Charging In Heat

[ToddS]

I'm still learning, so apologize if previously covered (I searched the topic), but does charging cause extra cooling of the batteries to occur?

Reason I ask is I'm 110 charging in the Florida sun. I can hear the cooling fans on. And I am not really adding mileage to the batteries, and even losing some during the hotest part of day. I do have the overheat cabin cooling on, so perhaps that is causing some. But I am wondering if it is better to just not charge at all so the battery cooling fans don't kick on as often.

I am not sure if I am describing my question well, but I think maybe charging causes the battery cooling fans to kick on more often?

 

[BerTX]

I'm still learning, so apologize if previously covered (I searched the topic), but does charging cause extra cooling of the batteries to occur?

Reason I ask is I'm 110 charging in the Florida sun. I can hear the cooling fans on. And I am not really adding mileage to the batteries, and even losing some during the hotest part of day. I do have the overheat cabin cooling on, so perhaps that is causing some. But I am wondering if it is better to just not charge at all so the battery cooling fans don't kick on as often.

I am not sure if I am describing my question well, but I think maybe charging causes the battery cooling fans to kick on more often?

I'm guessing it is climate control that is using up your juice.

Obviously parking in the shade will help, if you can do that. Turn off the climate control -- every time you open the door it will come on and that takes up much or all of your slow charge amount. Open the windows if you can, or at the very least vent the roof if you can.

The batteries won't need much cooling if charging at that rate. It won't take any time at all to get to 105 inside if sitting in the sun, but the temperature is less than that outside.

 

[Rocky_H]

First off, it might be related to that setting that prevents cabin temperature from getting too hot. So it might be cooling from that anyway.

But the other thing that might be is this. The 120V charging itself won't be generating much heat at all, but just the fact of it being plugged in may be doing this. It seems that there are may be two levels of what battery temperature the car likes to get to. The car will do cooling if it needs to protect from really bad conditions whether plugged in or not, to keep it away from dangerous/damaging territory. But there also seems to be a "nice to have" level, where it will turn on cooling a bit more if it gets plugged into shore power to run the climate control, rather than running down your battery.

I have seen this in summers where our car sits out in the sun in the parking lot all day over 100 degrees. We drive home (about 2 miles) and pull into the garage. When we get out of the car, it may or may not be running the cooling system after we have gotten out and closed the doors. But if it is not, and I get the power cord and plug it in, it does usually spin up the cooling system and run it for a little while once it has access to that outside power source.

So when it is really cold or really hot, I do try to remember to plug it in when I get home so it can do a bit more of that heating or cooling to get the battery into that ideal temperature range it would like to do.

 

[FlyF4]

I'm guessing it is climate control that is using up your juice.

Obviously parking in the shade will help, if you can do that. Turn off the climate control -- every time you open the door it will come on and that takes up much or all of your slow charge amount. Open the windows if you can, or at the very least vent the roof if you can.

The batteries won't need much cooling if charging at that rate. It won't take any time at all to get to 105 inside if sitting in the sun, but the temperature is less than that outside.

BerTX, right on target. I can say for a fact that the majority of Todds loss is the AC, not battery cooling. A/C is going to decrease range by roughly 2-4 miles for an hour of use, assuming AC is on Recirc. Now considering that a 120 V charge is going to average around 12 amps best case, Todds is only going to charge at a rate of about 3-4 miles of range for each hour of charge. Thus, barely maintaining range if even that much. As you say, he should turn off the A/C and auto cabin cooling, and open the windows if possible.

Bottom line, all that charging cost is just going toward keeping the cabin from overheating if the A/C is on.

 

[immolated]

Disable overheat protection