Wall connector charging a bit every hour

[Tha_Reaper]

I have my carport directly connected to my living room, and the wall connector is installed under that carport.
Whenever I'm charging at home, The car seems to restart charging a bit every hour to top off the battery. I thought it would just do that every day or so. It only stops doing that when I use the app to "stop charging".

This behavior is annoying because of 2 reasons:
1: teslafi generates a ton of charge entries. And since I use that to have my business pay back my charging costs to myself, that's kind of annoying.
2: the starting and stopping of the wall connector makes the heavy relay in the WC click, and apparently that's enough to drive my dog berserk.

Is this normal behavior?

I'm on 2019.8.4 at the moment

 

[Birdman325]

I noticed this behaviour started a couple of updates ago and I was hoping it would have been fixed, but I am on 16.2 and it still happens.

It happens even if I drop the charge limit down to significantly below the current state of charge.

Extremely annoying

 

[Electric700]

You can send a message to [email protected] about this. It could be due to cooling / battery optimization, which should actually be a good thing.

 

[SWUtah]

It started doing this some (??) number of software revs ago. I don't find it annoying at all & I like when I'm keeping the climate on, because it's using house power to do it. A plugged-in Tesla is a happy Tesla.

 

[MrMassTransit]

One way around this is to set up scheduled charging. I have charging set to start at 2 AM typically and the car completes a single daily charge cycle then, even if I haven’t driven it that day. If you need to charge mid day you can always turn off scheduled charging at that time. Obviously not the best solution but a workaround until it is resolved. I just always leave my car on scheduled charging at home. I don’t get off peak rates - I just attempt to charge when the grid is at its lowest point of demand - if I’ve taken a long trip I’ll start charging earlier in the evening.

 

[Tha_Reaper]

One way around this is to set up scheduled charging. I have charging set to start at 2 AM typically and the car completes a single daily charge cycle then, even if I haven’t driven it that day. If you need to charge mid day you can always turn off scheduled charging at that time.

That's a good solution until it's fixed. But given the fact that my dog goes berserk from the sound of the relay I'll probably opt for another timing than 2AM.

Given the replies i take from this that what I experience is normal behavior because of a change in the software/bug. Thanks everyone

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

fact that my dog goes berserk from the sound of the relay

Maybe the dog will grow to love the relay.

 

[Birdman325]

My car is scheduled to charge at 3 am. That doesn’t seem to help. It charges at 3 am and gets it to the set percentage (86 or 87%). If I don’t drive it over the course of the day it will continually “micro top it up” even if I set the limit down to 60%

 

[Tha_Reaper]

Maybe the dog will grow to love the relay.

I'm afraid that I'll grow to hate the dog long before that

 

[Daniel in SD]

This seems like Tesla decided to try to reduce the number of support calls complaining about vampire drain .
"I charged to 80% when I got home but it's at 79% the next morning!"

 

[eprosenx]

I have my carport directly connected to my living room, and the wall connector is installed under that carport.
Whenever I'm charging at home, The car seems to restart charging a bit every hour to top off the battery. I thought it would just do that every day or so. It only stops doing that when I use the app to "stop charging".

This behavior is annoying because of 2 reasons:
1: teslafi generates a ton of charge entries. And since I use that to have my business pay back my charging costs to myself, that's kind of annoying.
2: the starting and stopping of the wall connector makes the heavy relay in the WC click, and apparently that's enough to drive my dog berserk.

Is this normal behavior?

I'm on 2019.8.4 at the moment

Yes, I have seen this behavior. It started with some update like a couple of months ago (I may have even posted about it at the time). I can't hear my Wall Connector from inside my house, but I do have a Sense Energy Monitor and I can see when it happens.

It is pretty hit or miss though and I have not been able to isolate why it happens. It may be every hour for several hours after I get home and initially recharge my car, but then it stops and does not start again until I come home the next day and plug in. Some days I don't think it does it at all.

I have not been able to correlate it to outside temperature or my presence near the car (waking it up, etc...), but it is highly likely that one of these things might be a factor to whether it does it or not?

I am unsure if this is intended behavior by Tesla (to keep the battery more topped up to the level you set it to), or whether it is a bug/defect.

I do like that my car is closer to the set charge point when I come out in the morning, but I dislike the extra cycles put on the wall connector contactor and charging system in general.

