How can you use battery capacity without driving? Can this improve battery capacity?

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Leaf battery capacity degradation is the function of two things: Time and cycles. By not driving it, you are cutting down on battery charge cycles but not on battery age, so you will still have some degradation. Not much you can do about it but keep the battery as cool as possible...

FYI, my experience with the new Lizard battery indicates that this is still the case and that temperature is still a consideration...
 
I'd say the best way is to find the interior temp sensor, put an ice pack around it and blast the defrost on (heat and A/C going) at the highest heat setting. If you just turn the heat on and it's not that cold the power used will drop off quickly. Also cracking the windows will probably delay the sensor warming up but you might not want to leave the car like that.
 
I did an hour long test last night... left the car on, fan full blast, heat, and temp at 75. The car lost 7% of capacity. I set it to 75 because I wasn't sure if 90 would be too hot for something in the car but probably not if the windows are all the way down when it hits 50F or less outside.

I didn't realize, even though the heat is on, the temp of 90 vs. 75, uses about 3x as much power. I may try another hour long test with heat on at 90 to compare.

The car is parked in a locked garage so I don't have to worry about anybody seeing it on or messing with it.
 
As long as it's reasonably cool, you can just blast the heater. Open all the windows (and hatch if possible), set the heat to 90F, fan at max. That's your best bet for putting any appreciable load on the main pack without driving.

I've run it like this for a few hours, as a way to keep my garage warm when I was doing some painting.
 
This is just my 2 cents, but cycling the battery is using the battery, whether it is to run the heater or to move the car. I would advise against running the heater to use up battery power, your just adding cycles or "miles" to the battery for no useful reason.

As Tom T said, it is time and cycles that degrade a battery. I would add to that, leaving the battery at a high state of charge isn't the best for the battery as well. So if your not using the car that much just don't top it off when your done.

I find the biggest change I see in capacity or Hx is when I run the battery down pretty low, to LBW or VLBW. But honestly I don't think that "helps" the battery it just gives the car a better picture of the actual battery capacity and adjusts accordingly.
 
BrockWI said:
This is just my 2 cents, but cycling the battery is using the battery, whether it is to run the heater or to move the car. I would advise against running the heater to use up battery power, your just adding cycles or "miles" to the battery for no useful reason.

As Tom T said, it is time and cycles that degrade a battery. I would add to that, leaving the battery at a high state of charge isn't the best for the battery as well. So if your not using the car that much just don't top it off when your done.

I find the biggest change I see in capacity or Hx is when I run the battery down pretty low, to LBW or VLBW. But honestly I don't think that "helps" the battery it just gives the car a better picture of the actual battery capacity and adjusts accordingly.
I wouldn't say it's "for no useful reason". By cycling the battery more this past week, my stats have increased 3%. I need as much usable capacity on the weekends as possible and lately I can really tell the difference compared to a few months ago.

I'm not exactly sure how to ask this...
So if I go back to only charging 1-2 times per week and my stats stay at my low (down 10-13%), will my usable capacity stay the same for longer vs. higher usable capacity in the near term and lower in the long term?
Say 1 year from now, if I cycle my battery more (and the stats keep going back up and stay at a reasonable level), will I have more usable capacity than if I don't?
How about 2 years? I can imagine 2-3 years, the car would have less usable capacity from time degradation but maybe not 1 year.

I'm leasing and do not plan to buy the car so I'd rather have more usable capacity in the near term vs. long term.

I usually charge from around 30% and rarely hit LBW or VLBW. I never let the car sit at more than 80-100% for more than 1-3 hours.
 
I use mine to ferry power from QC and dump it into my solar banks. It's like getting $2 every time because the QC is free and the nearest station is only 3 miles away. Helps to keep down the electric bills. :mrgreen:
 
I could be wrong, but I believe all your doing is updating your battery stats, your not actually increasing the capacity of the battery by doing this, your letting the car get a better estimate of what is in the battery and what the battery can do. I guess it might add a tiny bit of capacity by exercising it, but I would but it is less than .5 kWh or more likely .250 kWh, going 2 miles an hour slower will give you more than that over the a full charge.

knightmb, well that's understandable and I have to admit I have done the same thing, but with a free L2 EVSE and charged our house bank :)
 
BrockWI said:
... I believe all your doing is updating your battery stats, your not actually increasing the capacity of the battery by doing this, your letting the car get a better estimate of what is in the battery and what the battery can do. ...
That is correct.
Occasional deep cycling to VLBW or Turtle and then charging back to 100% will help the LEAF know available capacity and will help your available range a bit.

But more cycling does increase long term capacity degradation some (but OP is leasing so that is less important).

