Tezlab & Phantom Drain

[Bootneckshuffl]

Hi all

Know there’s a plethora of advice and tech know how on here, so here it goes

I downloaded Tezlab a week ago, just to give it a whirl. It’s ok I guess, nowhere hear the detail of TeslaFi etc.

Anyhoo, just had my first battery report and all my trips have been round the doors but the report is stating 41% phantom drain over a week.

Now, I know sentry doesn’t use that much, a kW per 24 hours I believe. Yes I pre heat the car on a morning, for 20 mins, would this contribute to 41% phantom drain?

I also have the watch app for Tesla but I have the settings changed to only wake the car every 3 hours and only from 7am to 8pm. Again, surely this wouldn’t massively contribute to drain of that size?

Hoping some of you can advise.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

My recommendation is just delete the app and enjoy the car. In fact delete all of them except the Tesla one. They all try to sound knowledgeable using the same API and the same limited set of information yet want to charge you for the privilege, and if they don't want to charge you, what the hell are they doing with your details .

If you want more info then teslamate will do what teslafi does only more securely and is free (of might cost you a bit of time and a few quid to set up so being a biy geeky does help) and if you want more control from your iphone then look at siri and apple shortcuts (google and you can even find simple shortcut shares which help do the tricky bit of getting your token without selling your soul and lets you do all the basic controls.

 

[Godsense]

Any time the car is awake it draws power, around 200/300watts. So sentry mode on actually uses quite alot of power as the car is awake.

Even with sentry off the more you wake the car, app, watch etc the more vampire drain. Best just to let the car go to sleep unless you really need updates on your watch all the time.

Not sure how Tezlabs specifically records it but if you preheat the battery heater also runs in this weather and can draw upto 7kwh. Icon can be seen on climate screen in app. ( for that of you have atleast the pre Christmas update)

 

[GRiLLA]

Hi all

Know there’s a plethora of advice and tech know how on here, so here it goes

I downloaded Tezlab a week ago, just to give it a whirl. It’s ok I guess, nowhere hear the detail of TeslaFi etc.

Anyhoo, just had my first battery report and all my trips have been round the doors but the report is stating 41% phantom drain over a week.

Now, I know sentry doesn’t use that much, a kW per 24 hours I believe. Yes I pre heat the car on a morning, for 20 mins, would this contribute to 41% phantom drain?

I also have the watch app for Tesla but I have the settings changed to only wake the car every 3 hours and only from 7am to 8pm. Again, surely this wouldn’t massively contribute to drain of that size?

Hoping some of you can advise.

Sentry mode is more like 1KWH per 4 hours, so 6KWH a day, it'll account for your drain.

 

[Bootneckshuffl]

Sentry mode is more like 1KWH per 4 hours, so 6KWH a day, it'll account for your drain.

Bjorn Nyland has a video on YouTube saying it’s 1.24kw over 24 hours

Maybe I’m reading it wrong

Tesla Sentry Mode Energy Consumption Test By Bjørn Nyland: Video

 

[MrBadger]

Last I noticed, sentry consumes around 200-300W. Simple maths tells you it isn't going to be 1.24kW/h over 24 hours.

A single well behaved app shouldn't add significant amount to battery drain. Due to interactions between apps polling on the sleep cycle, all bets are off if using more than one app (excluding the Tesla App).

 

[GRiLLA]

Bjorn Nyland has a video on YouTube saying it’s 1.24kw over 24 hours

Maybe I’m reading it wrong

Tesla Sentry Mode Energy Consumption Test By Bjørn Nyland: Video

A few things are being combined there, which Bjorn explains in the video but the article (not by Bjorn) doesn't mention, and it's really fundamentally incorrect because of that.

Typically your car will sleep after about 15 minutes if it's not charging, sentry mode, or some remote API process waking the car up. In this mode the car has powered down the computer, and there's effectively no drain. Bjorn measures it as 25W in the second half of the video, so in 24hrs you could lose 0.6KWH.

