Prius plug-in not charging completely

one thing i am noticing is that my headlights seem to be eating up a lot of charge. does the advanced have more efficient headlights?

 

Nipples aren't as important to me as they used to be.

 

leaving them on all night in the garage will do that Bisco.

 

May I quote you on that?

 

RockerDan,

Those of us who have either whole-house Time-of-Use electric use tariffs or, like I am about to have here in Virginia, normal house electric tariffs and separate-meter hardwired EVSE Time-of-Use tariffs, will benefit from the "End" charging time on the timer. For example, the cheapest dead-of-night ToU tariff in Virginia is from midnight to 5 A.M. To get the best non-dissipated charge in the PiP while using the least costly ToU tariff, I would / will specify END time at 5 AM.

Now, just to be nice to the utility grid load, I specify START at 4:30 AM (the 240-volt line finishes charging about 5:45 - 6 AM) but as soon as my second EVSE-dedicated utility meter gets hooked up, I'll switch to setting the END time at 5 AM (which will likely self-start the charging time about 3:30 AM).

I think that without being signed up for a ToU tariff, using the charging timer is just being nice to the region by charging at the lowest likely electrical demand time for the network, and hopefully preserving a li'l bit of traction battery longevity, whether you use the START time setting or the END time setting.

With the PiP charging time at 240 volts that lasts about 90 minutes, that doesn't have a high price difference. However, with future model EV cars and their probably much larger traction batteries, timing the let's say five hours of 240 volt charging time to the cheapest ToU tarriff in the dead of night will become more & more important for our wallets.

Does this make sense?

 

Oh definitely...I completely understand charging during off peak hours. I just thought it was odd to have a start and stop time, which is vaguely explained. It looks like you need to set start and stop times. If it wasnt for the OR in the manual there would be nothing at all. Just seems alittle quirky in its layout IMO.

I just like the fact i can tap it now, i used to hold it, go thru the start then end times, then walk away. Now i just tap it, END time pops up(6am) and i am done. Nice.

Dan

 

aha!...now that makes perfect sense...this works best for those who charge at work and also at home.

I still dont see why they wouldnt just make a timer 1 and timer 2 and make them all END times, since end time seems to make more sense the start time, unless you know exactly how long it takes, which we do after trying basically.

Dan

 

Scenario for the START time: I have a time-of-day electric rate plan, and I want to make sure that it does not start charging until off-peak.