Charge Scheduling: Use Leaf Carwings or Blink's ?

[JCBNJB]

I do my charging the same way as ttweed, (using the Leaf timers) and it has worked flawlessly for me. Of course, I have a 2nd meter from SDG&E, and schedule all my charging for super off-peak hrs. My Leaf timers are set for 80%, except for Saturday and Sunday, where I have them set to 100%. That's because we usually do more driving on weekends. I've had no problems with my Blink, since I installed the "powerlink" boosters to get a stronger wireless signal to the garage.

I LOVE this car!!

Another vote here just to use the Leaf timer. I do my charging the exact same way as Derkraut… we also have the 2nd SDGE meter and do super-off peak charging. Only difference for us is that we have had some problems with the Blink charger (having to reset it over and over before it will "see" the car and the blue lights come on; they came out and replaced a card, and tomorrow will be replacing the entire unit because the network won't connect )

I don't trust the Blink charger and would rather just rely on it to send power to the Leaf.

[walterbays]

Another vote here just to use the Leaf timer. I do my charging the exact same way as Derkraut… I don't trust the Blink charger and would rather just rely on it to send power to the Leaf.

+1 doing it the same way as ttweed and derkraut

Blink gave me a scare the other day. When I plugged the car in I didn't get the usual "Now Charging" ... "Not Charging" as it offered power the Leaf's timer refused. Instead I got the 503 http error that necessitates power cycling the Blink. Since all the Blink has to do is provide power, and others reported that it does so successfully even when its computer crashes, I decided to leave it and see if it would eventually reset itself. (It did not; I had to unplug it.)

The next morning I logged into Carwings and refreshed car status. It reported that my car was plugged in, not charging, and had 0% charge. Had the malfunctioning Blink sucked my battery dry?! No, the car itself reported normal charge, and a subsequent Carwings refresh reported the same.

[Edit: Never mind below. You can only have one timer per day.]

PS - Many of us wish for a way to charge to 90%. I think you can do it using both Leaf timers. I'll try it out some time, but don't know if I'd do it regularly since it would make it more cumbersome to change settings to charge to 100% on weekends.

Set Timer1 to charge to 80% with start time of 00:10 and end time of 4:20. My car almost always charges in 1-3 hours so that would take it to 83% charge. Then I need 7% more, which at 3.3 kW charging rate into a 24 kWh battery would take about 30 minutes. So set Timer2 to charge to 100% with start time of 4:30 and end time of 5:00.

[davewill]

Well, I decided to take the plunge and switch to all day LEAF timers for 80% weekday/100% weekend and using the Blink timer to schedule Super-off peak charging at home. I've got some good and bad so far. I've got two things on the good side:

1. The Blink clearly counts down to the start time, which I like.
2. I have hopes that those zero length charging events that clutter up the Blink charge history won't be happening anymore since the LEAF doesn't sample the power each time I plug in.

On the bad side:
1. The plug in reminder from Carwings is now useless because the LEAF doesn't think it's plugged in until the Blink timer starts.
2. I can't remotely trigger a charge if I realize I need one. I've done this once; been out with someone, and realized I needed to top off the car parked at the house so I can go somewhere later.

I'm going to give this some more time, as I'm completely on the fence. The two "bad" things are things I've used and like, while the two pros are "nice" at best. The public charging thing has been theoretical to this point, but I agree that the timer override button could be problematic...but if someone unplugs me, they would have to reauthorize a Blink or Chargepoint before charging could resume anyway, wouldn't they? Part of the point is to be able to charge to 80% without reprogramming the LEAF timer, but since I use 100% charging on the weekend, and opportunity charging is also a mostly weekend thing, I would have to do that anyway or find myself topping up to 100% multiple times, something I'd like to avoid. If I were charging at work everyday, it would probably be the deciding factor, though.

[JCBNJB]

Well, I decided to take the plunge and switch to all day LEAF timers for 80% weekday/100% weekend and using the Blink timer to schedule Super-off peak charging at home.
JCB: FWIW, I don't have the Blink programmed for charging time at all, just the Leaf at 80 for weekday and 100 for weekend. I set the Leaf timers to start at 12:10am and end at 5:00am to be sure that I charge only during Super Off-Peak. Then if I need additional charging for some reason, I just go override it in the garage or turn it on remotely from my IPhone. Either way has worked fine if for some reason I wanted 100% on a random day during the week


I've got some good and bad so far. I've got two things on the good side:

1. The Blink clearly counts down to the start time, which I like.
2. I have hopes that those zero length charging events that clutter up the Blink charge history won't be happening anymore since the LEAF doesn't sample the power each time I plug in.
JCB: I have never seen these - maybe it's because I don't rely on the Blink charger for the timing of the charges? Or maybe I just don't know where to look.


On the bad side:
1. The plug in reminder from Carwings is now useless because the LEAF doesn't think it's plugged in until the Blink timer starts.
2. I can't remotely trigger a charge if I realize I need one. I've done this once; been out with someone, and realized I needed to top off the car parked at the house so I can go somewhere later.

JCB: I have remotely triggered the charge from inside my house successfully. I thought I had read somewhere that to trigger the charge remotely from a phone (not sure about a computer) both the car and the remote charging device had to be on the same internet network? At least that's what I have assumed. I've never tried to be somewhere else and trigger the charger to go on at my house. Another experiment in my future!


