OBD II Data for HVB

[Hybridbear]

Did the car charge at all or just running the fan?

No charging, just fan. This morning the HVB temp is 87.8. The fan was not running until I woke up the car to check the HVB. Now the fan is running with the car off. I'm unplugging the Energi now to charge the Focus. The Focus HVB was 97 when we got home last night & now it's down to 84 after sitting overnight.

[rbort]

Ok so let me understand this:

 

You got home yesterday with the Fusion and plugged it in.  The temp went from 89 to 86 after 7 hours fan only but this morning after the fan was already stopped the battery temp was back up to 87.8 presumably because the battery charged in the window later at night?

 

The Focus got home last night at 97 degrees and sat unplugged no fan and it just cooled naturally to 84 by itself?

 

-=>Raja.

Edited June 21, 2015 at 03:14 PM by rbort

[Hybridbear]

Ok so let me understand this:

 

You got home yesterday with the Fusion and plugged it in. The temp went from 89 to 86 after 7 hours fan only but this morning after the fan was already stopped the battery temp was back up to 87.8 presumably because the battery charged in the window later at night?

 

The Focus got home last night at 97 degrees and sat unplugged no fan and it just cooled naturally to 84 by itself?

 

-=>Raja.

Correct. I charged the Focus for 1 hr 36 mins this morning & the HVB temp rose from 84 to 99. The Focus has liquid cooling which it uses to cool the power electronics & the SOBDM and AC/DC converter while charging. It can also cool the HVB this way. The Focus doesn't cool the HVB though until its temp is a minimum of 98 F. This morning when I unplugged the TMS was not cooling the HVB. My entire drive this morning was with the HVB at 99 F and the car did not try to cool the HVB. After sitting in the sun for a few hrs the HVB temp had dropped to 95 F and again the car did not attempt to cool it while driving. When plugged in, waiting to charge after I got home the car is not pulling any power from the EVSE. It is not cooling the HVB or charging the 12V battery.

 

The ambient temp here is currently in the low 80s.

Edited June 21, 2015 at 05:04 PM by Hybridbear

[rbort]

Interesting.  Larry says charging the battery in the Fusion the temp only rises like a couple of degrees (did he say 2 or 4 degrees, I forgot exactly - you probably know as well).  The Focus the rise is bigger probably because of the higher charge rate, its double that of the Fusion right?

 

OK, so as far as letting the battery sit or using the fan to cool it, sounds like its not a very worthy ordeal if the battery temp is not really high, i.e. from small trips here and there.  The plugging in and letting it cool with the fan may only be fruitful if you have driven say at least 2 full charges in a day, like for me drive to Cambridge 29 miles, recharge there back to 100% and drive home 29 miles.  At that point the battery is probably well heated, whereas drive to go out to eat or go to the grocery store like 8 or 3 miles one way is probably not going to make any difference plugging the car in to cool the HVB.

 

Do you agree?

 

-=>Raja.

Edited June 21, 2015 at 05:12 PM by rbort

[Hybridbear]

Interesting.  Larry says charging the battery in the Fusion the temp only rises like a couple of degrees (did he say 2 or 4 degrees, I forgot exactly - you probably know as well).  The Focus the rise is bigger probably because of the higher charge rate, its double that of the Fusion right?

 

OK, so as far as letting the battery sit or using the fan to cool it, sounds like its not a very worthy ordeal if the battery temp is not really high, i.e. from small trips here and there.  The plugging in and letting it cool with the fan may only be fruitful if you have driven say at least 2 full charges in a day, like for me drive to Cambridge 29 miles, recharge there back to 100% and drive home 29 miles.  At that point the battery is probably well heated, whereas drive to go out to eat or go to the grocery store like 8 or 3 miles one way is probably not going to make any difference plugging the car in to cool the HVB.

 

Do you agree?

 

-=>Raja.

I think it's always beneficial to allow the car to run the fan to cool the HVB if it feels it is necessary. Plugging in also allows the car to charge the 12V battery. Since we have two EVs I can really see the effect on 12V battery SOC from not plugging in every day. I'd rather plug in the car whenever possible so that the car can charge the 12V battery and cool the HVB as it sees fit. Our garage is warmer than someone who lives in a house since it's typically in the mid 70s underground in the summer even when it drops into the 50s overnight. It's also cooler during the day because it's still in the mid 70s even though outside it might be in the mid 80s or low 90s.

