Confused by the Leaf charging timer: never seems to do what I want.

Ok, my local electric company has "peak" rates from 5pm to 8pm on weekends. I set up schedule 2 on a 2011 Leaf SL as so:

Start: 8pm
End: 5pm
Charge to: 80%
Enabled: Saturday Sunday

Click to expand...

On Saturday at 3pm I pull up, expecting the Leaf will charge two hours until 5pm, then resume at 8pm. Instead (as verified by LeafSpy) it showed chasing dots at 3pm and did not start charging until 8pm.

What am I missing?

brycenesbitt said:

Ok, my local electric company has "peak" rates from 5pm to 8pm on weekends. I set up schedule 2 on a 2011 Leaf as so:

Start: 8pm
End: 5pm
Charge to: 80%
Enabled: Saturday Sunday

Click to expand...

On Saturday at 3pm I pull up, expecting the Leaf will charge two hours until 5pm, then resume at 8pm. Instead (as verified by LeafSpy) it showed chasing dots at 3pm and did not start charging until 8pm.

Click to expand...

The above behavior you're seeing makes perfect sense to me. When you set that start timer, you are telling it delay charging until 8 pm and terminate at 80% if it's before 5 pm or terminate at 5 pm, regardless of % SoC.

Off the top of my head, I don't think there's any way to make it automatically achieve what you want, as I don't think you can assign 2 timers to 1 day. What you really seem to need is a timer w/no start time, but an end time of 5 pm for Sat and Sun (call this A). And, you also need what you've set for those 2 days (call this B).

You could set A, as I suggested then come back to the car sometime after 8 pm to push the timer override button. You might also be able to send a start charging command via Carwings. However, the car will then charge to 100%, as the only way to make an '11 stop at 80% is via timer.

What you are missing is a timer that covers the period before 5 pm on Saturday. I would use another timer that starts on Friday and ends at 5 pm, which would be Saturday. How are the other days of the week covered? This might determine exactly how to set the Friday timer. To avoid confusion I would set it for Monday through Friday to start at 5:10 pm and stop at 5 pm.

So if I set a timer from 8pm to 5pm (next day), but one day don't get home until 9pm, it won't charge at all that night?
Really? Is there a guide to timer tips and ticks online somewhere?

Time of use pricing is coming to more and more places (for example all of California in a few years). A lot of people will want to block out certain peak hours from charging.

The timer override button, by the way, charges to 100% as far as I can tell. Is there a way to override the timer and get to 80%?

Tell us your peak hours (or non-peak hours) each day of the week. We may be able to offer some guidance to set the two available timers to allow charging off peak and block charging on peak. By carefully choosing start and end times along with days of the week, I have set up my two timers to allow charging only off peak. If I plug in anytime during off peak hours, the car starts charging immediately. If plugged in on peak, it waits until the next off peak window to start charging. The manual does not explain the timer programming very well.

Gerry

brycenesbitt said:

The timer override button, by the way, charges to 100% as far as I can tell. Is there a way to override the timer and get to 80%?

Click to expand...

Not on a 2011.

To answer your second question. If you plug in anytime during a timer charge period, say 9 pm, the car should start charging immediately.

Here's an "out of the box" solution: how about no timers on the weekend (charge manually Sat/Sun)? I only have timers set for Mon-Fri since I don't drive that much on the weekend anyway. Just a thought for a very weird "peak charging" scenario.

KennyLewis said:

To answer your second question. If you plug in anytime during a timer charge period, say 9 pm, the car should start charging immediately.

Click to expand...

I set up:

Start: 8pm
End: 5pm
Charge to: 80%
Enabled: Saturday Sunday

Click to expand...

And plugged in at 3pm. It did not charge until 8pm.

brycenesbitt said:

KennyLewis said:

To answer your second question. If you plug in anytime during a timer charge period, say 9 pm, the car should start charging immediately.

Click to expand...

I set up:

Start: 8pm
End: 5pm
Charge to: 80%
Enabled: Saturday Sunday

Click to expand...

And plugged in at 3pm. It did not charge until 8pm.

Click to expand...

Right, because you told it not to start until 8 p.m. If you'd plugged in at 9 p.m. it should have started charging immediately, because that would be after the start time. Your best bet for off-peak charging, assuming you don't need to charge the whole time to get full, is probably to just set an end time and no start time. The car will start charging whenever it needs to, to finish by the time you set (it actually tends to finish somewhat earlier, so you can typically set the end time somewhere around .5 or 1.0 hours after you really want it to be done - experiment). If your battery is near empty that may mean you sometimes charge at peak rates, but most of the time it won't start until off-peak.

GRA said:

Your best bet for off-peak charging, assuming you don't need to charge the whole time to get full, is probably to just set an end time and no start time. The car will start charging whenever it needs to, to finish by the time you set (it actually tends to finish somewhat earlier, so you can typically set the end time somewhere around .5 or 1.0 hours after you really want it to be done - experiment). If your battery is near empty that may mean you sometimes charge at peak rates, but most of the time it won't start until off-peak.

Click to expand...

If I set a 10am weekday end time, drive at 8:30am, return at 9 am, I'd hope it would charge for 1 hour.
But when will it pick up again and finish the job? Midnight?

Is there any third party app or tool I can buy that can actually block out peak periods and control charging?

brycenesbitt said:

GRA said:

Your best bet for off-peak charging, assuming you don't need to charge the whole time to get full, is probably to just set an end time and no start time. The car will start charging whenever it needs to, to finish by the time you set (it actually tends to finish somewhat earlier, so you can typically set the end time somewhere around .5 or 1.0 hours after you really want it to be done - experiment). If your battery is near empty that may mean you sometimes charge at peak rates, but most of the time it won't start until off-peak.

Click to expand...

If I set a 10am weekday end time, drive at 8:30am, return at 9 am, I'd hope it would charge for 1 hour.
But when will it pick up again and finish the job? Midnight?

Is there any third party app or tool I can buy that can actually block out peak periods and control charging?

Click to expand...

Brycenesbitt,

I gave you some suggested timer settings in the thread under Batteries & Charging. An end only timer will not work well for on peak/off peak scheduling.

Gerry