Does timed heat really run off the house?

Limey said:

So I have been watching this for a while now, because I have noticed that whenever I have the timed heat set to run in the morning, my battery is never at 100% (its always close at 98% or so). Now, if I have it off, it will always read 100%.

So the question being, does it really run off the house or does it run off the car which it expects to quickly recharge?

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adric22 said:

I would think the new Leafs with the 6.6kw charger should be able to run entirely off of mains power, and still have enough left over to charge the battery if needed.

My 2011 uses more than 3.3Kw when initially starting the heater, so a small amount is drawn from the battery. But after a few minutes when the car starts to get warmed up, the power draw starts to go down.

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stjohnh said:

If you use the L1 120 v EVSE "brick" that comes with the car, you will drain the battery some during pre-heat

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RonDawg said:

stjohnh said:

If you use the L1 120 v EVSE "brick" that comes with the car, you will drain the battery some during pre-heat

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That is likely what is happening here. Back on Jan 23 he was asking about 240 volt EVSE's.

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Limey said:

correct. I just use the level 1 charger that comes with the car. haven't had a need to step up to the level 2, but they are getting cheap enough where it can be worth it.

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Pipcecil said:

In actuallity, it does NOT pull directly off the house, that would require additional wires in the car, basicly wiring from the on board charger and the inverter and going directly to the heat/cool instead of the OBC, inverter, battery then heat/cool (current set up).

So the heat/cool pulls directly from the battery and the incoming power from the house recharges the battery as its being depleted. If the power draw is too much to keep up the battery remains slightly deficient and hence the lower SoC. This is also proven with the Leaf Spy app tapping into the # of Level 1/Level 2 charges, if you preheat after the car has been full (either 80% or 100%), the car counts it as another charging event (pretty sure unless I was seeing something else on that #).

In addition if it was running directly off the home power, it would just use less when the car had reach the target temperature, but if you had set your car at 80% charge and you preheat/cool and you reach your temperature and use less power, the car will keep charging the battery (at full power) until you stop the preheat/cool, which could leave your battery at a greater than 80% capacity.

This is actually quite contrary to Nissan's statements of "not top off the battery" but "preheat/cool to get greater range" You can't have both.

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Pipcecil said:

In actuallity, it does NOT pull directly off the house, that would require additional wires in the car, basicly wiring from the on board charger and the inverter and going directly to the heat/cool instead of the OBC, inverter, battery then heat/cool (current set up).

So the heat/cool pulls directly from the battery and the incoming power from the house recharges the battery as its being depleted. If the power draw is too much to keep up the battery remains slightly deficient and hence the lower SoC. This is also proven with the Leaf Spy app tapping into the # of Level 1/Level 2 charges, if you preheat after the car has been full (either 80% or 100%), the car counts it as another charging event (pretty sure unless I was seeing something else on that #).

In addition if it was running directly off the home power, it would just use less when the car had reach the target temperature, but if you had set your car at 80% charge and you preheat/cool and you reach your temperature and use less power, the car will keep charging the battery (at full power) until you stop the preheat/cool, which could leave your battery at a greater than 80% capacity.

This is actually quite contrary to Nissan's statements of "not top off the battery" but "preheat/cool to get greater range" You can't have both.

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stjohnh said:

If you use the L1 120 v EVSE "brick" that comes with the car, you will drain the battery some during pre-heat

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Pipcecil said:

Even with a Level 2 my car (in a 40's degree garage) cannot keep up in 30 minutes time I give it in the morning. I start ~5-6% down (this is with a 3.3kW OBC). But yes, I double checked this morning, the car counts the preheat/cool as a separate charging event. Way to inflate those charging numbers!

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Berlino said:

At least for MY13, the LEAF heater is set to NOT to drain the battery when plugged into 120v. This applies whether you activate the heat from within a LEAF in "ON" mode, or when pre-heating.

In my case, this means that once the temperature drops below the high 20's, the heater will only blow cold air if the car is plugged into 120v. Since I only have L1, I cannot pre-heat for much of the Winter, unless I make a special trip to the vehicle to unplug it first!

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NeilBlanchard said:

Can we just turn on the heater manually, while plugged into a 30A L2 EVSE? We have a Leaf S with the charger option, and a JuiceBox Premium.

Or, do we have to use the climate timer? I tried turning on the heater, and it blows cold air. The electric rear defroster works, but not the windshield defroster and the cabin heater did not work.

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EVDRIVER said:

Pipcecil said:

In actuallity, it does NOT pull directly off the house, that would require additional wires in the car, basicly wiring from the on board charger and the inverter and going directly to the heat/cool instead of the OBC, inverter, battery then heat/cool (current set up).

So the heat/cool pulls directly from the battery and the incoming power from the house recharges the battery as its being depleted. If the power draw is too much to keep up the battery remains slightly deficient and hence the lower SoC. This is also proven with the Leaf Spy app tapping into the # of Level 1/Level 2 charges, if you preheat after the car has been full (either 80% or 100%), the car counts it as another charging event (pretty sure unless I was seeing something else on that #).

In addition if it was running directly off the home power, it would just use less when the car had reach the target temperature, but if you had set your car at 80% charge and you preheat/cool and you reach your temperature and use less power, the car will keep charging the battery (at full power) until you stop the preheat/cool, which could leave your battery at a greater than 80% capacity.

This is actually quite contrary to Nissan's statements of "not top off the battery" but "preheat/cool to get greater range" You can't have both.

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It has nothing to do with extra wiring, the charger supplies power to the car for any load beyond the charge load. If the pack is full the charger will cover that load directly from mains power. There is no wiring change required to do this. The OP's issue is just a lack of 240V power clearly. If a heat load is 3kw at a given time and the supply is 6.6kw then the charger is directly powered from the house not the pack.

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