Intentional cold soak -15

[TaxmanHog]

Saturday morning, no overnight or early morning spontaneous battery conditioning, again temps were in the low 20's overnight, what changed? I had not planned to drive the Lightning today, I had eliminated the Saturday afternoon departure time, that normally runs while the truck is off-plug sitting in the drive after morning coffee run.

It seems the trucks BMS logic noted my lack of planning to drive according to a particular schedule and didn't bother warming the battery at all, I'm certain all residual heat in the pack had bled off as yesterday afternoon when I parked her it was already showing limited power to motors at 92%, at an SOC of 57%, of course being that low the motor reduction is not uncommon even in warmer temperatures.

Here is the interesting event, plans changed for the day, I'll be taking the mrs. to church in the afternoon planning to leave the house at 3:45, so I decided to program a departure time to be ready at 3:35, knowing it'll prepare the battery earlier and warm the cabin 5 minutes prior through 10 minutes after appointed time.

As soon as I saved the plan, the truck immediately started battery conditioning, only a short stint of 11 minutes as we have seen in prior days, the cabin warming didn't occur, you can tell it's not happening when the animated fan icon is not active.

This is the energy flow for the event, 1.76 kWh to touch up the battery heat.

I'm going to let DT run full effect later this afternoon, to prepare the battery for full weekly charging, we will be driving the Mrs. car all day Sunday to give her a good work out, it's been 2 weeks since driven.

 

[TaxmanHog]

No spontaneous battery warming today, I did the bulk of weekly charging last night, the warmth acquired and milder temps yesterday through early this morning helped keep residual heat in the pack.

Next week we are expecting single digit temps overnight, a snow storm Sunday into Monday, so I'm going to maintain battery levels at 90% each early morning 6 am to 8 am window, we don't need much for daily travels

I expect I'll still see some spontaneous conditioning on the very cold mornings.

This first week, I used about 40 kWh for two departure timed conditioning sessions, several spontaneous battery warming sessions and daily morning cabin prep.

The traction energy came to 51.8 kWh of level 2 and 14.0 kWh of DCFC to drive 97 miles, the traction and drive overhead efficiency is 1.47 MPK.

Including all energy gross supply and battery conditioning and cabin prep. was 105.5 kWh, composite costs of L2 & DCFC was $37.16 at 35.22 cents a kWh and a net/net efficiency of 0.9 MPK

Next week's efficiencies will be worse with extreme temperatures and change to daily charging.

Level 2 energy:

 

[TMND]

How low can you go?

still feel like the temp gauge for the motors is just a dummy gauge -27 only 16% power available, but the motors were right in the middle according to the gauge

 

[TaxmanHog]

How low can you go?

still feel like the temp gauge for the motors is just a dummy gauge -27 only 16% power available, but the motors were right in the middle according to the gauge

Now that's CooooooolD!!

I've noticed the motor seems to only register when exceeding an unknown base limit that's much warmer than ambient.

No overnight battery conditioning here last night, temps did get down around 16 ° and now 20°

Tuesday & Wednesday morning should show interesting data!!

 

[PJnc284]

Well it's a balmy 20F with a windchill of 10F here. Currently plugged into the mobile power cord (120v) and noticed that the fordpass app is showing that it's preparing the cabin and battery for departure since about 5am even though I have no departure time set (and none set previously). Went out to the truck to check the battery temp and noticed the dash says conditioning the battery. Battery is showing 41F so I'm guessing it's just pulling power to keep the battery above freezing.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Battery is showing 41F so I'm guessing it's just pulling power to keep the battery above freezing.

Just barely keeping pace, but that is indeed what is happening.

 

[TaxmanHog]

This morning January 21st, we have 2° temperatures as I write this. The BMS didn't call for any energy for battery warming from the time I plugged in yesterday afternoon until 5 am this morning, my charging session was set for that time and it commenced on schedule and pulled full power for 47 minutes and took in 13.6 kWh to raise the SOC 5%, there was a LOT of overhead energy to warm the pack during the initial charging phase.

I will double check, after we unplug, but 5% should be 6.6 kWH or gross of 7.3 kWh, the extra 6.3 was warming the pack, this is a good example of timing your charges daily to precede drive time. I'll double check these values and edit later this morning as needed.

Here is the FCSP & FordPass charging records, only 5% and a rounded 7 kWh of traction energy deposited onto the HVB. The 15.339 kWh was for heating, charging and 15+ minutes of cabin remote start warming.

The charging analysis shows the impact of in process pack warming as the pack is recharged, note I deducted the 1.9 kWh Emporia & FCSP recorded for the cabin warming just to get down to the efficiency measures of charging in extremely cold conditions.

 

[mr.Magoo]

I was tinkering with my BlackBox V2 and figured I'd share this log that captures the effect of temperature vs. available capacity and the effects of conditioning the battery pretty well.

I came home from work and plugged in at 8.27pm, it's only 5F outside so no comparison to the -27 posted earlier, but even so...