 

[eprosenx]

Yes, I have seen this behavior. It started with some update like a couple of months ago (I may have even posted about it at the time).

Here was the thread I started on this:

My Model 3 has gotten more aggressive about "topping off" the battery

This is still happening. All the really tall spikes on the graph below are my car (nothing else in the house remotely comes close to its consumption). You can see I came home from a road trip on Monday and charged for a couple / few hours. There were no spikes after that. But then after work Tuesday I came home and charged, but then it spiked twice after that. Then I never drove the car on Wednesday, but it charged several times in the evening (perhaps this could have been triggered by me being in close proximity to the car and/or opening the trunk or something once when I drove home with my wife?)

I can't explain this.

 

[Sophias_dad]

Can't help but think the contactors are going to wear out much earlier than normally would.. I assume there's no spark generated because the car doesn't apply much of a load until the contactors are verified-connected, but even so, a connection per hour or two is far more than a connection per day or two.

 

[SSedan]

Is it topping up the 12volt due to the constant drain of third party apps and or having the key/phone too close?

I could see key/phone proximity triggering HVAC which would create meaningful draw.

 

[mswlogo]

No it’s a stupid new “feature”.

Tesla decided that if you just “plug-in” at X% it should try to hold it there. Regardless if you want to “charge” or not.

I no longer keep my Tesla plugged in to keep it “happy” because the owner is not happy with this behavior. Basically it’s to prevent (cover up) phantom losses.

If they want to have stupid behavior like this please make it an option. Or at least allow the user to set hysteresis thresholds other than 0.1% (or what ever ridiculously small value they use because it is as little as what you phantomly lose in about 1 hr).

Some people have off peak metering or other charge restrictions. It should not just be randomly charging. This would be really dumb on a cold pack as well.

Supposedly if it has a scheduled charge it won’t do this.

 

[eprosenx]

No it’s a stupid new “feature”.

Tesla decided that if you just “plug-in” at X% it should try to hold it there. Regardless if you want to “charge” or not.

I no longer keep my Tesla plugged in to keep it “happy” because the owner is not happy with this behavior. Basically it’s to prevent (cover up) phantom losses.

If they want to have stupid behavior like this please make it an option. Or at least allow the user to set hysteresis thresholds other than 0.1% (or what ever ridiculously small value they use because it is as little as what you phantomly lose in about 1 hr).

Some people have off peak metering or other charge restrictions. It should not just be randomly charging. This would be really dumb on a cold pack as well.

Supposedly if it has a scheduled charge it won’t do this.

This was my initial assumption too, but it does it so inconsistently that it makes me wonder if this is really what is going on or not.

I would think it would do it every day if that were the case (though it may have to do with outside air temp and such).

But also, when it does it constantly it is exactly once per hour. So maybe it wakes up once an hour to decide if it should do it again or not? Some kind of scheduled task?

 

[Tysto]

Maybe switch to the 110v charger more often for now? You can always use the 240v charger if you've driven a lot. The trickle charger should be able to keep the car topped up and I don't think makes any noise.

 

[Big Dog]

seems like a dumb feature, particularly for those on ToU plans.....who wants to pay day rates to 'top off' the battery, even if its only a few minutes to top off?

 

[mswlogo]

This was my initial assumption too, but it does it so inconsistently that it makes me wonder if this is really what is going on or not.

I would think it would do it every day if that were the case (though it may have to do with outside air temp and such).

But also, when it does it constantly it is exactly once per hour. So maybe it wakes up once an hour to decide if it should do it again or not? Some kind of scheduled task?

I have a close friend that got me to buy the model 3, he is in touch with a Tesla software developer and asked him about this new behavior. He asked what is going on with this new behavior and that's what he told him. I was hoping it was a bug, but it's a feature.

I agree, it's not very consistent. I have seen the once an hour as well. But then it stops. I really don't like it though.

 

[Rottenapplr]

Maybe the dog will grow to love the relay.

Each time the relay clicks give him his favorite treat. It takes time but they start associating this to something positive.

My german Shepard used to run from me when I put medication on both eyes. Enough so that she hid from me. I started giving her high value treats after each eye treatment. Now I call her, she sits down in front of me, and looks forward for her 2x daily eye ointment. Lol. She gets dentsabone. Now I mix it up. Sometime I walk her afterwards lol as her treat.