[larryh]

Value charging is simply unpredictable.  I experimented with the GO times for Monday morning. 

 

I set the GO time for 5:30 am.  It begins charging immediately when I plug in this afternoon.  It shows the charge time from 5:11 pm to 4:55 am in the morning.  5:11 pm is the current time.  I assume that it plans to finish at 4:55 am in the morning.  It says it will take 2.5 hours to charge. 

 

So I decide to make the GO Time later.  I unplug the car, change the GO time to 11:30 am, and then plug the charger back in.  It now states it will charge from 3:00 am to 5:30 am and is waiting until then to charge.

 

Since it will finish by 5:30 am, I decide to change the GO time to 6:30 am.  It begins to charge immediately.

 

I change the GO time to be sooner to 6:10 am.  It then shows that will charge from 3:00 am to 5:30 am and is waiting until then to charge.

 

I change it again to a later time and it starts charging immediately.   I let it charge.  It charges to a display SOC of 10%.

 

Value charge is simply unpredictable if it will charge immediately or not.  In addition, it does not recognize the charge window from 12:00 am to 3:00 am as the next least cost window, and refuses to schedule charging during that time when I use the 240 V charger.  It did schedule charging during that time when I used the 120 V charger. 

 

It doesn't matter in any case.  I have a timer connected to the charger to control when the car actually charges.  I simply use Value Charging as a backup in case the power goes out and the timer isn't working properly. 

 

I prefer having the car charge immediately when I plug in when the SOC is low.   If the SOC should fall too low, it could damage the HVB. 

Edited June 22, 2015 at 12:32 AM by larryh

[Hybridbear]

Value charge is simply unpredictable if it will charge immediately or not.  In addition, it does not recognize the charge window from 12:00 am to 3:00 am as the next least cost window, and refuses to schedule charging during that time when I use the 240 V charger.  It did schedule charging during that time when I used the 120 V charger. 

The car does seem to struggle with the window that starts at midnight. For this reason I have the window starting at midnight set to be a higher cost window.

[larryh]

I changed the GO time to 7:05 am.  I unplugged the charger and plugged it back in.  It started charging again.  It says it will finish at 5:35 am.  It predicts it will take 2.5 hours to charge the car.  So from 3:00 am to 5:35 am sounds about correct.  It charged the car to 7.5% displayed SOC.   The displayed SOC, which was previously 10%, was now down to 1% when charging started (I did have the car running for a little while to draw down the HVB SOC).  But note the start time didn't make sense.  It was not the current time, but a time about an hour ago. 

Edited June 22, 2015 at 12:35 AM by larryh

[larryh]

According to the charge log, the first time the car charged from 5:52 pm to 6:01 pm for 9 minutes to 10% displayed SOC.  The second time it charged from 7:18 pm to 7:24 pm for 6 minutes to 8% SOC.  So it didn't charge very long either time. 

[rbort]

Yes Larry, something is messed up with the value charging in conjunction with the go times you are using.  Maybe you ought to play again with it but delete the go times this time around and see if you can make any sense of how its working for you.  Mine seems to behave as I expect with the 120v charger that I'm using.  I don't use any go times.  I will say though the hours that show up on the leaf screen can be somewhat confusing and/or better said incorrect, especially if you plug and unplug the car and change the windows, in other words they don't update properly after a change.

 

Clearly the car is not charging your battery because its low, it has something to do with the car's confusion about when its going to finish the charge and when you need the car (go time).

 

-=>Raja.

Edited June 22, 2015 at 02:42 AM by rbort

[larryh]

I cannot conclude anything from these results.  I would need to know how Ford intended for it to work.  It seems suspect that I was unable to get it to charge from 12:00 am to 3:00 pm when I moved the Go time to an earlier time so it would be unable to finish charging unless it started prior to 3:00 am.   Ford states that the car may charge the HVB when the SOC is low and it does do so, so it may simply be charging the HVB because the SOC is low.    I cannot rule that out.  Or it may be software errors.  I would have to experiment with GO times when the SOC is not low to see if it makes any difference in how Value Charging works.   In any case, I use a timer connected to the charger to prevent the car from charging during the real peak hours on weekdays from 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm.

