Quantitative Results of Grid Charge/Discharge

Steve, thanks for this.......really helps to understand what the discharge process is doing and how not to damage the packs.

Obviously the biggest concern is not damaging a pack that is currently working fine.

 

I always heard that any day you learn something is a good day but I am not so sure thats the case. At least not when you learn the hard way!

Well, my dual discharger finally arrived and it didn't work. It appears that I blew more than just the bulbs.
Now I put myself further behind because I have to take apart the car to replace the inline fuse. That is after I locate a replacement..

The only good news is that I can finally contribute by giving some words of caution.

ALWAYS disconnect the discharger when swapping bulbs. If you do one at a time it may blow the other bulb (best case), and worse case (for car), you will be replacing the fuse. Worse case for you if the bulb broke in your hand you could be dead. Instructions could probably be more clear for us idiots.

@steve - Based on your experience, assuming my car was at 243v for 4.5hrs and thats where I ended charging/balancing after a total of about 9hrs charging from 80%, and then it sat for a week waiting to sort out the discharger issues, would you proceed to discharge or do some additional charge/balance prior to discharge??

Thanks
Jim

 

Yes that's a good point Jimbo. With two light bulbs in series it is vital that they are the same wattage if they are to share the voltage equally. If you place a low wattage bulb in series with a higher wattage one, then the lower wattage one will see the majority of the voltage and likely blow.

One thing that does seem a little puzzling however, is that this caused any real damage other than just blowing the bulb. In my experience when a light bulb blows it almost always just makes a simple open circuit and shouldn't result in any kind of overload condition. I guess that there could always be a freak exception though.

 

Incandescent bulbs have a power on surge load that can sometimes exceed the 3.15A inline fuse max capacity. We use a slow blow fuse to minimize failures but it does happen sometimes. It's more with the Honda's due to the single bulb config. We've only seen it twice on the dual bulb Toyota setup. This is the second :-(

 

Hi there. New HA product user here. I have a 2006 Prius with 125K miles that recently displayed the standard red-triangle, threw the standard dtc's which resulted in the standard white-knuckle drive home whilst praying to make it there. So, after reading all about my options, I ordered the HA Reconditioning Package and, after 24 hours, charged it up to 242 volts, which completed last night. I then waited about 24 hours before I started the discharge process. When I hooked up the simple discharger, the voltage on the meter displayed 170 volts, which I was surprised to find would not display on the 200 volt range setting of the meter but that's another topic. I was also a bit surprised it had dropped that much. Should I be concerned about the 72 volt drop since last night? I overshot my first target a bit with the two 200 watt bulbs and changed to a 90 and a 60 watt bulbs at 128 volts instead of 134 volts. 75 watt bulbs are surprisingly hard to find these days. I'm now on my way down to 84 volts.

 

Wow, thanks for the quick reply!! I"m not sure what you mean by "stopped discharging w/200W a long time ago". I let it charge for 24 hours and it was at 242V as of last night when I turned off the charger. Tonight, I started the discharge process using the two 200W bulbs and as soon as I started is when I saw the battery voltage was at 170V, per the HA-supplied meter. By the way, I did a fair amount of edits to my original post, probably before you posted your reply.

 

You're absolutely correct! When the HA meter said 123V, my meter said 167V. I've got a bad meter. So, if things are linear here, that would put my starting voltage at 214, still 28V down but better. I also tripped the fuse when I inadvertently touched the plug-in end of the positive lead to the "10ADC" input just above the correct positive input of the meter. I really shouldn't be doing this late at night. Apparently, all my faculties are not present. Fortunately, I had a 250V 2A fuse lying around. It looks like it will work until I can replace it with the correct 3.15A fuse. It's discharging with the 60/90W bulbs now. I need to go to bed so hopefully, its at or near 84V when I get up and I'll switch to the two 25W bulbs for the final leg.

 

I thought the cause of the fault code had to be corrected before a grid charge could be used successfully.

