Still 186V. It is now 18 hours since charging began. It has been 186V for the last 6+ hours. I guess I'll wait until dinner time and check again.

 

Time to shut it down.

That is about all you are going to get.

Willie

 

Your charger display does not show tenths, hundreds or thousands of a volt? In my experience with a gen 2 insight the voltage rises for the first 4 or so hours then starts to rise and fall by double digits. About a day into it it starts to rise and fall by a single volt and tenth of a volt. I check it every 10-15 minutes and note the voltage and temp. Assuming little to no temp change if the voltage is unchanged its done. If the temp is constant and the votage varies by a tenth or so its still balancing.

You want to check it a few times to make sure its the same reading as there is a possibility a cell is rising and falling at the same time showing no change in overall voltage.

As a pack fails the topping volt starts to be reduced.

 

Yup the Hybrid Automotive chargers only show whole volts, no tenths. if the voltage is changing by 0.2V I would have no way of knowing, unless it just happens to be changing from 186.9V to 187.1V

If I check at the 24 hour mark and it still says 186V then I'd say I am done. I was just wondering if I should wait longer for 189V as the instructions say. Deep Discharge here I come.

 

I happen to be balancing my gen 2. I am at the 24 hour mark and watched the volt meter for 15 minutes. It went from 122.2 to 122.1 then up to 122.8 volts dc. I decided since it was 8 pm, sun had set and temp was stable its still doing its thing.

In my experience the gen 2 takes 36 hours roughly. Between work and commute both ways thats 12 hours and between sleep getting ready for work and winding down from work is another 12 hours. So with my busy schedule I check in between the two.

In this case I wont have time til about 5 pm tomorrow if I am lucky. So, thats 45 hours. If you leave it longer than needed with adequate cooling you just waste some electricity.

 

When I grid charge, I look for the 'plateau' where the pack reaches and stays at 'peak' voltage. I shoot for about 4-6 hours on the plateau and call it done.

 

Did you do the 12V reset prior to grid charge like I suggested elsewhere?

If so, you are done.

EDIT: I just saw the revving bit. Yes. You're done.

Peak voltage is different from pack to pack. Not drastically so, but 3V is nothing to fret over. After your deep discharge, you will likely go over 190V.

 

Thanks everyone!

Interesting, I didn't know that people go over 40 hours on a grid charge. Maybe that's Insight specific?

At 6pm it was actually down two volts to 184V Not sure what to make of it... since I plan to re-grid charge within the next day, I just pulled the plug. I guess there is slight reverse polarity risk?

Discharge started at 6pm. I have the Hybrid Automotive Single bulb discharger, that ironically has a 4-digit adjustable range voltmeter.

Using a 120W load (two 60V bulbs in parallel) it is 160V 2.5 hours later. I might go grab a 100 or 200W bulb so I can go to 100V before I goto bed so I can switch it to a 40W.

 

Insight/HCH1 have 6500 vs. 5500mAh cap for HCH2, so you're looking at a few extra hours. There are those who measure voltage out to the umpteenth decimal point to identify peak voltage and run grid charges for 36hr+... Bumblebee batteries being one.

A 2V drop suggests you're building up some heat in the pack faster than the IMA fan can cool it. You were definitely done. No reverse polarity risk during charging.

In parallel, you're probably doing about 1.3A at 160V. They should be notably bright for 60W bulbs. If you go to higher wattage, watch it like a hawk and avoid letting the voltage drop below 132V. The fall from 145V will be pretty fast. Below 132, 2X 40W will put you at about 0.7A, which is good to go all the way to the bottom.

 

UPDATE: 10:30pm, now 60V and the light bulb looks more like a night light. How long do I hold it at 0V?

A 60W/120V is probably... 240Ohms resistance which means 0.5A at 120V

If resistance is constant, then as voltage drops current drops so 0.125A at 30V. But apparently light bulb resistance decreases with bulb temperature so if the light dims and temperature drops it could go down to 200, 100, 10Ohms.

So at 40V and 100Ohms the current could be 0.4A.
But if the resistance is 20Ohms then current would be 1.5A--way too high?

