knightmb
Well-known member
Just as the subject says, I want to find out how the 62 kWh battery is heating itself in really cold weather. The owners manual is not much help and my technical contacts at Nissan are kind of shoulder shrugging this one, so I am going to design an experiment to try and find out how this actually works.
My first obstacle, I don't live in a cold enough climate. It is rare for it to reach single digit F temperatures for more than a few days and that is not enough to activate the battery warmer regardless. What I do have access to though, is lots of cheap, dry ice. :lol:
So while I don't need to cool the battery to -100F to make this work, it can help cool the battery pack enough to reach the target temperature when it is *suppose* to activate some heating system and then when it does, try to find out how much power it is using and what is it actually doing!
I'm going the simple route, wait till dark, put a thermal bag around the whole bottom of the Leaf to encase the battery, then fill it with dry ice to create a deep freezer right below the battery to *hopefully* cool it down, but not too much. :shock:
Monitor the experiment the whole night, battery temperature, etc. Then when it finally gets close to the target temperature, just watch LeafSpy to see when some "extra" power usage kicks in or maybe a light on the dash will come on if the Leaf is off, I'm not really sure what to expect at this point... :?
If anyone sees an issue with my experiment setup or has some better suggestions, I'm open to "cheap" options. :mrgreen:
My first obstacle, I don't live in a cold enough climate. It is rare for it to reach single digit F temperatures for more than a few days and that is not enough to activate the battery warmer regardless. What I do have access to though, is lots of cheap, dry ice. :lol:
So while I don't need to cool the battery to -100F to make this work, it can help cool the battery pack enough to reach the target temperature when it is *suppose* to activate some heating system and then when it does, try to find out how much power it is using and what is it actually doing!
I'm going the simple route, wait till dark, put a thermal bag around the whole bottom of the Leaf to encase the battery, then fill it with dry ice to create a deep freezer right below the battery to *hopefully* cool it down, but not too much. :shock:
Monitor the experiment the whole night, battery temperature, etc. Then when it finally gets close to the target temperature, just watch LeafSpy to see when some "extra" power usage kicks in or maybe a light on the dash will come on if the Leaf is off, I'm not really sure what to expect at this point... :?
If anyone sees an issue with my experiment setup or has some better suggestions, I'm open to "cheap" options. :mrgreen: