fred wrote:
On Saturday, November 28, 2020 at 10:23:25 PM UTC, Roger Mills wrote:
On 28/11/2020 12:57, fred wrote:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I bought one of these to monitor the electric consumption of the electric car I recently purchased. The car isn't seeing much use so it only goes on charge about once week.
I keep a note of the distance covered and record it against the kWhs used to recharge the batteries.

The strange thing is the meter records usage when the car isn't being charged.(i.e.) last week after recharging the meter read 73.65kWh. This morning when going to recharge the car again the meter read 74.16kWh so where did the 0.51kW go ?
Gremlins
Is my neighbour plugging in extension lead ?

It just questions my faith in the meter.

According to the blurb, it switches itself off at above 1650watts, so I
would have thought it was totally unsuitable for measuring car charging
consumption, anyway.
--
Cheers,
Roger


Very strange as I've been using it with no problem for some time now

I hope when you're charging the car, you're not filling the
battery 100% full. When storing lithium devices (non-use situation),
it's better to keep the battery fractionally full. Maybe 50% to 70%
or so.

Only when you're taking a really long trip and plan to discharge
the battery almost immediately, would you charge to 100%. Also,
charging to precisely 100%, prevents regenerative braking from
working for the first five to ten minutes. The car should switch
modes on its own, because it knows the battery hasn't room to
store regenerated charge at the moment.

Fractional filling will add some life to the battery pack.

It's the same with laptops. Laptops in the past charged to 100%,
and some people left their laptop plugged in all the time. Even though
the charger is smart, this tends to wear on the pack. More modern
laptops have a "stage 1 only" charging option, which charges the
pack to 80%, and then if you leave the adapter plugged in, the
smart charger will never put more than 80% in. Which reduces the
terminal voltage so it spends less time at 4.2V and more time
at 3.7V (LiCo).

I'm sure this is explained in the documentation somewhere. Although
manufacturers want you to think everything they make is an "appliance",
BEV still isn't really at that point yet. We're still at the "pointy bits"
stage and the "don't do that" stage. Some day the vehicles really
will be don't care technology, and the biggest worry will be the
manufacturer making shoddy body panels or the like. Or like the
cars I drive, where everything is "blown alternators" :-) Before
I take a car to the junkyard, the last thing to fail is the
alternator. I saw a flicker the other day when I was out in
the car... and I know what comes next. Some day electric cars
will have a favored failure mode too. Maybe the bumper will fall
off or something :-)

Paul