Leaf battery OK sitting in garage for 10 days?

Hello everyone,

I found a related topic when I did a search but then that thread went into much technical aspect of electricity, etc. that i didn't understand. So, i just would like to confirm: if my Leaf's battery will be OK when we go on vacation for 10 days? We're lucky to have a garage (the temp. could be down to below 0 here in MN at this time a year). I don't use any spyware or anything that would draw energy from the battery even when the engine is not on.

Also, should I charge it to full (we only have trickle charger at home, and have been charging to full most nights), unplug and leave it be? Or, is it better to be more "empty"? half charged? or just don't worry about it?

Is there anything else I should do for my Leaf before going on vacation? We've had this 2014 SL for about 5 months now and it was brand new when we got it.

thank you for any info and insights!
Peace

Half-charged and unplugged from the EVSE.

How cold will the garage get? I wouldn't worry about the traction battery above 5°F.

The only risk is the car draining the 12V battery too far before deciding to wake up and recharge it from the traction battery, normally every 5 days or so. With a healthy 12V battery and normal temps, I wouldn't worry.

With reduced capacity in a very cold 12V battery, and the possibility it might freeze the liquid inside if it neared total discharge (when the acid turns into good old water that freezes at 32°F), l might consider hooking up a standard 12V trickle charger to the 12V batt. Might save you a 12V battery replacement.

what mwalsh said. don't fret the exactness of 'half charged' I suspect anywhere between 80 and 40 is fine (personally, in the winter i'd err on the side of more charge - for lots of reasons). but leave it unplugged (and doors shut, dome light off etc) for sure.

With the problems people have had with 12V battery, if it is going to be below 0F, having it on a trickle charge is a good idea.

The main pack will be OK for ten days. Agree anywhere in the 40% to 80% range is OK.
The main pack heater will cycle on when temperature hits 0F and will go off when it hits 14F.
I don't know specific draw of it, but my guess is 10 days of extremely cold weather probably will not drop the main pack more than 10% to 20%.

But the heater quits working when main pack is fairly low. 30% if I recall correctly.
So it will not damage the pack by excessive discharge.

Supposedly even if the pack gets extremely cold say to -20F it will not be damaged.
But not a lot of people have provided info on this.
If it got real cold you probably could not get much power out of the pack until it warmed up.
The cold weather package pack heater that was added late in 2011 primarily is to keep the LEAF functional in very cold weather.

This would be a good time to install the connection cable for a hardwired 12 volt battery maintainer. I ran mine from the battery through the back of the charge port (I drilled a small hole for the wire, and will seal it with black rubber compound at lease end) with the connection plug residing in the port, so I can plug the maintainer in just by opening the charge port. If you will be leaving the car regularly the maintainer will provide you with peace of mind. A 2 amp maintainer like the Diehard is best, although a 0.75 amp unit like the Battery Tender JR. will work ok most of the time.

Thanks everyone, for your prompt replies!

We live in a small split entry home w/ a tug under garage. So, the garage has one shared wall with the house and its ceiling is also heated; therefore, it's never been that cold even in the deep of winter (I think I'd worry more if we had to leave our Leaf at the airport, but we're getting rides from friends to the AP). Depending upon the outside temp, it has never gotten below 30F (if it's 0 or below outside, then it's about freezing in this garage or around 32 or 30, per hubby). We could insulate the other walls - that has been on the honey-do-list that never got executed

Anyway, it sounds like my Leaf likely will be ok. I will of course follow your advice and leave the car charged btwn 40 - 80% and unplug from the EVSE.

Oh, one more question. When we return, assuming the car will turn on ok (hopefully), should I charge it to full before using it the next day, warm it up a little before using it again, anything special that i need to do, besides just start driving it, like normal?

Many thanks!
Peace

Just park it and leave it unplugged. Return and use the vehicle as normal.
Nothing special about it really.

OK something less than 100% charged is probably best. No need to do anything extra.

Peace said:

Hello everyone,

I found a related topic when I did a search but then that thread went into much technical aspect of electricity, etc. that i didn't understand. So, i just would like to confirm: if my Leaf's battery will be OK when we go on vacation for 10 days? We're lucky to have a garage (the temp. could be down to below 0 here in MN at this time a year). I don't use any spyware or anything that would draw energy from the battery even when the engine is not on.