Sentry mode prevents the computer sleeping, and powers up the cameras. Bjorn is measuring that as 315W, so in 24hrs so 7.5KWH.

For reasons that aren't that realistic they are comparing it to a scenario where they keep the computer on, I think Bjorn mentions that this was due to leaving it plugged in but preventing charging, I'm not sure if that will work anymore. Certainly some apps can stop the car sleeping by querying it regularly. I don't know Tezlab, but TeslaFi has configuration to prevent polling for long enough after the car is idle to allow the car to sleep, I don't know if your app has the same.

So make of it what you will, if you leave sentry mode off, and don't have an app keeping your car awake it should sleep, and there will be tiny power loss. Power up the computer and you'll lose about a mile an hour.

I disable Sentry at home, there's an option in the car to do that, and instead I have a Ring Camera monitoring the drive. When I park somewhere else Sentry is on. I consider the drain if I'll be away from a charger for long vs risk.

 

[Bootneckshuffl]

Last I noticed, sentry consumes around 200-300W. Simple maths tells you it isn't going to be 1.24kW/h over 24 hours.

A single well behaved app shouldn't add significant amount to battery drain. Due to interactions between apps polling on the sleep cycle, all bets are off if using more than one app (excluding the Tesla App).

Simply passing on what Nyland stated mate. It’s not my findings.

 

[Bootneckshuffl]

A few things are being combined there, which Bjorn explains in the video but the article (not by Bjorn) doesn't mention, and it's really fundamentally incorrect because of that.

Typically your car will sleep after about 15 minutes if it's not charging, sentry mode, or some remote API process waking the car up. In this mode the car has powered down the computer, and there's effectively no drain. Bjorn measures it as 25W in the second half of the video, so in 24hrs you could lose 0.6KWH.

Sentry mode prevents the computer sleeping, and powers up the cameras. Bjorn is measuring that as 315W, so in 24hrs so 7.5KWH.

For reasons that aren't that realistic they are comparing it to a scenario where they keep the computer on, I think Bjorn mentions that this was due to leaving it plugged in but preventing charging, I'm not sure if that will work anymore. Certainly some apps can stop the car sleeping by querying it regularly. I don't know Tezlab, but TeslaFi has configuration to prevent polling for long enough after the car is idle to allow the car to sleep, I don't know if your app has the same.

So make of it what you will, if you leave sentry mode off, and don't have an app keeping your car awake it should sleep, and there will be tiny power loss. Power up the computer and you'll lose about a mile an hour.

I disable Sentry at home, there's an option in the car to do that, and instead I have a Ring Camera monitoring the drive. When I park somewhere else Sentry is on. I consider the drain if I'll be away from a charger for long vs risk.

Thanks for this

Yeh, I have sentry disabled at home too, due to the fact the car is covered by CCTV.

Sentry wise, over the last week, it’s activated when we’re out and about, so I’d say ball park figure over the week, sentry has been activated for ball park 8 hours.

I’ve chinned Tezlab off now too.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

Thanks for this

Yeh, I have sentry disabled at home too, due to the fact the car is covered by CCTV.

Sentry wise, over the last week, it’s activated when we’re out and about, so I’d say ball park figure over the week, sentry has been activated for ball park 8 hours.

I’ve chinned Tezlab off now too.

You disagree with a comment saying delete the app and then say you have deleted it yourself?

Other things missing from the logic, the calculations for consumption while driving only include the energy used once you're in the car. If you preheat remotely then where does that energy get recorded? If the car heats from the mains directly and not from the battery does that get recorded as consumption or not? That could easily appear as vampire drain as its not attached to driven miles, just lost battery capacity.

There are too many variables which is why these apps all have to guess so what are they really telling you?

 

[spartanheed]

My car seems to drop around 10miles per day. And that's with sentry turned off!

 

[photon08]

I charged my model 3 to 90% ( ~ 63kWh) on March 16. For 10 days since the last charge-up, I used 18kWh (for 96.6 miles at 186Wh/mile), but the remaining charge is ~ 36kWh (198 miles range left at 182Wh/miles per Energy app on Tesla).

