Phantom drain

[m3gt2]

Hi, I've never really looked at my phantom drain as the car was never really parked up long enough to worry. I've not set teslafi to stop polling data through the night as when things are normal the car is used in the day and night. However as it's not doing much at the moment I've had a look and was quite shocked at how much it drains. The car wasn't used on the day I've attached and I don't use sentry. Does this seem normal? Thanks

Oh I should say it's a Model 3 Performance if that makes a difference.

 

[Jason71]

Hi, I've never really looked at my phantom drain as the car was never really parked up long enough to worry. I've not set teslafi to stop polling data through the night as when things are normal the car is used in the day and night. However as it's not doing much at the moment I've had a look and was quite shocked at how much it drains. The car wasn't used on the day I've attached and I don't use sentry. Does this seem normal? Thanks

Oh I should say it's a Model 3 Performance if that makes a difference.

if that's the one day loss 3.83 KW then no thats high. That's about 5%. That is the sort of loss I would expect from a car that is not sleeping. a car that goes to sleep normally 10-15 minutes after you leave it will typically use no more than about 1% per day. If you are using Teslafi that should be able to tell you when it is asleep. It is also may be Teslafi that is the issue. I'm not a user myself but there are several similar threads where recommended settings for Teslafi are discussed to stop it keeping the car awake

 

[MrBadger]

TeslaFi should out of the box, allow the car to sleep after 45 minutes (15 minutes car, 30 minute default TeslaFi polling). It can be tweaked and/or buggered up. As @Jason71 hints at, easiest way you can check the minute status intervals for each period by clicking on the sleep, idle etc icon. By default, right hand columns will tell you if TeslaFi is polling, logger notes can be quite revealing. Polling column seems to be not quite what it seems so don't be driven by that - its rare to see anything in that column.

Something is up with something though, your drain is high if thats what its genuinely reporting.

 

[m3gt2]

Thanks, I've not messed with the settings on teslafi, just had a look and the teslafi sleep mode wasn't enabled so I'll give that a try without messing with anything else and see how it goes

 

[MrBadger]

If the setting below highlighted in red was not checked, then that is probably the source of your problem. As an aside, I thought that it was checked by default so new one on me.

 

[bhanorthy]

Or use TeslaMate which uses the streaming API not polling, eliminating phantom drain completely

 

[Adopado]

Or use TeslaMate which uses the streaming API not polling, eliminating phantom drain completely

That doesn't read quite correctly ... it may eliminate drain caused by Teslafi but it won't "eliminate phantom drain completely". Some degree of drain is a fact of life unfortunately.

 

[m3gt2]

If the setting below highlighted in red was not checked, then that is probably the source of your problem. As an aside, I thought that it was checked by default so new one on me.

View attachment 542642

Thanks, I've enabled it and will see how it goes.

 

[m3gt2]

Or use TeslaMate which uses the streaming API not polling, eliminating phantom drain completely

Thanks for the suggestion but I'd rather stick with teslafi as I don't want to start again and have data mixed between different options.

 

[Fraank]

Thanks for the suggestion but I'd rather stick with teslafi as I don't want to start again and have data mixed between different options.

Teslafi doesn't cause phantom drain in my experience. I currently have both Teslafi AND Teslamate running their polling and my typical day is like below.

You just need to ensure the car isn't woken up once sleeping, for me that means turning my Bluetooth off and don't touch the door handles

 

[m3gt2]

Just to update, it seems that this has sorted the phantom drain out. How do I make sure teslafi doesn't miss the start of my journey now if it's not polling the car? Thanks for everyone's help

 

[m3gt2]

Sorry, another question, is it possible on teslafi to see how much has been lost to phantom drain over the lifetime rather than going in every day to add it up? Cheers

 

[Adopado]

I'm wondering if our terminology could do with refinement? We often refer to "phantom drain" in many cases when the "phantom" element seems to have been eliminated, yet the loss of charge when not driving continues to be lumped under that heading. Some loss of charge when parked has been identified as being from the car's computer, communications and battery maintenance systems remaining active if not "asleep". So it's not phantom any more .. and it's not necessarily indicative of a fault. Our questions mostly seem to boil down to "what's keeping the car awake" at times when I'm expecting the car to be totally dormant. So, we certainly have some charge losses when parked, and sometimes those are higher than expected, but is it "phantom drain" ... probably not!

I am sure that battery and EV systems engineers are continuing to optimise their hardware/software to minimise losses when EVs are not in use but meantime, for me, these losses come under a similar heading to the saying "It's not a bug, it's a feature"!

