Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Charging Quirks

For the past few days, I have had to charge away from home so no 240 volt/ 12 amp,  nestled in a semi-warm garage environment. It has been outside in the cold, 120 volt trickle charging for me. 

Now before the past 2 days, my charges have been showing what I would consider to be inflated GID values.

GID counts at 240 volt charging has run between 274 and 280 (twice) with two 273's over the past few months. After 32,000 + miles, I always found that hard to believe and I have always thought the GID count to be an approximation anyway. Changes in tires has made a true evaluation of degradation by range testing impossible.

But GID count on 120 has been 270, 269 which in itself, I think means very little except that the last time it was that low was back in Nov right after we had moved and I was charging at 120 for a week (also had space issues due to move and 120 was the only thing that would reach)  and then went back to 240 and had GID counts in the 265-270 range for a week before jumping back up into the 275 range.

All this has brought up questions. Is 120 so slow that it is not finishing its initial charge soon enough to enable a rebalance charge?  both days, the charge completed at 7 AM but didn't go anywhere yesterday until 11 AM so seems like it would have had plenty of time.

Or is 240 charging at a faster rate and overshooting the BMS allowing a slightly higher finishing point?

Or is it the cold that is reducing the capacity of the battery?

**edit 5/6/2013**

The GID count continues to drop reaching 263 this morning. Now, don't know if this matters but weather has been unseasonably warm. In fact, at 84º yesterday, it does not fit into any season (August, our hottest month has average highs only reaching 78º)  Either way, I will be continuing the 120 volt charging for a while to see if GIDs go any lower or change when the weather gets back to normal

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