. And we still got a High Temperature warning on the Dash (close to 50degrees battery temp I think, and mid 30s outside). But it shouldn't affect it as much as the Gen 1 Cells.
83% SOH is good for its age and kms. Just a shame about the weak cell. Our 2015 Leaf has just under 80%.
That article is technical, but seems very thorough. It does mention temperature related degradation, which is a problem with fast charging. That also links in with your last question. Yes, DC Fast charging forces a lot of juice into the battery in a very short amount of time. So temperatures increase a lot. Especially since we don't have active cooling. The usual advice is, charge as slow as you can to reduce degradation. There are graphs online that show a much shorter battery life, when a battery is exposed to higher temperatures. It's not necessarily AC vs DC charging, because in the end the battery always receives DC. But DC charging connects directly to the ~400V of the pack, whereas the AC goes through the Inverter first.
If those type of chargers are what you need, go for it. I didn't even want to spend $1k on a Zappie, so we just use a Mobile charger at home 😅. The cost of your chargers would pay for a Tesla Powerwall, but that probably doesn't suit your current setup or needs. We went big on Home Battery (2 Powerwalls) and 13.2kW Solar. We can charge the 30kWh Leaf overnight most days, unless that battery is near 0 and we need 100% for the next day before the sun comes up.
|
|
|
Post by coulomb on Dec 5, 2020 17:17:27 GMT 11
DC charging is at 132 Amps for 50kW chargers, considerably more than 6 Amps. The 6 A from the previous post was 6 A from the wall, i.e. at around 240 VAC. By the time it gets to the ~380 V battery, it's about 3½ A, possibly less. Heating due to internal resistance is proportional to the square of the current, so (132/3.5)² ≈ 1400x more heating from the fastest fast charge to the slowest AC charge. Heat is the main enemy of the battery's longevity, though certainly not the only one. Leaving the battery at very high or very low states of charge will also decrease battery life, for example.
|
|
|
Post by johnmath on Dec 5, 2020 22:50:10 GMT 11
When we bought our 4/2016 car it had only had fast charges - about 700 of them at 30,000 km. That indicates that the car was charged 5 times per week with an average daily driven distance of 40km. It's a shame that the original owner didn't charge every second day, instead of every day. The battery SOH would certainly have benefitted. Since we have had the car the rate of decline of SOH of the battery as reported by LeafSpy has halved. The car now has 56,000km and 11 bars.
Given that the purchase price includes the cycle life capacity of the battery paid in advance, and hence the total milage returned from our purchase price investment, I am keen to get the most in total kilometres from the battery. The 26,000km we've done so far has saved ~$4,500 in fuel costs (we're in a remote location where fuel costs are at a premium).
|
|
jaginoz
EV Enthusiast
Posts: 47
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
|
Post by jaginoz on Dec 5, 2020 23:29:02 GMT 11
Hopefully the weak cell will now stay a bit stronger....200mV difference is very high. We usually have around 17-25mV. And that's already high compared to eg. Teslas. Correct, the Gen 2 'Lizard' battery is supposed to be better at coping with heat...DC Fast charging forces a lot of juice into the battery in a very short amount of time. So temperatures increase a lot. Especially since we don't have active cooling. The usual advice is, charge as slow as you can to reduce degradation. It's not necessarily AC vs DC charging, because in the end the battery always receives DC. But DC charging connects directly to the ~400V of the pack, whereas the AC goes through the Inverter first. If those type of chargers are what you need, go for it. I didn't even want to spend $1k on a Zappie, so we just use a Mobile charger at home 😅. The cost of your chargers would pay for a Tesla Powerwall, but that probably doesn't suit your current setup or needs. We went big on Home Battery (2 Powerwalls) and 13.2kW Solar. We can charge the 30kWh Leaf overnight most days, unless that battery is near 0 and we need 100% for the next day before the sun comes up. thanks tomkauf. We had read on the forum somewhere about the mV differences and figured we had a problem (apart from LeafSpy saying "weak cell #47"). When we grow up (or win the lottery) we will try for a Tesla .
