Help with Charging to 80%--what am I doing wrong?

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

thankyouOB

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 21, 2011
Messages
3,583
Location
Coastal LA
I have my timers set for base rate times, which is all day on the weekends and 80%.

When I come home in the middle of the day on the weekend and plug in, it wont start charging.

The only way to charge it is to use the bypass button, then it charges to 100%.
What am I doing wrong and how do I fix that?
I searched the book and dont see a ready answer.
 
I am confused by this also. The woman at the dealer had me set the charge to 80% without enabling the timers as I am retired. The charger starts at plug in but i'm not sure it isn'tk charging to 100%. Is their a screen that shows the battery percent charge?
 
svBackstreets said:
I am confused by this also. The woman at the dealer had me set the charge to 80% without enabling the timers as I am retired. The charger starts at plug in but i'm not sure it isn'tk charging to 100%. Is their a screen that shows the battery percent charge?

yes, on the timer screen you pick either charge to 100% or charge to 80%.

I am new to this. Got the car Saturday.
 
thankyouOB said:
svBackstreets said:
I am confused by this also. The woman at the dealer had me set the charge to 80% without enabling the timers as I am retired. The charger starts at plug in but i'm not sure it isn'tk charging to 100%. Is their a screen that shows the battery percent charge?

yes, on the timer screen you pick either charge to 100% or charge to 80%.

I am new to this. Got the car Saturday.

Yes but does it stop at 80% if you don't enable the timer and how do you tell?
 
My take on the Leaf 80% timer is as follows:

I have my timer 1 set to 80% for all 7 days, and to run from midnight to 5am (due to lower rates). When I get home from work and plug in, there's some clicking and thumping, but after a few seconds the charging process stops and is waiting for the timer to kick in at midnight. Once that time rolls around, charging begins and goes to 80% (10 of 12 bars, according to the email that the car sends me after it stops).

If I use the timer bypass button inside the car at other times of the day, it will charge to 100% for that one time.

I have to say I've never tried it, but I didn't think you could only set the charging level (80%) and not set a start or end time for the timer. I know that some people have set just an "end" time without a start time, but I think you need to set some sort of time to get the timer to function....
 
I have my timers set for 80% for weekdays and 100% weekends. My start time is 12:10 am (I am a programmer and I don't trust software that starts at noon/midnight) I don't have stop times since a full charge has never exceeded 5 hours. Since the charges start after midnight the schedule needs to reflect the day of week when charging occurs, not the day of week you plug in.

You can verify that it has charged to 80% by counting the bars or setting up email notification (10 of 12 bars). I don't think it's possible to charge to 80% without the timers.

I've manually charged to 100% via the button a couple of times (button is pressed before you plug in) and have adjusted the schedule a few times. Blink timers are off and my Blink is hard wired. So far the charging has work flawlessy. BTW I have my modem and router on a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) and have never experienced the Blink problems that other have reported.

BTW when you go to the charging timers screen it will display the next charge event (if any) and if it is 100% or 80%.
 
Randy said:
Once that time rolls around, charging begins and goes to 80% (10 of 12 bars, according to the email that the car sends me after it stops).

I have had no problem with charging to 80% using the LEAF timer and not the Blink timer. Following the advice of others, I set start at 1210AM and stop at 1150AM. However, I don't receive an email from the car/Blink as mentioned by Randy. I can look at my Nissan site for info on the charge status and Carwings. Is there something I'm missing or overlooked regarding email messages? I have a Droid and not iphone. Is that part of the problem?
 
One of the biggest oversights (IMO) is that charging on a timer only occurs if the car is plugged in at exactly the time the timer triggers. Otherwise you will have to hit the manual button and will go to 100%.
 
I do not want to use the timers. I drive at different times. I would like the charge to always begin when I plug the car in. I want the default charge to be 80%.

This seems like it would be a very simple thing to do. I would think there are many drivers like me who do not have a regular schedule or an off peak rate plan and almost never need a 100% charge.

If you set the percent entry on the timer screen to 80% and disable the timers why would it charge to 100%?
 
linkim said:
I have had no problem with charging to 80% using the LEAF timer and not the Blink timer. Following the advice of others, I set start at 1210AM and stop at 1150AM. However, I don't receive an email from the car/Blink as mentioned by Randy. I can look at my Nissan site for info on the charge status and Carwings. Is there something I'm missing or overlooked regarding email messages? I have a Droid and not iphone. Is that part of the problem?

Did you set the notifications up on the Nissan Owners web site? It's under Manage Account > Edit / Add Vehicle Information. You have to provide your info in the "CARWINGS Notification Contacts" section.
 
turbo2ltr said:
One of the biggest oversights (IMO) is that charging on a timer only occurs if the car is plugged in at exactly the time the timer triggers. Otherwise you will have to hit the manual button and will go to 100%.

fully agree.
i want a simply way to get 80% on weekends when all day is base rate.
 
jcesare said:
linkim said:
I have had no problem with charging to 80% using the LEAF timer and not the Blink timer. Following the advice of others, I set start at 1210AM and stop at 1150AM. However, I don't receive an email from the car/Blink as mentioned by Randy. I can look at my Nissan site for info on the charge status and Carwings. Is there something I'm missing or overlooked regarding email messages? I have a Droid and not iphone. Is that part of the problem?