Highest power use in the garage is with Defrost on at 90F setting with all windows open and lights on High Beam for the 2011 and 2012 LEAF.
Depending on garage temperature will pull 4.5 kW for an hour or two.
As garage heats up to 85F power draw will drop back to 3 kW.
 
knightmb said:
I use mine to ferry power from QC and dump it into my solar banks. It's like getting $2 every time because the QC is free and the nearest station is only 3 miles away. Helps to keep down the electric bills. :mrgreen:
That is very cool! I'd do the same if I could.

BrockWI said:
I could be wrong, but I believe all your doing is updating your battery stats, your not actually increasing the capacity of the battery by doing this, your letting the car get a better estimate of what is in the battery and what the battery can do. I guess it might add a tiny bit of capacity by exercising it, but I would but it is less than .5 kWh or more likely .250 kWh, going 2 miles an hour slower will give you more than that over the a full charge.
I already drive pretty slow so I can't go much slower but I see your point.

In one week, by cycling more, I'm up 0.5 kWh. I will continue to cycle at least every 2 days, if not everyday, and see how much higher it will go. I will probably only try for another week and see where I'm at then determine if I'll go back to charging 2-3 times per week and see if it stabilizes or starts to go down again.

I'm charging the same way I normally charge but more frequently and stats are improving rather than continuing to go down or stabilize at the lowest ever.

Whatever the case is, I did not expect to be down 10%+ in 7 months and 4,500 miles and if I can gain some back, I will try.

Thanks for all your posts!
 
wow i just took a serious look at that signature.

2015 Leaf Mfg: Jan. '15 // Pur: May '15
Best: 6/27/15 - 1,416 Miles - 292 GIDs - 63.11 Ahr - 22.6 kWh - 100% SOH - 97.2% Hx - 4 QC, 29 L2
Worst: 12/12/15 - 4,616 Miles - 259 GIDs - 55.02 Ahr - 20.1 kWh - 99% SOH - 82.8% Hx - 17 QC, 96 L2

I have to think that the SOH% is wrong or now a useless number on a 2015.

55.02 Ahr / 63.11 Ahr is 87% that's right on the edge of losing your first bar.

What leafspy app are you using? IOS vs android, and version of app.

I'd think we need to get a screenshot or debug trace log to be sure but your SOH% shouldn't be that high with your AHr that low.
 
BrockWI said:
... I believe all your doing is updating your battery stats, your not actually increasing the capacity of the battery by doing this, your letting the car get a better estimate of what is in the battery and what the battery can do. ...

TimLee said:
Occasional deep cycling to VLBW or Turtle and then charging back to 100% will help the LEAF know available capacity and will help your available range a bit. But more cycling does increase long term capacity degradation some

And that has been the conventional wisdom here, but after seeing Brian Kent's data (the guy who did the road trip around North America) I'm having doubts. Now we don't know his battery stats when he started the trip in his 2013 LEAF with 28k miles on it but this is what LEAF Spy reported 108 days later at nearly 50k miles. That's a lot of cycles! His battery looks a good bit better than when I got mine new (after it sat mostly unused for almost 2 years and now at 10k miles) and I venture it looks better than most any 2013 car here. Makes me wonder about the conventional wisdom... Does it influence your views at all?

12299375_10101532114058200_3583125326195360678_n.jpg
 
I'm not sure I'm on board with your plan, but I can sure solve your problem.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=13097

My inverter can power my fridge, or Christmas lights, or whatever, and discharge the HV pack very nicely.

Again, not sure your theory is sound (not sure its not either ;) ) but this will do what you want.

Good luck.
 
KillaWhat said:
I'm not sure I'm on board with your plan, but I can sure solve your problem.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=13097

My inverter can power my fridge, or Christmas lights, or whatever, and discharge the HV pack very nicely.

Again, not sure your theory is sound (not sure its not either ;) ) but this will do what you want.

Good luck.
Hey, I totally missed that topic somehow. I did the exact same thing (even have the same brand inverter, those rock!) but I just used 4 pronged 50 amp dryer outlet and reused the extra wires to double on the current to 100 amp so that I had a nice easy dryer plug for the inverter (was the cheapest and safest way I could do it), but the plug you have looks awesome!
 
LeafMuranoDriver said:
knightmb said:
I use mine to ferry power from QC and dump it into my solar banks. It's like getting $2 every time because the QC is free and the nearest station is only 3 miles away. Helps to keep down the electric bills. :mrgreen:
That is very cool! I'd do the same if I could.