I only have a 40A setup so all the availible power goes to the heater for the first 30 minutes to heat the battery from 15F to 60F ( bet all the squirrels are camping out under the truck tonight ) but as you can see, while the state of charge remains the same, but the availible capacity goes up from 61kWh to 74kWh, this from using approximatley 4.5kWh to warm it up.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Wednesday morning, no spontaneous warming, it was -1°, I suppose the residual heat from warming & charging yesterday held over until this morning!!

Charging session this morning started on time, I move the start time to 6 am, it ran until 6:47 am, took in 13.6 kWh to raise the SOC by 5% (85--->90). Ending Time 7:27 am is when I tapped the STOP button.

When i started the climate system via remote start, I wasn't seeing any energy flowing from the FCSP to the truck, yet the marker lights were on, when I went out it was toasty warm and ready to go at 8 am.

Looking at the SOC on the dash, it had dropped to 88% by the time we got to coffee shop, that's odd, but I'm sure I know why this happened.

I played with the charging [START] button on the vehicle page to trigger a brief session of charging so I could get the FordPass statistics for my charging session without energy for the remote start, I capture that data, it showed 6.6 kWh to traction, then I tapped [STOP] to suspend charging past 90%.

When we do this it literally suspends all energy transfer to the Lightning including sustaining energy for remote start sessions. I've seen this happen in the past. Lesson learned don't touch the [START / STOP] regarding charging if you're trying to gather statistics.

After unplugging Fordpass and FCSP logs show, no shore power to cover remote start reduced the net traction energy from 6.6 to 5.0 kWh and lowered ending SOC from 90% to 88%

7.0 kWH to warm the battery, including conversion losses, with 100% energy available to drive the motors.

 

[Grumpy2]

Thanks for your efforts, this is a learning experience. Was the heat really sufficient in the truck from yesterday to not warm the battery as usual ???

 

[TaxmanHog]

Thanks for your efforts, this is a learning experience. Was the heat really sufficient in the truck from yesterday to not warm the battery as usual ???

I have questions about that as well, it was very cold overnight.

I had parked the truck in the un heated garage after yesterday's return from coffee, that helped.

We went out for an hour in the afternoon, but parked it in the garage upon returning.

I've been using a time constraint on my chargings scheme this week, I'm wondering if that's interfering with energy flow in the middle of the night?

I've stripped off the time constraints, leaving the truck parked outside today and when we've finished travels for the day will plug in & immediately charge, hoping the residual heat will minimize reheat needs during the charging activity.

Then will unplug, gather charging stat's then plug back in for overnight spontaneous conditioning like I was seeing last week.

 

[Maxx]

still feel like the temp gauge for the motors is just a dummy gauge -27 only 16% power available, but the motors were right in the middle according to the gauge

I love to see what your battery temp is in these conditions with your battery bar bellow minimum. Do you use a car scanner?

I only have a 40A setup so all the availible power goes to the heater for the first 30 minutes to heat the battery from 15F to 60F ( bet all the squirrels are camping out under the truck tonight ) but as you can see, while the state of charge remains the same, but the availible capacity goes up from 61kWh to 74kWh, this from using approximatley 4.5kWh to warm it up.

When my battery gets periodical conditioning, it heats up the battery only to Low 40s. It is interesting to see that it heats it up to 60s to charge. I was under the impression, that it starts charging the battery cold and the act of charging heats up the battery. If you are saying that it won't charge the battery until it reaches 60F, that is comforting for battery longevity.

For those that are reading this and doing the math in their head thinking they are putting 4.5KWh in to heat the battery and getting 13KWh back, that is only true if you start driving immediately and use all of your battery before it gets cold. This rarely if ever happens. A fair amount of that 4.5KWh goes to heating up the squirrels.

7.0 kWH to warm the battery, including conversion losses, with 100% energy available to drive the motors.

If that includes heating the cabin for 15 minutes, I have seen it starts at around 9-10 KW. Adding butt warmers, you could be loosing 3KW heating the cabin.

 

[TaxmanHog]

If that includes heating the cabin for 15 minutes, I have seen it starts at around 9-10 KW. Adding butt warmers, you could be loosing 3KW heating the cabin.

That 7 kWh was just related to battery warming & conversion losses net of implied 5% rise in SOC (before I lost it below)

Today was an anomaly, I do average around 2 kWh for cabin conditioning alone, but because of the tampering with the start/stop charging button the truck behaved as though it was unplugged while warming the cabin for 15 minutes, with this mornings extreme cold 3 kWh is in range.

 

[TaxmanHog]

With time restriction removed and the truck now parked in the garage, I plugged in and replenished the HVB to 90%, looks like I lost much of the morning charge / warm-up, the afternoon charge / warm-up was just as inefficient.

SOC boosted by 6%, for ~8 kWh traction energy with total energy sent at 15.22 kWh.

Now that charging is out of the way, the pack will cool down, overnight low is expected to be 10°, expecting a spontaneous warming action, we are leaving at 7 am for grocery run Thursday.

 

[Grumpy2]

Some wise man once wrote:

don't touch the [START / STOP] regarding charging

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