Maybe none of this is important? Seems a constant resistance resistor would work better in this application than a variable-resistance resistor (light bulb).

 

Technically, the charger doesn't measure voltage at all. The display is both the voltmeter and ammeter. The voltmeter does measure more accurately, but it rounds the display. I have a similar one on a homebuilt charger.

You said you had two in parallel, so current X2, so I would swap to 40W to keep current well under 1A. Yes, filament resistance drops with temp, so current taper is proportional but not linear to voltage drop.

Issues with a resistor is 1) finding one with a sufficient wattage and 2) the linear current taper with voltage drop dramatically increases discharge time. IMHO, stick with bulbs. You can get a 300 Ohm, 100W resistor that works great. Costs $15-20. Still gets hot as hell and takes a lot longer to drain a pack than bulbs.

No need to hold 0V. You'll probably never actually get there. Once you hit < 1V, stop discharging when you want to. You're in the diminishing returns zone at that point.

Once discharged, I still recommend the brief grid charge/car charge/grid charge process.

 

Technically, the charger doesn't measure voltage at all. The display is both the voltmeter and ammeter. The voltmeter does measure more accurately, but it rounds the display. I have a similar one on a homebuilt charger.

You said you had two in parallel, so current X2, so I would swap to 40W. Yes, filament resistance drops with temp, so current taper is proportional but not linear to voltage drop.

Issues with a resistor is finding one with a sufficient wattage and the linear current taper with voltage drop dramatically increases discharge time. IMHO, stick with bulbs.

No need to hold 0V. You'll probably never actually get there. Once you hit < 1V, stop discharging when you want to. You're in the diminishing returns zone at that point.

Ah i see.

I basically have a Y-splitter on the bulb fixture but since its parallel I just took one of the two 60W bulbs out. So now I have a single 60W bulb in there.

 

After sleeping on it, showing 0.3V this morning. When I remove the light bulb the voltage quickly increases to something like 3V.

So when people say discharge to 0.4V is this the no-load voltage or the light-bulb voltage?

 

light-bulb

You're good. Charge it.

Edit: You're very much in the "splitting hairs" or diminishing returns region here. You've reversed the polarity on all but maybe a few cells, and you've kicked the **** out of any voltage depression that may have been present.

 

I for one would like to see a progress report after this process is finished

 

Just a follow up to say everything is still working great after a few more weeks.

I have not had any recals. Now that I've driven it more I'd say that the improvement is more around 30%, not 100% as I initially thought. Since I do not have recals the performance is consistent and I no longer have sudden power loss. In that respect my real-world usefulness is indeed 2x better. I can merge on the highway without safety concerns.

MPG is hovering around 46mpg with normal driving with climate control full auto (72F).

 

minor update:

Busy day, left it discharging till just before 6pm. It was at 0.2V with the light bulb so yes it would take days/weeks/years to get to 0V and I was not going to wait!

Charged with grid charger to 135V, which only took minutes. During this time the voltage on the charger quickly increased and the ammeter on the charger was jumping around all over the place, 0mA, 350mA, 450mA, etc. Not sure if that is significant or if there was some "hunting" going on with the power supply trying to maintain current.

At 135V disconnected the HA charger and harness and immediately followed S Keith's suggestion:

1. Disconnect/reconnect the 12V to force an idle engine regen. Car actually started using the starter motor (like a real car! ), showed red battery icon but no other lights. Car regened for a few mins at around 1200rpm, during which time the red battery icon disappeared. During this time I also drove the car off the rhino ramps(see end of post for why). Regen stopped shortly after 3/8 battery bars lit up and car started idling at ~700rpm. At this point I shut the engine off.

2. Disconnect/reconnect the 12V to force an idle engine regen again. Car started with IMA but showed 0 bars. No red battery light like last time. Car regened for a few mins at around 1200rpm until 3/8 bars of battery then regen stopped automatically and car started idling at ~700rpm. At this point I shut the engine off.

3. Disconnect/reconnect the 12V to force an idle engine regen yet again. Car started with IMA, i think with 1 bar? can't remember exactly. Car regened for a few mins at around 1200rpm until it did a recal and jumped from 3/8 bars to 8/8 bars of battery then regen stopped automatically and car started idling at ~700rpm. At this point I shut the engine off.