We reckon we will keep going with the slow slow charging, and try to charge from Type 2 (rather than CHAdeMO) in town if there is enough time to allow for that. It's definitely faster than the 10Amp AC standard charger and hopefully won't have such a temperature impact.
Our solar guy was very keen to have us not overspend on the solar system, so we only have 8.8kW of panels and 6.6kW inverter (don't remember the battery size but we have not run dry in winter after at least 3 days of grey skies - it takes 3 hours to fully charge with clear sky and 6 hours with cloud cover/rain).
We are thinking 20kW panels for the shed and 3-phase, but no battery for now. If we were to stick with the type of charger you have (15 Amp AC?) would the battery fill in 8 hours? Then maybe we shouldn't go for spend on the 20kW DC charger and rather put that aside for the battery so that we could charge overnight meaning that if we had to leave in a hurry the battery would be full from an overnight charge. Main concern for us is the same as johnmath mentioned, which is fire risk. Is that an issue for you - do you ever need to charge at home in a hurry?
|
|
jaginoz
EV Enthusiast
Posts: 47
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
|
Post by jaginoz on Dec 5, 2020 23:40:43 GMT 11
DC charging is at 132 Amps for 50kW chargers, considerably more than 6 Amps. The 6 A from the previous post was 6 A from the wall, i.e. at around 240 VAC. By the time it gets to the ~380 V battery, it's about 3½ A, possibly less. Heating due to internal resistance is proportional to the square of the current, so (132/3.5)² ≈ 1400x more heating from the fastest fast charge to the slowest AC charge. Heat is the main enemy of the battery's longevity, though certainly not the only one. Leaving the battery at very high or very low states of charge will also decrease battery life, for example. thanks for the additional info coulomb.
|
|
jaginoz
EV Enthusiast
Posts: 47
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
|
Post by jaginoz on Dec 5, 2020 23:54:56 GMT 11
When we bought our 4/2016 car it had only had fast charges - about 700 of them at 30,000 km. That indicates that the car was charged 5 times per week with an average daily driven distance of 40km. It's a shame that the original owner didn't charge every second day, instead of every day. The battery SOH would certainly have benefitted. Since we have had the car the rate of decline of SOH of the battery as reported by LeafSpy has halved. The car now has 56,000km and 11 bars. Given that the purchase price includes the cycle life capacity of the battery paid in advance, and hence the total milage returned from our purchase price investment, I am keen to get the most in total kilometres from the battery. The 26,000km we've done so far has saved ~$4,500 in fuel costs (we're in a remote location where fuel costs are at a premium). That makes a very strong argument for limiting the DC fast charges- sounds like your care has paid off. Read somewhere that Tesla limits the battery capacity and releases capacity as the battery deteriorates to maintain distance. So would seem that slow charging and being mindful of the other factors that negatively impact battery health is somewhat equivalent. Just an upfront behavioural change from the user rather than imposed by the manufacturer, if that makes sense.
Not sure where you are, johnmath but the local diesel outlet here charges $1.40+ per litre, which is about 30cents per litre more than if you buy discounted closer to town. We save on fuel if we can leave with enough charge to return, otherwise charging in town costs about the same as a coffee (which is still less than running the diesel to town and back).
We are keen to look after the battery, so have to re-think these fast charges we've been ad hoc doing, since the rest of the vehicle is likely to be going strong for considerably longer than the battery!
|
|
|
Post by tomkauf on Dec 6, 2020 5:51:36 GMT 11
Ah ok, interesting that LeafSpy reported the weak cell. Makes sense though.
Yeah, it's hard to have enough time to charge when out and about. You have to be somewhere for several hours, and even then it's not enough for a full charge. AC charging is definitely a far lower impact on temperature. We don't see much temperature rise at all when charging at home on 15Amp.