Also, should I charge it to full (we only have trickle charger at home, and have been charging to full most nights), unplug and leave it be? Or, is it better to be more "empty"? half charged? or just don't worry about it?

Is there anything else I should do for my Leaf before going on vacation? We've had this 2014 SL for about 5 months now and it was brand new when we got it.

thank you for any info and insights!
Peace

Click to expand...

I have left my Leaf at 50% for around a month and came back to around 45-46%. I always do a full trickle charge of 12v before leaving for good measure. No problems so far.

As said before try to leave the car not at 100 and not at zero. 50-60 gives me the comfortable margin.

Great! I'm feeling much better now. You rock!
Thanks so much and I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Peace

While not helping for your colder timeframe, this summer we left our Leaf in the garage for a month. Set it up with about 60% charge, unplugged EVSE and left it. When we returned the car started and functioned as normal. Unfortunately I did not record the power drop but it was not all that significant.

No 12v maintainer, no unplugging 12v system, nothing special other than unplugging the EVSE somewhere above 50% but below the 80%.

YMMV of course, but I wonder if some of the concerns about 12v battery system are rooted in earlier models and perhaps by my 2013 model being delivered they changed something?

epirali said:

Peace said:

Hello everyone,

I found a related topic when I did a search but then that thread went into much technical aspect of electricity, etc. that i didn't understand. So, i just would like to confirm: if my Leaf's battery will be OK when we go on vacation for 10 days? We're lucky to have a garage (the temp. could be down to below 0 here in MN at this time a year). I don't use any spyware or anything that would draw energy from the battery even when the engine is not on.

Also, should I charge it to full (we only have trickle charger at home, and have been charging to full most nights), unplug and leave it be? Or, is it better to be more "empty"? half charged? or just don't worry about it?

Is there anything else I should do for my Leaf before going on vacation? We've had this 2014 SL for about 5 months now and it was brand new when we got it.

thank you for any info and insights!
Peace

Click to expand...

I have left my Leaf at 50% for around a month and came back to around 45-46%. I always do a full trickle charge of 12v before leaving for good measure. No problems so far.

As said before try to leave the car not at 100 and not at zero. 50-60 gives me the comfortable margin.

Click to expand...

Here are my results for a 2011 LEAF that was left in my garage (Cupertino CA) for about 18 days:

Sept. 25 44.5% SOC 125 gids
Oct. 13 43.8% SOC 123 gids

So over that period of time, very little change. I removed the ELM 327 dongle since it consumes some of the energy from the 12 V battery if left plugged in. No problem with start up upon return.

Just want to report back to you all. We came back from being gone for 10 days (Leaf was at almost full charge level when we left) and it started right up. I don't use any extra device to accurately measure range so don't have accurate answer on what charge is left then, but it looked like it had the same level of charge. We left the Leaf in the garage (space w/ partial insulation, but never got below freezing) and just unplugped the EVSE. So, no problem here.

However, a new issue emerged. After the trip, the garage outlet where we used to plug the EVSE in just doesn't work anymore! At first, I thought something is wrong with the Leaf becasue the EVSE's green light lids up as "ready to charge" but the Leaf's charging light doesn't click on and light up. so I brought the Leaf to charge at work (level 2 charger) and it worked fine. I also brought my EVSE to test out to trickle charge from work and it worked too. So, it's our outlet at home. I tried to plug the EVSE in other outlets around the house and found one that worked but it's just not convenient and I think I'm not supposed to use long extension cords, also not to share the outlet w/ other electricial usage (fire hazard and all). not sure if it's just a coincident that this convenient garage trickle charge outlet just gave out at the time of trip, or something else is going on. I wish we could afford to install a L2 charging station in the garage and do things properly. But, we can't right now as the estimates were close to two thousand to start out! This is because our house is old and the panel is all maxed out so we need new panel, and maybe a separate one in garage for the Leaf. I thought we could just use this garage outlet for a while to trickle charge and re-think the installation of new electrical panel when we're ready to re-model the house hopefully in a year or two. Now, we might have to get an electrician to just fix this section of the house's electrical needs so we can continue to trickle charge this way.

sorry for a long winded account of this new development. I guess this is what one needs to deal with when we get EVs I have to understand electricity better...
Peace

Peace said:

Now, we might have to get an electrician to just fix this section of the house's electrical needs so we can continue to trickle charge this way.