 

Jim, I didn't have time to include a lot of the details in my original post, which I know are important for folks here to provide educated replies and suggestions. I did disassemble my battery pack down to where I could measure individual module voltages. All were in the 7.8 - 7.9V (no load) range except for one that was 6.7V and they all dropped about .1V after a quick 10 second load check with a head light bulb. As I found out later, I should have done the load check for 120 seconds. I'll do that after completing the reconditioning process. Anyway, I decided I had enough info to proceed with ordering the HA Battery Reconditioning Package (BRP) and give it a go. With my active family, getting the Prius back into service quickly is a priority so this approach seemed to be a good combination of economics, time and chance of success. I figure if this didn't work, I'll probably either replace the pack with a new Gen 2 pack ($2500) or swap my modules out with the modules from a 2012 (Gen 3) pack with 33k miles that a local salvage yard has available for $900. I can then still use the BRP for which ever option I go with to maintain it.

 

214 Volts is right in the range of what we would expect resting voltage to be. Sorry about the bad meter. Give us a call Monday (800-589-0730) and we will send you a replacement.

If the cause of the failure is a weak or failing battery, reconditioning with our products is what will fix the fault code, so the fault code won't go away until after the reconditioning treatment is done and the 12V system is reset for at least 2-3 minutes.

 

How does one do a 2-3 minute reset of the 12V system?

 

You must be referring to the white connector located right near the 12V battery and I assume the reset is performed after reconnecting the 12V battery ground cable? I've heard something about having to reset the power windows after the 12V is disconnected. Will I still have to do that after performing the 12V reset?

 

Powering down the ECUs (by disconnecting the 12V supply) resets (almost all) of them.

Yes, you will need to reset the auto-up/down on the driver's window - no big deal - it takes 30 secs tops. You will also loose your radio presets and your trip A/B info, as well as your current tank MPG average/distance on the consumption screen.

 

I'm a little confused on which table I should use to determine the voltages I need to go down to before switching to the next lower discharge load. I finished the second full charging cycle and, after 24 hours, it filled up to and balanced at 242V. I've started the second discharge cycle with 2x200W bulbs and would like to know if I should discharge down to 134V per the "Discharge Termination Voltage Chart" or down to 196V per the "Light Bulb Wattage Change Table" before switching to the 2x75W bulbs. I read the Simple Discharger User Guide several times and it still isn't clear when to change the bulbs and how to use the two charts for the discharge process.

To establish what I've done with the first discharge of my 2006 Prius, I went down to 134V with the 2x200W load then went down to 84V with the 2x75W load then went down to 17V with the 2x50W load, per my interpretation of the Discharge Termination Voltage chart. I charged it back up and am now doing the same discharge process again. I sure hope I'm on the right path!

 

It may seem confusing, but it is not contradictory.

The voltages in the discharge termination chart are the voltages you stop the discharges. So, for a Gen II,

• First discharge cycle, stop when the voltage is 134 V
• Second discharge cycle, stop when the voltage is 84 V
• Third discharge cycle, stop when the voltage is 17 V.

The voltages in the light bulb change chart are the voltages you change the light bulbs. So, for a Gen II,

• Discharge with 2x 200 W bulbs until the voltage is 196 V, then change to 2x 75 W bulbs;
• Discharge with 2x 75 W bulbs until the voltage is 140 V, then change to 2x 25 W bulbs;

Hope that clarifies.

 

Rut-roh (a Shaggy/Astro term for those old enough to remember)!! It appears I've followed the wrong path after all. My first complete discharge cycle (using all the light bulb combinations should have only gone down to 134V whereas I went all the way down to 17V. What is the suggested way forward from here? I changed it to 2x75W at 182V and will follow the Second Discharge schedule unless I hear differently from one of the gurus here.

By the way, for the HA representative, I think an example, similar to what dolj provided above, added to the Simple Discharger User Guide, would be a helpful addition for other nubes like me.