Yes, 3.6kW over 8.3 hours is 30kWh. That's the extreme case, from totally flat to 100%. Even though there are some losses and it should be closer to 3.3kW actual, the calculations when we set the Charge Timer are always pretty accurate with 3.6. Probably because it's not 30kWh usable, and has a buffer top and bottom.
That's a good home battery size (roughly 20kWh, since it charges in 3h x 6.6kWh). But I understand you can't treat your battery like we do. If we run out, the grid just kicks in. We do get semi-regular grid outages, but less than an hour usually. Our house consumption is reasonably low at ~10-12kWh per day, but Leaf charging is usually 20kWh per day. We have bushland behind our block, but we don't have a big fire risk. So luckily we don't have the same issues with having to charge in a hurry.
If the 20kW DC Fast Charger suits your needs best, go for it. But like you said, you might get a Tesla one day (used prices will make them affordable one day). Or that money could get you into a 42kWh Leaf (the newer shape). Maybe you can break even after the cell swap and upgrade early next year. Just some options that might make the charging problem a bit less stressful.
|
|
|
Post by johnmath on Dec 6, 2020 7:33:29 GMT 11
Not sure where you are, johnmath but the local diesel outlet here charges $1.40+ per litre, which is about 30cents per litre more than if you buy discounted closer to town. We are on Kangaroo Island where the transportation of fuel across the ferry adds a premium to fuel. We are off-grid with about 9kW of solar panels and about 40kWh of battery for the house. We also want to get the most out of our house battery, so try to only charge the car when we have excess solar available. In fact, not being able to export excess solar to the grid was one of the main motivations for getting the BEV Leaf. The only time we pay for charging is when we visit the Adelaide Central Market (about once every 3 months) for provisions. There the charge cost is about $5 which is much less than what we would otherwise pay for parking, so it is actually saving, not an expense.
|
|
|
Post by rusdy on Dec 7, 2020 11:51:05 GMT 11
... tomkauf Battery heat climbed to 43 deg C during the DC charge (which takes no more than 20-25 mins). ... Does anyone know more about the specifics of AC vs DC in terms of effect on battery state of health? And if our understanding is correct that it's related to amperage? ... Hi jaginoz, Did you keep the record of the DC fast charge curve using your LeafSpyPro? You must've started with high temperature already, else, there's something seriously wrong there. A single fast charge DC will not have much affect to your battery's health. It's the repeated contiguous long distance drive AND fast chargers that is detrimental (due to increased heat and the heat stays there, i.e. the thermal mass). Although I should admit your car's history is pretty extreme. This study ( click here) did twice fast charger daily (vs slow only) and revealed very slightly more degradation. From this study alone, your car shouldn't have much worse condition compared to others who are charged 'slowly' only. Keeping physics aside (as coulomb mentioned with I 2R), the increased heat from a single DC fast charge is there, but rather insignificant, even with old leaf batteries. This is my own data from old vs my new leaf battery (simply see the black curve for temperature): However, the story is completely different with long distance drive and multiple fast chargers. When I did mine, 200-ish km long drive with 4-off fast chargers in the same day ended my battery temperature in 49C (starting high 20s). The worst part is, even overnight didn't cool the battery much, i.e. high 30s in the next morning.
|
|
jaginoz
EV Enthusiast
Posts: 47
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
|
Post by jaginoz on Dec 29, 2020 9:29:53 GMT 11
Hi rusdy, apologies for the long delay on reply to your detailed note (thank you). The black line is pretty consistently around 45 degrees by the time we are charging while out and about. We are in the middle of summer and unfortunately the car is black so it doesn't seem to take much before it climbs up to these temps. At home it's trickle charged in the shade, but our usual charging places (the DC and the faster trickle charge) are both in full sun, unfortunately. In both cases we do drive the car before and after the charging so this will no doubt be contributing to the problem. But this is a consequence of our being out of town and not having understood the principles of charging, battery, distance, altitude, temperature etc at the time of purchase. Were we in town, this would be a terrific car - it seems to run on nothing when we are driving between 40-65 km/h in city traffic.
|
|