So, I lost about 9kWh ( 63 - 18 - 36) due to the phantom drain in 10 days. It's 0.9kWh / day.

If the sleep-time energy usage rate is 25 W, it'll be 0.6kWh for a day and 6kWh for 10 days. I have 3kWh to account for.

The only app I have is Tesla app. The sentry mode is off at home/work(well, I don't go to work these days). The sentry mode runs at grocery stores (2 places on weekends for about 2 hours). Make it 3 hours at315 W and the sentry mode can account for ~ 1 kWh.

Yet unaccounted for is about 2kWh. Should I regard it as an 'round-off' error and declare the victory?

 

[init6]

IIRC Tesla say a drop of 1% per day is 'normal' sleep usage. So about 7kWh per day. Which if I've followed your working out means you have 1kWh left.
Worth bearing in mind that the car doesn't sleep all the time. Mine still wakes up for either 15 or 60 minutes in every 24 hour period (it used to be a lot worse), so you will likely lose slightly more than expected.

Oh and you're better using percentages rather than mileage when doing these calcs. There are loads of threads on here about that particular hot potato

 

[Durzel]

I run TeslaMate on my own hosted machine. With TeslaMate running 24/7, and me looking at it and checking previous drives, current car state, etc, my car is almost always asleep and consequently loses maybe 1% every few days.

I don’t use Sentry at home though (because of CCTV), only when I’m out, so that helps.

The source code for TeslaMate is freely available if you feel the need to dig in if you have doubts about what it’s doing etc.

Can’t speak for TeslaFi, TezlaLab or whatever, but I imagine it’s easy to misconfigure all of them to keep your car awake unnecessarily for extended periods.

 

[MrBadger]

IIRC Tesla say a drop of 1% per day is 'normal' sleep usage. So about 7kWh per day.

Erm. Not by my maths

 

[init6]

Erm. Not by my maths

Er, 7kWh per TEN days

 

[init6]

I run TeslaMate on my own hosted machine. With TeslaMate running 24/7, and me looking at it and checking previous drives, current car state, etc, my car is almost always asleep and consequently loses maybe 1% every few days.

I don’t use Sentry at home though (because of CCTV), only when I’m out, so that helps.

The source code for TeslaMate is freely available if you feel the need to dig in if you have doubts about what it’s doing etc.

Can’t speak for TeslaFi, TezlaLab or whatever, but I imagine it’s easy to misconfigure all of them to keep your car awake unnecessarily for extended periods.

Not all cars behave the same way - here's one 15 page thread that details other behaviours. I'm sure there are more.

Battery Drain Overnight.

Happy new year to all. First time here. I have a quick question in regards to battery drain and if other members are getting this on their new cars also. My Tesla model 3 LR was delivered on Wednesday and I have noticed this phantom drain. On Wednesday night it had 100 miles left and yesterday...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[MrBadger]

Can’t speak for TeslaFi, TezlaLab or whatever, but I imagine it’s easy to misconfigure all of them to keep your car awake unnecessarily for extended periods.

Default settings for TeslaFi seem pretty good. Not optimal for all scenarios (suffers if you try to go for a drive and its just started sleeping but some of that is the issue with transition delay of wifi to LTE) but default settings good at avoiding phantom drain. There is an option to reset TeslaFi to default settings.

 

[Wol747]

My guess is that the car keeps the 12v battery topped up - it's IMPORTANT! - by waking up and taking current from the HV battery, which of course involves inverters, transformers and the like. If the 12v is beginning to suffer it's logical that the car would wake up more often?
Another guess is that even if the 12v is losing charge the car would still be driveable since once booted up the HV battery would back up the 12v one, and only become bricked when the 12v was kompletely kaput.

 

[El joe]

Also doesn’t help that TezLab, depending on the setting, can awaken your car periodically. And as others have mentioned, things like Sentry Mode and even just opening up your app every once in a while can slowly (phantom) drain your battery.