Click to expand...

I am sorry you have this problem.
But best to look at it as a blessing, that it just quit rather than being a much worse problem.

As I have advised many people considering use of 120V EVSE that comes with the LEAF and other plug in vehicles:

TimLee said:

A repeat of my input from previous questions on 120 V EVSE use:
Note that Nissan recommends the 120V EVSE for limited emergency use only.
Some people have used it for a long time without problems yet, but in general that is a bad idea unless you have a newly properly installed dedicated circuit with high grade receptacle using properly tightened screw connections.

Previous info from another thread:

mikelb said:

...
Trickle charging should be safe, though, right? I wouldn't necessarily need to have the circuit certified for it or anything, should I? If I were to go to a friend's house, would I be safe plugging into their outlet?

Click to expand...

How safe 120V charging is depends on how lucky you are.
Very few garages have the correct properly installed high quality single outlet supplied by a single breaker.
Code only allows using 80% of the circuit rating for a long term continuous load.
So on a 15 amp circuit nothing else should be on the same circuit while the car is charging.
And a lot of 120V gets put in poorly using push in connections.
One person had a bad fire most likely from staples that had damaged the cable in the wall.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=15784&hilit=+fire#p352567" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Click to expand...

Your non-working outlet definitely should be checked by someone that knows what they are doing.
It could be simple, like GFCI outlet that has went bad, some of them have very high failure rates.
But it could be very dangerous.

Using other outlets further away, especially using extension cords, is a very bad idea.

Peace said:

Just want to report back to you all. We came back from being gone for 10 days (Leaf was at almost full charge level when we left) and it started right up.

Click to expand...

How can almost everyone tell you NOT to leave an EV at "full charge" (or anywhere close to it) for an extended period of time and that's the first thing you do!
Sorry to hear about your 110v issues, but (as was mentioned) that's not a good long-term solution either.

Excuse my "dumb" suggestion here----but, have you checked all the circuit breakers in your electrical panel? It's possible that thecircuit breaker that feeds the non-functioning outlet was tripped by something else in your house, and has nothing to do with your Leaf.

No 12v maintainer, no unplugging 12v system, nothing special other than unplugging the EVSE somewhere above 50% but below the 80%.

YMMV of course, but I wonder if some of the concerns about 12v battery system are rooted in earlier models and perhaps by my 2013 model being delivered they changed something?

Click to expand...

No. In fact, the 2013 Model Year has a worse record, it would seem, than the earlier and later years, although all years have reports of it happening, IIRC. A bad batch of batteries is suspected in the 2013. Just as a Leaf with a bad 12 volt battery and/or charging system doesn't mean they are all bad, one with no problems doesn't mean they are all good.

Thanks everyone for your responses - I'll have the circuit breaker where the faulty outlet is connected to checked soon. My husband thinks using an extension cord to use the other working outlet inside the house to charge the car is fine, but I'm a bit uneasy after reading what you all wrote here, plus I did check the manuals and did see the section which TimLee quoted (...120 EVSE for limited emergency use - and I did read the fire case referenced earlier). So, I've been mainly trying to charge from work we'll have to figure something soon. I'll have to show him what you all wrote here...

Regarding having my Leaf at almost fully charged, in the hectic frenzy of trying to get ready for our trip, I happened to fully charge the car at work that last day thinking that I'll have alot of driving to do but ended up not being the case. I remember thinking that I wanted to drive the Leaf around the neighborhood some more just to get it down to 80% but ended up not having time. I had some comfort that at least it was NOT fullly charged at the end, because even if we don't live that far, I did drive home from work - and so it wasn't over the top full I promise to never do this again!

Best thing is just to have the L2 charger installed properly in the garage.
thanks again for your concerns and advices.
Happy Holidays to you all!
Peace

If you got it down to the low 90% range and it wasn't hot in the garage it should be fine.

Thank you!!