Power drain while idle (Vampire Load)

[WarpedOne]

Al those features should note consume more than about 10W of standby power.
This sums up to about 0,25 kWh/day, about 1,5 kWh/week, 6 kWh/month, one full charge / year.

As it is the car' standby power is around 150W. Ridiculous and embarrassing.

 

[twinklejet]

From energy.gov:

http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/estimating-appliance-and-home-electronic-energy-use

STANDBY POWER SUMMARY TABLE:
We measured the standby power of many, many, products. The table below summarizes those measurements, with the average, minimum, and maximum power levels observed while in standby.

http://standby.lbl.gov/summary-table.html

 

[ElSupreme]

Al those features should note consume more than about 10W of standby power.
This sums up to about 0,25 kWh/day, about 1,5 kWh/week, 6 kWh/month, one full charge / year.

As it is the car' standby power is around 150W. Ridiculous and embarrassing.

My cable box standby power (it doesn't actually turn off) is about 35W continuous. If I actually turn it off it has about a 4 minute boot time. I find that ridiculous and embarrassing.

I fully expect the Tesla to have more stuff to do while 'idle'. All my cable box really should do is monitor a timer and wake itself up on time to record my shows, or download a new guide once a day.

But we also need to remember that the Model S, is monitoring temperature also. So running pumps, fans, and if necessary heat/AC. I know for a fact that my car will run coolant while it is 'off'. So I would expect to see a good bit of vampire loss during extreme temperatures, while parked.

But in my garage I think 35W or less is about what I would deem acceptable.

 

[markb1]

From energy.gov:

http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/estimating-appliance-and-home-electronic-energy-use

STANDBY POWER SUMMARY TABLE:
We measured the standby power of many, many, products. The table below summarizes those measurements, with the average, minimum, and maximum power levels observed while in standby.

http://standby.lbl.gov/summary-table.html

It's kind of outrageous how much energy most consumer electronics use while idle. A good benchmark would be a battery powered device like a cell phone. The iPhone 5 draws about .03 watts in standby, and it's still doing a number of things in that mode. Any device that is using more energy than that, but does less, is using too much energy. (I'm not talking about Model S, here. I don't know what it needs to do while idle.) It seems most consumer electronics manufacturers think that if it plugs in, a watt or two is acceptable when idle.

 

[mitch672]

The car can "wake itself up" once an hour, update its charging status, coolant loop temperatures, etc, then it should go back to sleep.
I don't thinks anyone needs more than that, if they do, they can put in a toggle on the settings page, "stay awake (warning: consumes lots of power)". So you can have a choice, run low power standby or have instant remote access, at a cost. Right now we only have choice 2 (instant access)

 

[montgom626]

I'm really curious. HOW MUCH is acceptable to you guys?

I can tell you that 3 kw a day is not acceptable. My 2012 Volt loses nothing in 24 hours. And the Volt is one complicated car with a 16 kW battery pack. The Tesla Roadster is reported to lose almost nothing in 24 hours.

 

[dpodoll]

At least give us a way to shut all the stuff off when we want to park long term (like at the airport while on vacation)

 

[stopcrazypp]

Tesla said they will address this issue by bringing back sleep mode:

Tesla has in fact been working on “sleep mode” software improvements to reduce vampire losses. Its next major update, due this summer, is expected to cut vampire losses by half.
By the end of the year, they will be virtually eliminated, according to Tesla spokesperson Shanna Hendricks.

http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2013-05/does-tesla-model-s-electric-car-pollute-more-suv

 

[Seegem]

How are you getting percentage soc?

what's the holdup on wifi, anyone heard anything on this front?

also, quick data point. i'm out of town and my car is hanging in the garage, i had to remotely (my brother) install v4.5 so i could use the charge level slider to set the car to ~50%. that's done and i've been tracking the slow charge bleed as it gets down to 50 from its usual/former 93% standard charge, and i thought i'd point out that the drain i'm seeing isn't as bad as what it used to be. i was getting about a mile an hour in overnight drain, so close to 24 miles in a day -- the last three days i've checked it's doing about 8 miles in a 24 hour period. much better. i am in socal, so no temperature challenges to speak of, but even so.. a big difference from what i was seeing a month or two ago. do others have this experience?

View attachment 24065

 

[RichardC]

I am continuing to see average daily losses of approximately 16 km = 3.2 kWHr = 135 Watts average power consumption. Indoor storage at temperatures between 20 to 30 degrees Celsius. No clear difference between versions 4.4 and 4.5.