Now it was ~6:20pm, immediately hooked up the HA charger and started grid charging at 181V.

I should add, during the initial grid charge I was also changing my oil, installing a fumoto value and changing my CVT fluid. So whether this goes well or not at least I'll have clean fluids.

 

Good for you on the repeated resets. I forgot to mention that's necessary sometimes. Can you estimate the approximate total charge time?

If you're saying you were grid charging at 181V right after the triple 12V reset, that's a good sign you got a fair amount of juice into the battery with the car. As-removed pack voltages WITHOUT a 12V reset have been in the 172-174 range.

There's no "whether" it goes well about it. It's going well. The only question is how long until you need to do it again.

 

9am. Charger showing 191V.

So this answers my original question - Yes I had voltage depression when it would not go above 186V. It seems there was no amount of waiting that would have let me reach 191V back then. Yes deep discharging appears to get rid of voltage depression.

So how does this impact IMA performance? I do not know yet as Saturday mornings are daddy makes breakfast day. Car seats (meaning child seats) installed. can't wait to give it a test drive.

 

You indicated a noticeable improvement after the overnight grid charge prior to charge/discharge. You'll likely notice an improvement, but it may not be as profound as the initial. You also need to give the car a chance to "settle". Your initial discharge will be longer than your subsequent ones as the pack is near 100% SoC. It will settle and operate in the 20-80% range. Your 4 mile hill should be a good test. In any case, your recalibrations should be gone for a while, though you may get 1-2 a the BCM adjusts to the newly balanced pack.

IMHO, it's a good idea to let a pack "rest" before the test drive, and I think HA recommends 30 min wait after charging when possible.

Steve



Steve

 

Results!

First two miles was really weird as I suspect BCM was trying to readjust to new parameters.

Overall IMA performance is, subjectively measured, more than 2 times better. Those SOC bars (just 8 blocks on the 2006 Civic) take more assist to drop and more regen to climb. There is a 4 mile hill (4 mile up 4 mile down) nearby and before battery conditioning I ran out of assist 2 miles into incline and triggered a recal--and fully recharged 2 miles into decline and triggered a recal. Now I run out of assist 3 miles into incline and no recal, and I climbed with significantly higher acceleration. Car did not fully recharge until pretty much at the bottom of the hill.
Some details of the pre-conditioning behavior is here:
http://www.greenhybrid.com/forums/f51/recal-question-4-mile-hill-30456/

I bought this car less than a month ago. I thought that it was normal for the car to run out of assist before the end of a highway ramp. (8/8 bars to 4/8 bars) Now I have some left even after achieving significantly higher merge speed.



So as SKeith mentioned I wonder how long before my performance degrades again. When it does I shall update.

THANKS everyone!

 

So as SKeith mentioned I wonder how long before my performance degrades again. When it does I shall update.

THANKS everyone!

Glad to hear the product is helping your battery We recommend reconditioning the pack via the charger & discharger 2-3 times per year and charging & balancing every 8-12 weeks to keep the battery running well and prevent the performance degradation from returning

 

Glad to hear it appears to have worked out for the time being. You may find that you tend to run more in the 3-6 bar range rather than 7-8. This will be particularly true if you have to run your A/C.

IMHO, once a pack goes unbalanced, it will continue to do so. The rate at which this occurs is the only unknown. I would do another charge/discharge the sooner of quarterly or when performance deteriorates noticeably.

 

Update!

As of 2016-06-28, car and IMA seem just fine. I had a few back-to-back recals several months ago so I did a full discharge with full charge. Since then I have not noticed any recals.

MPG is down, however. Over the winter I had snow tires and freezing temps so I got 40MPG. Right now, hovering around 42mpg with normal driving with climate control 65F. It is very hot here in Colorado right now and I keep my AC on 65F. The battery drains very quickly these days but I think that has to do with my AC usage rather than the battery itself.

 

Thanks for the follow-up... dude... TRY setting it at 75...

I'm in AZ, and I leave every car at 75-78°F. Today was 113°F on the dash...