UMC 2 Vampier Losses (warm to touch)

[ratsbew]

The UMC brick gets quite warm just sitting idle without charging. Has anyone measured the vampire losses? From my touch, I'd guess somewhere between 5-10 Watts of heat losses just when it's sitting idle. For an environmentally friendly company, it seems like an awful lot of wasted energy. Could a firmware update fix this? Can the UMC accept firmware updates from the car when it's plugged in?

 

[bro1999]

The UMC brick gets quite warm just sitting idle without charging. Has anyone measured the vampire losses? From my touch, I'd guess somewhere between 5-10 Watts of heat losses just when it's sitting idle. For an environmentally friendly company, it seems like an awful lot of wasted energy. Could a firmware update fix this? Can the UMC accept firmware updates from the car when it's plugged in?

The "Tesla" does remain illuminated even when not charging. That's probably where most, if not all of the electricity usage while not plugged in is coming from. I'm assuming they are LEDs?

 

[eprosenx]

The UMC brick gets quite warm just sitting idle without charging. Has anyone measured the vampire losses? From my touch, I'd guess somewhere between 5-10 Watts of heat losses just when it's sitting idle. For an environmentally friendly company, it seems like an awful lot of wasted energy. Could a firmware update fix this? Can the UMC accept firmware updates from the car when it's plugged in?

It would be interesting to throw this on a kill-a-watt unit to see exactly how much it is using.

I would not expect LED's to take hardly any energy. What I would expect to take power is whatever embedded microprocessor is in there for signaling to the car, etc... I do wonder if it has firmware and if so, is it updatable? And how?

The other thing I would expect to take power is the contactor that turns the power on and off. When engaged, that is a electromagnet.

Are you feeling it warm when it is plugged into a car but not charging? Or just when plugged into the wall but not into a car? (I could see if it is keeping the contactor engaged all the time to supply power to the car it could be using more power) Though I think the EVSEs may turn off power to the car when charging is done and turn it back on as needed?

FWIW though, compared to the 11.5kw my car uses when charging I guess vampire loss is not a huge concern to me. ;-) Yeah, it is constant loss all the time, but perhaps in the noise. I also don't leave my UMC plugged in ever since I have a Wall Connector (you now make me wonder how much it draws).

 

[bro1999]

It would be interesting to throw this on a kill-a-watt unit to see exactly how much it is using.

I would not expect LED's to take hardly any energy. What I would expect to take power is whatever embedded microprocessor is in there for signaling to the car, etc... I do wonder if it has firmware and if so, is it updatable? And how?

The other thing I would expect to take power is the contactor that turns the power on and off. When engaged, that is a electromagnet.

Are you feeling it warm when it is plugged into a car but not charging? Or just when plugged into the wall but not into a car? (I could see if it is keeping the contactor engaged all the time to supply power to the car it could be using more power) Though I think the EVSEs may turn off power to the car when charging is done and turn it back on as needed?

FWIW though, compared to the 11.5kw my car uses when charging I guess vampire loss is not a huge concern to me. ;-) Yeah, it is constant loss all the time, but perhaps in the noise. I also don't leave my UMC plugged in ever since I have a Wall Connector (you now make me wonder how much it draws).

I could actually do that, since I have a Kill-a-watt laying around somewhere. I'm thinking electric usage would be the same regardless of 120V or 240V adapter.

 

[bro1999]

So I plugged in the Gen 2 mobile connwc to my Killawatt. Registered 2 watts.

 

[eprosenx]

So I plugged in the Gen 2 mobile connwc to my Killawatt. Registered 2 watts.

Nice. Not sure I would worry about that.

 

[bro1999]

Nice. Not sure I would worry about that.

So over the course of a year, that's a little over 17 kWh of energy or about ~$2 of juice annually. Not statistically insignificant, but a rather tiny amount of energy in the grand scheme of things.