 

[jerry33]

I am continuing to see average daily losses of approximately 16 km = 3.2 kWHr = 135 Watts average power consumption. Indoor storage at temperatures between 20 to 30 degrees Celsius. No clear difference between versions 4.4 and 4.5.

As far as I know, that's expected. There was no vampire fix in 4.5. I believe the target for a fix is for late summer, although that was said some time ago and hasn't be updated.

 

[Discoducky]

I'm really curious. HOW MUCH is acceptable to you guys?

I think the better question would be "How much is acceptable to the EU?" I wonder if there are regulatory requirements coming for shipping into the EU? Anyone know?

One Watt Initiative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On 6 January 2010, the European Commission's EC Regulation 1275/2008 came into force regulating requirements for standby and "off mode" electric power consumption of electrical and electronic household and office equipment.

 

[ddruz]

I received this email response from Tesla's Walter Franck on July 9 in response to my question about when the vampire load will be fixed. My apology if this is a boilerplate response posted previously.

Regarding the ancillary drain of Model S. Over the course of the next several months the firmware will continue to be updated to reduce the power consumption of the car’s computer systems. We strive to strike the right balance between minimum energy consumption and ability to have the car always ready and responsive. In our next major firmware release coming this summer, the car's computer systems will use half the power they currently do when the car is off. By the end of this year, they will use about 1% of the power that they do now when the car is off. The loss of range when the car is off has absolutely nothing to do with energy needed to heat, cool or otherwise do anything to the battery pack. The battery pack simply doesn't consume energy when the car is off nor do the systems that manage it. All of the "sleep" energy loss is going to onboard computer systems and providing the useful benefit of keeping them ready to start-up at a moment’s notice when the driver returns. As noted above this energy consumption will be almost completely eliminated over the next 2-6 months.

 

[Jeff Miller]

I received this email response from Tesla's Walter Franck on July 9 in response to my question about when the vampire load will be fixed. My apology if this is a boilerplate response posted previously.

Regarding the ancillary drain of Model S. Over the course of the next several months the firmware will continue to be updated to reduce the power consumption of the car’s computer systems. We strive to strike the right balance between minimum energy consumption and ability to have the car always ready and responsive. In our next major firmware release coming this summer, the car's computer systems will use half the power they currently do when the car is off. By the end of this year, they will use about 1% of the power that they do now when the car is off. The loss of range when the car is off has absolutely nothing to do with energy needed to heat, cool or otherwise do anything to the battery pack. The battery pack simply doesn't consume energy when the car is off nor do the systems that manage it. All of the "sleep" energy loss is going to onboard computer systems and providing the useful benefit of keeping them ready to start-up at a moment’s notice when the driver returns. As noted above this energy consumption will be almost completely eliminated over the next 2-6 months.

Thanks for sharing that. It's good to know the fix is still on schedule. It's also good to know that 100% of the drain is from the computer and not from battery management.

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

Is there any product specialist better informed than Walter Franck?! I doubt it. Thanks for sharing, ddruz.

 

[pbrulott]

As a side note, I had an issue with my 12V battery which shutted down most of the onboard always on electronics. 48 hours later when the ranger arrived and was able to get the car up and running, I had lost 4 km of range compared to 30-40km in normal circumstances.

Now let's go to the 12V thread to tell my story

 

[apacheguy]

In our next major firmware release coming this summer

Sure wish they could be somewhat more specific. In "Tesla language" summer could mean anytime between now and early October. Originally, the word was that 5.0 was due out by the end of May.

 

[Merrill]

Anyone here any more on firmware and vampire loss in regards to updates to minimize this problem.

 

[OleJA]

A datapoint from user Andrewas on the norwegian forum:

Range reduced from 365km to 364km overnight from 0:10 - 9:40, so the vampire drain seems to have been reduced a lot on the EU cars
I assume he has FW 5.5 as that seems to be normal on the cars delivered to EU, not reported though.

 

[widodh]

A datapoint from user Andrewas on the norwegian forum:

Range reduced from 365km to 364km overnight from 0:10 - 9:40, so the vampire drain seems to have been reduced a lot on the EU cars
I assume he has FW 5.5 as that seems to be normal on the cars delivered to EU, not reported though.

As far as I know EU cars get 5.0, but I could be confused since the EU user manual assumes 5.0

Anyway, a loss of one KM is about the same as the Roadster.