I'm going to give this some more time, as I'm completely on the fence. The two "bad" things are things I've used and like, while the two pros are "nice" at best. The public charging thing has been theoretical to this point, but I agree that the timer override button could be problematic...but if someone unplugs me, they would have to reauthorize a Blink or Chargepoint before charging could resume anyway, wouldn't they? Part of the point is to be able to charge to 80% without reprogramming the LEAF timer, but since I use 100% charging on the weekend, and opportunity charging is also a mostly weekend thing, I would have to do that anyway or find myself topping up to 100% multiple times, something I'd like to avoid. If I were charging at work everyday, it would probably be the deciding factor, though.

So far I have charged twice in public chargers. Both times I plugged in the charger, nothing happened (watching for the blue blinky lights and the charger to say "Now charging.") I then realized I needed to go into the car to push the override button. Did that and the charger started no problem. I'm not sure this is a big deal to remember for the charging we'd do one the road - just one more button to push and you'd remember it once you saw the car not charging. Or am I missing something?

[davewill]

2. I have hopes that those zero length charging events that clutter up the Blink charge history won't be happening anymore since the LEAF doesn't sample the power each time I plug in.

JCB: I have never seen these - maybe it's because I don't rely on the Blink charger for the timing of the charges? Or maybe I just don't know where to look.

If you look at the Blink after you've plugged in, you'll find that the last charge is always 0 kwh because the LEAF always turns on the power for a couple seconds when plugged in outside it's timer. These also show up as every other entry if you look at your charge history on blinknetwork.com. They're annoying.

Or am I missing something?

Yes, the entire rest of the thread. We have been discussing the pros and cons of using the LEAF's vs the Blink's timers and how that affects public charging to 80% and the possibility of someone messing with the J1772 plug. If you use timer override it's always to 100% and if there's an interruption, the charge won't restart, although you would get a notification, and could possibly take action...

I've been using the LEAF's timers all along in much the same way you do and decided to try the Blink's to see whether I liked it.

[rickbecker]

I always use LEAF's timers set to 80% and super-off peak time of midnight to 5 AM. My recent SDG&E bill showed some charging at other times...what's up with that...my first bill showed all super-off peak. I checked the timing of charges on the blink web site and it showed that recent charging always starts at 3AM...not midnight as directed by LEAF. Many of these charges also went beyond the LEAF stop time of 5AM.
With the Blink tech on the phone I went through the power cycle to reboot and did a 3 minute test charge. Blink: "If that doesn't solve the problem, call back."

I'll post the results from future charges.

[davewill]

I always use LEAF's timers set to 80% and super-off peak time of midnight to 5 AM. My recent SDG&E bill showed some charging at other times...what's up with that...my first bill showed all super-off peak. I checked the timing of charges on the blink web site and it showed that recent charging always starts at 3AM...not midnight as directed by LEAF. Many of these charges also went beyond the LEAF stop time of 5AM.
With the Blink tech on the phone I went through the power cycle to reboot and did a 3 minute test charge. Blink: "If that doesn't solve the problem, call back."

I'll post the results from future charges.

The charge history on blinknetwork.com seems to be offset 3 hours from PDT. If you subtract three hours from all the times, it should make sense. As far as SDG&E showing non super-off-peak charging, people must be sneaking over and charging when you're not around.

[rickbecker]

I always use LEAF's timers set to 80% and super-off peak time of midnight to 5 AM. My recent SDG&E bill showed some charging at other times...what's up with that...my first bill showed all super-off peak. I checked the timing of charges on the blink web site and it showed that recent charging always starts at 3AM...not midnight as directed by LEAF. Many of these charges also went beyond the LEAF stop time of 5AM.
With the Blink tech on the phone I went through the power cycle to reboot and did a 3 minute test charge. Blink: "If that doesn't solve the problem, call back."

I'll post the results from future charges.

The charge history on blinknetwork.com seems to be offset 3 hours from PDT. If you subtract three hours from all the times, it should make sense. As far as SDG&E showing non super-off-peak charging, people must be sneaking over and charging when you're not around.

I had not noticed the offset. I now see that my first week of charging (4/20 - 4/26) the start time for charging shows 3:59 AM (LEAF did not have DST set) and 3:00 AM thereafter.


That must be my EZ-GO work horse that is grabbing some Blink time when I'm not looking.

[mxp]

If you're doing 100% charging, you should use the Blink scheduling exclusively, especially if you plan on doing any public charging. It would work using the Leaf timer, however you'll have to remember to disable your timers when doing public charging because people will mess with the plug.

I've seen some people set up their Leaf for 80% charging from 4am to 3:55am and then set up their Blink for the actual times they want to charge at home, that should work too.

I think this is the perfect idea for using the Carwings timers in combination with the Blink's timers. I too, want to make sure wherever I am plugged in outside of home, I only want 80% immediate start charging and accounts for situations where if someone unplugs you momentarily, and when plugged back in, will still get the 80% charge criteria, uninterrupted. The manual override switch in the Leaf is a one-shot deal and will not work when someone accidently unplugs you from a public station.

Now, the other thread below suggests preferred times to set on Carwings timers so as to not received error emails:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.p ... r&start=10

Is 5:50am stop through 6:00am start a good set of times to program for Carwings? It sounds like a great set of time inputs to use.