Edited June 22, 2015 at 09:49 AM by larryh

[Hybridbear]

I cannot conclude anything from these results.  I would need to know how Ford intended for it to work.  It seems suspect that I was unable to get it to charge from 12:00 am to 3:00 pm when I moved the Go time to an earlier time so it would be unable to finish charging unless it started prior to 3:00 am.   Ford states that the car may charge the HVB when the SOC is low and it does do so, so it may simply be charging the HVB because the SOC is low.    I cannot rule that out.  Or it may be software errors.  I would have to experiment with GO times when the SOC is not low to see if it makes any difference in how Value Charging works.   In any case, I use a timer connected to the charger to prevent the car from charging during the real peak hours on weekdays from 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm.

Have you considered deleting all Go Times and adding them back in? The Focus recently started doing something odd when we changed our Go Times from using HVAC to no HVAC and I had to delete all Go Times to get it to stop acting strange. It would run the radiator fan at high speed even though we weren't asking for any heating or cooling. The cabin of the car would be warm but not have any air coming out of the vents. Clearing all Go Times got it to go back to normal behavior.

[rbort]

Larry,

 

Sounds like you're suffering with the value charge/go time thing, having to use a separate timer on the car to prevent it from charging right away which sort of defeats Bear's cooling strategy.  Something certainly doesn't seem to be working right for you, might be a good idea as bear suggested to delete everything and start over.  I know you need to go to work during the week so maybe Friday night would be a good time to experiment.

 

I would delete everything at first, go times and value charge profiles,

Then I would create a value charge profile starting at 3am (forget about the midnight to 3am its more expensive anyways)

See if that works OK on its own to start charging at 3am Saturday morning.

Then I would add Saturday a go time for Sunday morning, drive the car Saturday and see what happens when you plug it in Saturday afternoon.

 

Hopefully after this you'll have something working for you as good as Bear's setup and you'll understand more how its working once you break it down into pieces.  Its the engineering way.   ;)

 

-=>Raja.

[larryh]

I don't want the car to use any electricity during peak hours. When Value Charging is enabled, the car consumes about 60 watts of power while waiting to charge. That is unacceptable during peak hours. Electricity costs $0.38 / kWh during peak hours. If it consumed 60 watts of power during peak hours, the cost for that electricity would exceed my savings and there would be no point to signing up for cheaper electric rates with the power company for EV charging. You can see one of my many complaints against Value Charging here: http://www.fordfusionenergiforum.com/topic/821-leave-it-plugged-in/?p=4422. I have also complained to Ford directly about how it works.

 

If I plugged in the car when I get home from work, Value Charging would be consuming 60 watts of electricity for 5 hours during peak hours. That is unacceptable. I don't want to have to get up in the middle of the night to plug in the car after peak hours, so I use the timer.

 

I don't really use Value Charging. The charger is disabled when I arrive home from work until well after peak hours. Value Charging is only a backup if the electricity goes out and the timer is set incorrectly.

 

The only time I override the timer is on Sunday afternoon and let Value Charging do its thing. There are no peak electric rates during the weekend. It does what I want on Sunday afternoon. The HVB is depleted when I arrive home and I let it charge the HVB immediately up to whatever it wants (10-40%). It then finishes charging on Monday morning.

 

Value charge has always been charging the HVB immediately after plugging in (for various reasons known only to Ford) from day 1. Not every time, but many times. What I have been posting regarding value charging immediately charging the car after plugging in are not isolated incidences. It has consistently done that since I have owned the car. That's simply the way value charging works and why I use a timer instead.

Edited June 23, 2015 at 11:38 AM by larryh

[rbort]

Is there any way you can get yourself solar panels and be done with 38 cents a kwh?

 

Cost up front but you'll get all your money back and then some in a few years.

 

-=>Raja.

[larryh]

All my electricity comes from wind farms.  My total electric bill each month for my house is between $40 and $50.  The cost for charging the car is $15/month.  It don't use enough electricity to make solar panels worthwhile.  I will be moving in about three years.   I'll leave electricity generation to the power companies.   I never pay $0.38/kWh since I don't ever charge the car during peak hours.  It is about $0.06/kWh during off peak hours when I charge.