 

[m3gt2]

I'm wondering if our terminology could do with refinement? We often refer to "phantom drain" in many cases when the "phantom" element seems to have been eliminated, yet the loss of charge when not driving continues to be lumped under that heading. Some loss of charge when parked has been identified as being from the car's computer, communications and battery maintenance systems remaining active if not "asleep". So it's not phantom any more .. and it's not necessarily indicative of a fault. Our questions mostly seem to boil down to "what's keeping the car awake" at times when I'm expecting the car to be totally dormant. So, we certainly have some charge losses when parked, and sometimes those are higher than expected, but is it "phantom drain" ... probably not!

I am sure that battery and EV systems engineers are continuing to optimise their hardware/software to minimise losses when EVs are not in use but meantime, for me, these losses come under a similar heading to the saying "It's not a bug, it's a feature"!

No I know the car will still be pulling from the batteries whilst parked but using around 4kW a day seemed excessive, my car wasn't sleeping at all, it is now I've enabled it on teslafi But I was just trying to get an idea as to how much has been wasted over the time I've had the vehicle. I know it won't be 100% accurate but would give me a rough approximation.

 

[phillcom3]

Teslafi doesn't cause phantom drain in my experience. I currently have both Teslafi AND Teslamate running their polling and my typical day is like below.

You just need to ensure the car isn't woken up once sleeping, for me that means turning my Bluetooth off and don't touch the door handles

View attachment 542688

wow those are a dream. mine is forever like 10 times a day coming on than off even after seeing the settings.

 

[MrBadger]

I suspect something else is going on to get 0 drain in 24 hours. We recently went 4 days with 0 reported drain - reason is, car was out of normal radio contact and TeslaFi couldn't see what was going on to report.

 

[Adopado]

I suspect something else is going on to get 0 drain in 24 hours. We recently went 4 days with 0 reported drain - reason is, car was out of normal radio contact and TeslaFi couldn't see what was going on to report.

Do you mean that the car actually had some drain but Teslafi wasn't recording it? I have read occasional posts by people who have reported surprisingly low levels of drain but I assumed they had actually looked at the car to see if it was really true!

 

[MrBadger]

Yes, sort of, although the 'drain' is not necessarily lost but can seem to be associated to something else, possibly a drive or a message.

There is a setting in TeslaFi that reports an offline car as sleeping - 'Show offline as asleep'. But I have recently witnessed this behaviour without this setting being enabled.

My car recently went around 4 1/2 days 'sleeping' as reported in TeslaFi. But I know for sure, it wasn't asleep. It was being worked on at a service centre, so spend that time either in their workshop and/or mobile access disabled/offline. The range loss got rolled into a simple 'A drive may have occured during this idle session. The range loss and kWh loss is not included in the daily summary.' message, or, on another occasion, a 'sleep session' of 23 minutes that consumed ~7kWh battery. The reality was that it was actually in service mode for ~7 hours prior to that, which was the most likely period for much of the 7kWh.

TeslaFi was simply blind to these sleep/idle/charge periods and rolled them into a single event, in our case a 4-1/2 day sleep. It did however report the ~7kWh/30 mile phantom drain, approx 10% - actual battery loss, approx 13%, so not necessarily all accounted for and possibly confused even more by the 4-1/2 days including an unreported small charge.

I wonder if a car out of lte/wifi connectivity may behave the same?

 

[Fraank]

wow those are a dream. mine is forever like 10 times a day coming on than off even after seeing the settings.

May just be your phone Bluetooth talking to the car? Try disabling Bluetooth on any connected devices. I use default Teslafi sleeps settings.

I suspect something else is going on to get 0 drain in 24 hours. We recently went 4 days with 0 reported drain - reason is, car was out of normal radio contact and TeslaFi couldn't see what was going on to report.

When the car is asleep Teslafi can't see battery charge, just the vehicle sleep state. This means when you wake the car up you'll then see what the drain was for the period. For me it's less than 0.25 miles a day, and that obviously includes the power used to wake the car. My car has LTE and WiFi no problem!

If Bluetooth is enabled on my phone the car ends up with a few hours of non-sleep a day, that obviously bumps up the drain.

Funny about your service "black hole". The Teslafi algo was fooled.

 

[m3gt2]

May just be your phone Bluetooth talking to the car? Try disabling Bluetooth on any connected devices. I use default Teslafi sleeps settings.


When the car is asleep Teslafi can't see battery charge, just the vehicle sleep state. This means when you wake the car up you'll then see what the drain was for the period. For me it's less than 0.25 miles a day, and that obviously includes the power used to wake the car. My car has LTE and WiFi no problem!

If Bluetooth is enabled on my phone the car ends up with a few hours of non-sleep a day, that obviously bumps up the drain.

Funny about your service "black hole". The Teslafi algo was fooled.

So if the cars charging it won't be logged if the car is sleeping at all or will the charge log once it's woke?