Prolong Intelligent Discharger 1st impression

I notice a similar thing with my 2nd and third discharges, in fact I was thinking of letting the next charge/balance cycles soak a bit in order to make sure, since I noticed on each of the last 3 charge/balances the voltage only got up to 228V, whereas back in January it got up to 240V each time. Any thoughts, Jeff (if you're reading this?) (…one of the things which confuserated me earlier!)

 

I just dug out notes from Jan:

Prolong charging
15:35 - 226V 361mA
15:55 - 230V 361mA
16:08 - 232V 355mA
16:39 - 236V 360mA
17:00 - 238V 357mA
19:45 - 241V 363mA
20:10 - 241V 360mA
20:31 - 241V 358mA

2nd cycle:
9:45:00 229V 360mA
13:00:00 234V 360mA
15:09:30 237V 360mA
16:48:00 238V 360mA

…mmm, I think I'll need to let it soak more next time!

 

Bad gauge? Charger or discharger? (…yup, Jeff runs a tight ship!)

 

Well, my car had a couple of days of "down-time" so I used them to do a short recondition (just one long charge/balance session with no discharging). I was going to do it in early September (the full-recondition was done at the beginning of July), and I thought I'd share my measurements. Here's the .pdf file, and the left column is in hours:

 

Just "rediscovered" this thread. I had lost it in all the shuffle. Thanks guys for the kind words! We really try hard to make sure our customers are taken care of. Happy customers are the best form of advertising we could ever hope for

We went to the NACE/CARS expo in Anaheim last week and found a few new vendors to work with. We are signed up to exhibit at four different conventions in 2017, might even try to bite into the AAPEX show next October. One cool sneak preview: Look for "plug and play" hybrid battery cooling fan integration coming soon. No more cutting & splicing wires will be awesome

 

That comment is more Honda focused - I need to update the site. The Toyota does not perform a recalibration right after a 12V reset. It starts mid range on the display and the car has to be driven a bit before it recalibrates. I have tried forcing this immediate recal on my 2005 Prius and I haven't found a way yet.

 

Well here's the latest long post …sorry! (well, not really!):
Date: 20161229
Traction battery full re-condition: 117020 miles

1. charge & balance (16 hours - final 240V, 356 mA) then discharge to 134 V (6 hours - when I checked it had already completed)
   
2. charge & balance (16 hours - final 240V, 356 mA) then discharge to 84 V (5 hours - again it had already completed, and crept back up to 192V)
   
3. charge & balance (16 hours - final 240V, 356 mA) then discharge to 17V (5 hour - again it had already completed, and crept back up)
   
4. 16 hour final charge (final 240V, 356mA)
   
5. let sit for 2 hours before driving.
6. total time 82 hours (approximately)

If I had been hovering over it, I might have cut some time out of the discharges by switching back to charging immediately the discharges were complete. But this time I wanted to make sure the charges were totally complete, and as you can see, every time, the voltage maxed out at 240V, and the current was 356mA (last time I did the full recondition, the max was only 238V, so I think the letting it soak approach was better!) I just wish Jeff would make the Intelligent Discharger really intelligent by having it send a trigger to my SmartPhone telling me the discharge was complete. I set timers in my phone to remind me that the charging is under way, and also have them for the discharge cycles, but I think 6 hours is a bit to coarse-grained to hit the exact point at which the discharge stops, so next time perhaps I'll pay more attention.

So my only question for Jeff is how consistent are the charge/discharge cycles, i.e. when I do the full recondition again in six months, are the times likely to be similar to what they were this time, or will they change as the battery ages? BTW, the extension cord is perfect and makes the discharging so much easier by not having to empty the rear of the cargo area or the car in order to avoid cooking everything with the exhaust air from the discharger (…even worse when I used the two-bulb discharger!) I can now leave the Intelligent Discharger outside the car, which is A Good Thing! So that's it for another six months (I'll do a short recondition sometime in March, though)

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

 

Damn, all this looks so good!

But tell me, and I may have missed it on this thread if it was mentioned but when you begin the discharge cycle, do you do it straight after charging it? Or do you boot up the car safely and run around in EV mode to bring the pack down to 40%, just to quicken the discharge time?

 

Yup, just follow the instructions, although I must admit that even though I thought I'd have a 4-day window to do the recondition this time, I had an emergency where I needed to use the car, and it just so happened that it occurred at the very end of the second charge cycle (that's the one prior to the discharge to 84V cycle) I'd already started the discharge, so I aborted it (the voltage had dropped to around 200V), ran my errands, and started the discharge again (the running around for the errands had left the SoC at around 220V, so it was slightly higher than where it was in the aborted discharge cycle) so there was a break of 4½ hours in between charge complete and start of next discharge, but from there on, the charge/discharge/charge/discharge were all back-to-back! As for "EV" mode, mine is a 2009 Gen II Prius, and doesn't have an "EV" switch as such, however careful use of the "GoPedal" (drive as though there's an egg between your right hoof and the gas-pedal) has very much the same effect (I have a ScanGauge II so I can monitor ICE RPM and power output, so I can see when we're on AllElectricPower) - hope this helps - Wil
PS: I'm sure Jeff will correct anything I've either overlooked or misunderstood!

 

Hrmmm . . . that is a really good idea. I'll have to talk to the EE about feasibility on that one

There are a lot of factors that influence this. Ambient temperatures, battery SOC at the start of the treatment, how long since the car was driven, and much more. We get reports that are all over the place on times, so I wouldn't read too much into it. I'd be interested to see how things progress as the car (battery) ages, so please do keep us all posted

 

Here's latest episode:
Well, big blizzard going on outside, so ChuggyPig is tucked up warm & snug in garage, so what better opportunity than to do a short recondition of TractionBattery! Started yesterday 229V 356mA, and 16 hours later 245V and 356mA. I've not driven the car today so I don't know about SoC on MFD, but AuxBattery is connected to maintenance charger, so we'll see how it is later in the week!