Edited June 23, 2015 at 11:05 PM by larryh

[larryh]

This is an image of the trunk with the foam insert containing the charger and the tire pump removed.  You can see a long black tube that runs the length of the trunk in the middle.  There is a shorter black tube immediately to the left.  There are fans at the top of each of the tubes. 

 

The long tube draws in air from the outside or from the trunk, depending on whether the inlet door is open or closed, and circulates the air through the HVB.  The motor controlling the inlet door is at the bottom of the tube.  There are holes on the bottom left side of the tube so that it can draw in air from the trunk.  If the inlet door is open, those holes are blocked and the car draws in air from the outside through a vent right below the bottom of the tube.  If the inlet door is closed, the vent to the outside is closed and the fans draws in air from the trunk through the holes on the bottom left side of the tube.  I have only observed the inlet door to be fully open or fully closed and not in an intermediate state in which it draws air from both the trunk and outside.

 

The short tube draws in air from the car's cabin and blows it out through the large opening at the bottom of the tube into the trunk.  

 

What I have observed so far while the car is waiting to charge using value charge is that the car draws in air from the trunk via the longer tube and circulates that air through the HVB.  The inlet door is closed.  The fan in the short tube that draws in interior air from the cabin is off.  So it appears to be circulating warm air in the trunk through the HVB.

 

When charging, I observe that the inlet door is open and the car is circulating outside air through the HVB via the long tube.   The fan that draws in air from the car's interior may be on or off. 

 

When the car was running this morning, it was circulating outside air through the HVB via the long tube.  In addition, the fan in the short tube that draws in interior air from the cabin was on, drawing cabin air into the trunk.

 

ForScan  seems to show the speed of both of the fans.  The BECM provides the fan speed of the fan for the short tube that draws in air from the car's cabin and a count to indicate whether the inlet door is open or closed.  The SOBDM provides the fan speed of the fan for the long tube that draws in outside air or air from the trunk. 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 24, 2015 at 10:14 AM by larryh

[larryh]

I observed the HVB temperature for two 6 hour periods. On Sunday, the car was plugged in and value charge was enabled. The car was waiting to charge. Yesterday, the car was unplugged. The results are summarized in the table below. The temperature ranges are the temperature at the beginning and end of the 6 hour interval.

Value
Charge HVB Temp     Outside Temp  Inside Car Temp  Trunk Temp
Yes    98.6 – 93.2  86.0 – 75.2   95.0 – 86.0      100.4 – 89.6
No     96.8 – 91.4  80.6 – 78.8   93.2 – 86.0      98.6 – 89.6

For both cases, the HVB temperature fell 5.4 F. The temperature ranges were similar for both cases. For the entire time the car was waiting to Charge on Sunday, the HVB fan was recirculating air inside the trunk running at low speed (1750 rpm). The other fan that draws interior air from the car, remained off. The car did not appear to make a serious attempt to cool that HVB when using value charge. The fan is apparently only running to cool the electronics that were active during value charge. Maybe the results would be different if the HVB temperature were significantly higher, i.e. much greater than 100 F?

Edited June 24, 2015 at 09:33 PM by larryh

[rbort]

Very interesting, so plugging in to value charge and "cool  the battery" did not accomplish a whole heck of a lot.

 

I like the idea of waiting to charge until the morning, but then value  charge is going to draw 60 watts on average for 12 hours or so if I set the charging to start at 8am for example.  Might be most "cost effective" to just plug it in myself in the morning or have the wife do it as she gets up early before me.  Might make more sense to do the value charge thing when "on the road" so when I wake up at the hotel the car is ready but charged as late as possible.

 

I would be interested to see the results when you HVB is say 105 degrees, see if the fans make any more of a difference.

 

-=>Raja.

Edited June 25, 2015 at 02:52 AM by rbort

[rbort]

OH, try to open the trunk also next time, the HVB might cool faster than running the fans.  You may have to take a bulb out if it doesn't go out on its own.

 

-=>Raja.

[larryh]

When charging, if the HVB temperature is less than 88 F, the HVB seems to warm up. If the HVB temperature is greater than 95 F, it cools down. When it is in the upper 80's/low 90's, the HVB temperature does not vary much while charging. The steady state temperature when charging the HVB using a 240 V charger is around 90 F when the outside temperature is in the 70s.