BrockWI said:
I could be wrong, but I believe all your doing is updating your battery stats, your not actually increasing the capacity of the battery by doing this, your letting the car get a better estimate of what is in the battery and what the battery can do. I guess it might add a tiny bit of capacity by exercising it, but I would but it is less than .5 kWh or more likely .250 kWh, going 2 miles an hour slower will give you more than that over the a full charge.
I already drive pretty slow so I can't go much slower but I see your point.

In one week, by cycling more, I'm up 0.5 kWh. I will continue to cycle at least every 2 days, if not everyday, and see how much higher it will go. I will probably only try for another week and see where I'm at then determine if I'll go back to charging 2-3 times per week and see if it stabilizes or starts to go down again.

I'm charging the same way I normally charge but more frequently and stats are improving rather than continuing to go down or stabilize at the lowest ever.

Whatever the case is, I did not expect to be down 10%+ in 7 months and 4,500 miles and if I can gain some back, I will try.

Thanks for all your posts!

Hi LeafMuranoDriver

I was faced with your problem of not doing enough miles to nicely fit in with Nissan's charging view of the world from when I purchased my Leaf, and for the first few months whatever I tried, from more part charges to fewer, all resulted in a drop in battery stats. I bought the car for local (suburban) needs, and all my regular destinations are less than 15 miles return, most less than 10.

It took a while to cotton on to the solution, but it has proved to be a winner - turn your problem around and ask yourself how much charging do you need to do for your current driving. In other words, if you are only regularly driving 20 miles/day then charge just enough for that.

To do this I needed Leaf Spy as I found I needed no more than a 40% charge and my 2012 Leaf doesn't have any display of this. I have tested my charging regime for a year, and in doing so have found that I can drive up to 20 miles down to LBW, and up to another 15 miles down to VLBW, depending on conditions of course. I needed to explore that low to become comfortable with it - Leaf Spy makes the difference. I keep tinkering with the charging; what I currently do is run the car to below LBW (about 20%) then give it a 80 minute charge (240 volt house supply), using the car timer.

The li-ion battery research I have read through this forum and elsewhere suggests that optimum storage conditions for a Leaf-type battery include keeping SoC at 40% (or below). My question (to myself) was; what if I keep the charge below 40% AND drive the car too?

The answer is that my battery has stopped degrading AT ALL - my battery AHr before my last (July) service was 61.41, and today it is still 61.41. In between I have been averaging about 35-40 miles/week, so I am charging 2 maybe 3 times/week. Note that I have found that exceeding 40% when charging by even very small amounts (e.g. 41-42%) is enough to result in an AHr drop.

This works for me - hope it helps your problem.
 
dhanson865 said:
wow i just took a serious look at that signature.

2015 Leaf Mfg: Jan. '15 // Pur: May '15
Best: 6/27/15 - 1,416 Miles - 292 GIDs - 63.11 Ahr - 22.6 kWh - 100% SOH - 97.2% Hx - 4 QC, 29 L2
Worst: 12/12/15 - 4,616 Miles - 259 GIDs - 55.02 Ahr - 20.1 kWh - 99% SOH - 82.8% Hx - 17 QC, 96 L2

I have to think that the SOH% is wrong or now a useless number on a 2015.

55.02 Ahr / 63.11 Ahr is 87% that's right on the edge of losing your first bar.

What leafspy app are you using? IOS vs android, and version of app.

I'd think we need to get a screenshot or debug trace log to be sure but your SOH% shouldn't be that high with your AHr that low.
The SOH could definitely be wrong. I have no clue. I'm using the newest LeafSpy on iOS, v1.1.1 en. I literally just updated to 1.2.1 as of this post but haven't connected to the Leaf yet.

I started cycling the battery more and the AHr has come back up to 56.7 after a week of heavy usage but dropped to 56.0 in the last 2 days.

KillaWhat said:
I'm not sure I'm on board with your plan, but I can sure solve your problem.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=13097

My inverter can power my fridge, or Christmas lights, or whatever, and discharge the HV pack very nicely.

Again, not sure your theory is sound (not sure its not either ;) ) but this will do what you want.

Good luck.
That is very cool. I think it's above my head though but even if it wasn't, my garage where the Leaf is parked is detached and nothing in it to consume the power.

hieronymous said:
Hi LeafMuranoDriver
This works for me - hope it helps your problem.
I've tried to partially charge and only charge when I really needed it and my stats still continued to go down so I went back to charging to 100% and it still made no difference.
 
Update: When I started to leave the car with the heater running vs. driving it, the stats froze for a day then went down 2 days in a row. 2 days ago I started to drive it to cycle the battery and now the stats are starting to go back up.

Maybe the slow pull of power from the battery with the heater isn't good enough compared to the power the motor pulls from of the battery driving, especially the freeway.
 
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