Did you set the notifications up on the Nissan Owners web site? It's under Manage Account > Edit / Add Vehicle Information. You have to provide your info in the "CARWINGS Notification Contacts" section.


I did set my CW Notification to email (not text) and entered my email address. Also listed under CARWINGS™ notification contacts is my cell number and provider. I wonder if this is messing me up since I have a Droid. Will try deleting the cell phone contact.
 
linkim said:
I wonder if this is messing me up since I have a Droid.
Unlikely - I was able to get both email and cell phone notification to work on my Droid 2 through Verizon
 
svBackstreets said:
I do not want to use the timers. I drive at different times. I would like the charge to always begin when I plug the car in. I want the default charge to be 80%.

This seems like it would be a very simple thing to do. I would think there are many drivers like me who do not have a regular schedule or an off peak rate plan and almost never need a 100% charge.

If you set the percent entry on the timer screen to 80% and disable the timers why would it charge to 100%?
Unfortunately the LEAF doesn't provide a way to do what you're requesting. Since the 80% is a function of the timers, it will only function during a timer. That's why it's on the timer screen.

Probably what I would recommend is charging to 100%, but only charging every-other day. If you won't be driving the LEAF for a couple of weeks, take it down to 10 bars of SOC and just leave it unplugged.
 
turbo2ltr said:
One of the biggest oversights (IMO) is that charging on a timer only occurs if the car is plugged in at exactly the time the timer triggers. Otherwise you will have to hit the manual button and will go to 100%.

In my experience, as long as you have an end time on the timer, you can plug in during the "window" and the car will start charging. It's only if there is no end time on the timer that it won't kick in (which is as it should be, since without a boundary on the timer, when starting "late" it could inadvertently carry on into a higher TOU rate - or, to look at it another way, once you're late, how late is "just late, go ahead and start" and how late is "missed it, wait for the next start time" - it has no way of speculating on that.

We have our 80% timer set to start at 9pm, and end at 5am. If we plug in before 9pm, it does not start (actually, it starts and stops right away), then fires up at 9pm and charges to 80%.

If we get home after 9pm and plug in, it starts charging right away, and stops at 80% (really 10 bars, which is then reported at 83%)
 
svBackstreets said:
I do not want to use the timers. I drive at different times. I would like the charge to always begin when I plug the car in. I want the default charge to be 80%.

This seems like it would be a very simple thing to do. I would think there are many drivers like me who do not have a regular schedule or an off peak rate plan and almost never need a 100% charge.

If you set the percent entry on the timer screen to 80% and disable the timers why would it charge to 100%?
I do exactly what you want to do, but there is no way to charge to 80% without using a timer, unfortunately. I simply set up a timer for every day of the week to charge to 80% from 12:00AM start time to 12:00AM end time. Whenever I plug the car in it starts charging and stops at 80% charge. If I want to go to 100%, I use the "No Timer" button. This has worked perfectly for me for 1000 miles now.

TT
 
wsbca and TT, I dont know how you are doing that; plugging in after the start time and getting a charge to 80%

Leaf help says it cant do that, and I cant do it either.

I was curious about other reference to just programming a stop time and 80%.
I may try that tomorrow.
tonite, I am testing the 80% with timer, as I get home before 8 p.m., when the base rate starts.
 
thankyouOB said:
wsbca and TT, I dont know how you are doing that; plugging in after the start time and getting a charge to 80%
If the start and end time are both set to midnight, when is "before" and when is "after" the start time? Think about it.

Leaf help says it cant do that, and I cant do it either.
Who is "Leaf help?" are you calling Customer Service or something? Did you try what I did? It works for me.

I was curious about other reference to just programming a stop time and 80%.
Keep in mind what it says in the manual (p. CH-19):
"When only the charging timer end time is set, the system automatically determines
when to begin charging based on the Li-ion battery charge level."

Thus if you come home at 5:00PM and have only an end time set at 5:00AM, not a start time, the car may not start charging until it needs to, which may not be until sometime after midnight, depending on its state of charge when you parked it. If you have the timer set to 80% charge level, and you park the car and plug it in at 5:00PM with 20% SOC remaining in the pack, it may not start charging for 6 or 7 hours. In such a case, you only need a 60% charge to "top it off," which will only take about 3 hours with the Blink EVSE, so it will not start until 3-4 hours before the end time, or about 1-2:00AM.

Hey--why am I helping you? Aren't you the guy who insulted me multiple times in earlier threads?

Never mind...forget I said anything. Call CS again and follow their excellent instructions. They're all experts and know everything about your Leaf. :p

TT
 
Back
Top