 

Note that the BECM controls the door that allows the fans to draw in outside air. It also controls the fan that draws in air from inside the passenger compartment. The BECM is off when value charge is waiting to charge. Only SOBDM is active. SOBDM controls the fan that draws in air from the trunk through the HVB and vents it to the car's interior behind the rear seat. Since the BECM is off, little fresh air enters the trunk. The SOBDM fan can only circulate the existing warm air. Hence, value charging doesn't cool the HVB much. It might help to leave the windows open to vent the warm air from the car, but the fan seems to only run at low speed.

Edited June 25, 2015 at 12:14 PM by larryh

[rbort]

So basically charging heats up the battery until a certain threshold where the fan can hold the temp from rising further.  If temp is too high it fan is able to cool the battery to a certain point where charging stops any further drops.

 

Maybe over the weekend you can run some tests to see if 120v charging makes a difference in the steady state temp of the battery, while hopefully the outside temp is in the 70's as you stated above.  I'd be interested to know what's the difference because cooling is the same but slower charging 1/3 the rate of 240 should technically generate less heat.  You may find under similar tests that the steady state temp of the battery might be 86 instead of 90 if the tests are done accurately.

 

-=>Raja.

[Hybridbear]

Today we did a 90 mile one way trip. MFM shows 5.8 kWh used. The HVB temp rose from 82.4 to 93.2. The ETE started at about 7.14 and ended at about 1.30 kWh. The car sat for a short while before I could get a space at the hotel where we could plug in. When I started the car after it had sat for about 2 hours the ETE was 0.8 kWh. The ICE started immediately. I had to drive about 0.5 miles to get to a space with an outlet in another parking lot and I got under 5 MPGe. The ICE burned 0.05 gallons of gas and raised the ETE back to about 1.3 kWh. The ICE did not turn off until I turned off the car.

[larryh]

That's why I try to avoid Hybrid Mode until the end of a trip and why I immediately charge the HVB at the end of trip after entering Hybrid Mode.  The BECM doesn't always correctly estimate the SOC/ETE for the HVB.  It can only accurately measures the SOC/ETE of the HVB after it has rested for a couple of hours.  If the SOC falls too low, the HVB will be damaged. 

 

At the end of a trip last week, I saw the HVB voltage down to 283 V with no load.  The BECM estimated the SOC to be 15.2%.  To determine the correct SOC, I would have to let the battery rest for a couple of hours and then measure the voltage.  But if the rest voltage were really 283 V, the SOC would be -8.5%!   I didn't wait two hours to see what the true SOC was.  I charged the car right after the trip.   The BECM isn't always all that accurate. 

Edited June 25, 2015 at 09:50 PM by larryh

[Hybridbear]

That's why I try to avoid Hybrid Mode until the end of a trip and why I immediately charge the HVB at the end of trip after entering Hybrid Mode. The BECM doesn't always correctly estimate the SOC/ETE for the HVB. It can only accurately measures the SOC/ETE of the HVB after it has rested for a couple of hours. If the SOC falls too low, the HVB will be damaged.

 

At the end of a trip last week, I saw the HVB voltage down to 283 V with no load. The BECM estimated the SOC to be 15.2%. To determine the correct SOC, I would have to let the battery rest for a couple of hours and then measure the voltage. But if the rest voltage were really 283 V, the SOC would be -8.5%! I didn't wait two hours to see what the true SOC was. I charged the car right after the trip. The BECM isn't always all that accurate.

 

I wanted to plug in immediately, but there was no opportunity, unfortunately. The parking ramp spots that have outlets were all taken, as were the spots in the Hilton parking lot with outlets...

 

We did not go into hybrid mode until about 1/8 mile before exiting the freeway. After exiting the freeway I was able to go back into EV Now. We drove through the city to the hotel without the ICE coming on again. We entered hybrid mode with 1.520 kWh showing as the ETE.

 

The reason why it likely charges immediately and overrides the value charge settings at these times is because the car figures out that the real SOC is much lower, like I experienced today. Perhaps once connected to a charger the BECM can more accurately calculate the SOC & ETE.

 

I did not expect to be unable to plug in immediately, or else I would have saved more energy in the HVB. On future trips to Rochester I will save more HVB energy in case this happens.

 

I'll carefully watch my ETE on upcoming charges to see if anything changes in terms of HVB behavior. I hope no damage was done!

Edited June 25, 2015 at 10:53 PM by Hybridbear