Scheduling on charger can cause issues with preconditioning and climate start

[jimfigler]

Just an FYI and this may be obvious to some. Since I installed my ChargePoint Home Flex back in the spring I've been scheduling the charging time in the ChargePoint app and not in the truck. The truck had no schedule set. The primary reason I did this was because ChargePoint lets you schedule in half hour increments and I wanted to set 11:30pm to 7:00am. I noticed recently that if you climate start while plugged in and you are outside the 11:30pm to 7:00am schedule the truck can't pull power from the house, so it pulls juice from the battery. I don't often precondition but I'm assuming the same will happen if you are outside that window.

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[Grumpy2]

Were you able to confirm the HVB was preconditioned when the truck wasn't plugged in, and not just the cab heated?
When we are out and about I like to remote start while not plugged in so the truck is warm when we get to it. I don't believe the remote start does anything to precondition the HVB...

 

[TaxmanHog]

Funny this discussion came up!!

Starting this week, I began my winter strategy, I'm using the FCSP.

I built rules for the week & weekend that basically constrain charging to early morning 5 am to 8 am, this is usually enough time to get the battery charged, modestly warmed, and then when I hit the remote start button, pull juice from shore, normally I click it at 7:45.

I had a change of routine just for today, we were not leaving the house until about 8:15 or so, so I delayed hitting the remote climate start [fan] button until 8 am.

Looking at my Emporia chart, it showed no substantial energy (just a few watts) going into the Lightning, then it dawned on me the time constraints was the cause, so now, I'm lengthening the period to 9am to accommodate the conditions of a late departure, I expect it'll work perfectly Wednesday morning.

This chart shows the energy charging the HVB from 5 am to 6:31 am, but nothing from 8 am when remote start was running, so that 1.5 kWh for warming the cabin came straight out of the battery.

 

[Adventureboy]

This is normal. The ChargePoint simply won't supply the truck with power outside of the window you set. I found using the truck's schedule is more effective however I agree it would be nice for the times to be a bit more granular.
On the other side, if you use the truck's scheduler instead of ChargePoint, the truck makes some undocumented assumptions when you plug it in and can start using power before/after your window in several conditions. The truck seems to prioritize your SOC target and will start charging in advance if there may be a challenge hitting target SOC in your window. Preconditioning throws another set of parameters at it that can change the behaviour of when the truck draws power outside of the window.

In the end, I just use the truck's scheduler. This keeps the battery from freezing at any time and is more likely to be successful if I choose to precondition. The majority of power draw stays within the window, just not all of it.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Just make sure to take full advantage of the start of your TOU window, so that the charging and battery conditioning phases complement each other, then enough time at the far end of the window that cabin conditioning can occur with shore power.

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