GID# for Turtle

I just received my LEAF DD today (Thanks Greg!). It's awesome--I wish I got it much sooner.

Does anyone know at what GID # does the car enter "Turtle mode"?

On the home screen, I know that:

49 GIDs is when I hit LBW,
24 GIDs is when I hit VLBW.

I saw from an earlier posting that 7 GIDs is when the car stops.

A few early observations (apologies that I didn't get other data points yet--I had to leave in a hurry, and didn't get all of the data at 100% charge):

I got 222 GIDs when I charged to 100% overnight.
My "H" (presumably "Health") is at 65.41%.

Does anyone know how to improve the health from a dismal 65.41% ?

Does connecting the 120v portable "brick" in lieu of the Blink Level 2 to do a <20% capacity to 100% still balance the cells and restore health?

CayenneSJLEAFy said:

Does anyone know at what GID # does the car enter "Turtle mode"?...

I saw from an earlier posting that 7 GIDs is when the car stops.

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Sorry, there isn't a hard number and that's because it's triggered by the lowest cell pair voltage. This can happen with a Gid range from 4 to 8, typically. I generically use 6 or 7.

I got 222 GIDs when I charged to 100% overnight.

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The car's battery is degraded. You're at about 222 / 281 = 79% capacity. If you haven't lost a capacity bar yet, you will soon.

Does connecting the 120v portable "brick" in lieu of the Blink Level 2 to do a <20% capacity to 100% still balance the cells and restore health?

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The BMS balances the cells, and for that it just needs time after a 100% charge, typically up to 4 hours. The charger will merely restore the lost energy during the balancing process.

TonyWilliams said:

The BMS balances the cells, and for that it just needs time after a 100% charge, typically up to 4 hours.

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Is this still true for the 2013s?

In my case, on level two there seems to be a very slight taper from 90-98% on the dash, but then the vehicle will then sit on 98% (with SOC% and GIDs not changing as reported by LEAF Battery App) for *two hours* before finally announcing that the charging is complete and jumping to 100%. However, if you interrupt this process, the dash board will go from 98% to 100% as soon as you remove the plug.

Is this cell-balancing being built into the charging process, or do you need even more additional time for balancing?

Berlino said:

In my case, on level two there seems to be a very slight taper from 90-98% on the dash, but then the vehicle will then sit on 98% (with SOC% and GIDs not changing as reported by LEAF Battery App) for *two hours* before finally announcing that the charging is complete and jumping to 100%. However, if you interrupt this process, the dash board will go from 98% to 100% as soon as you remove the plug.

Is this cell-balancing being built into the charging process, or do you need even more additional time for balancing?

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I don't think that the dash % meter has anythin to do with cell balancing. Obviously, the Gids won't change during battery balancing since it is adjusted with Open Circuit Voltage. SOC% is a different calculation than Gids.

I very seriously doubt that there is any difference between any of the LEAFs with regard to cell balancing.

TonyWilliams said:

I very seriously doubt that there is any difference between any of the LEAFs with regard to cell balancing.

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Do MY11 and MY12 spend two hours balancing before signaling that the charge is complete?

Thanks Tony--greatly appreciate your feedback.

Yes, I've lost 1 CB at 35K miles in June 2013. I'm at 41K miles as of today. I might have mitigated additional loss by parking the car outdoors overnight and charging with the 120V brick during the past summer. My garage traps a lot of heat during the summer.

So if I charge the car to 100%, and let is sit for 4 hours (plugged or unplugged), the BMS would automatically balance the cells? That would explain it then, as I've always tried to leave within 1-2 hours after the car finishes charging at 100%.

So is it fair to say that once the the GIDs go below 8-9--that's it--most likely the car will just "stop" ?

Ivan Jue

From all I can tell, balancing only happens for the first 15 minutes after a full charge (when all the blue lights are on).
And then continues while you're driving or during subsequent charging.. ie whenever the BMS is powered up.

There's no indication that the car does anything (including cell balancing) beyond 15 minutes after a full charge.
That being said, I haven't seen balancing set at 80% the same way I see it on a full charge. But then I hardly charge to 80% so maybe that's not saying much.

What I DO see is the balancing shunts turn ON over the course of a few seconds after the car is turned on... The implication to me that they were off while the system was off.

Long story short, no need to leave your car sitting at full for 4 hours thinking its balancing.. it's probably not.

As for Gids at Turtle.. As Tony said probably somewhere between 4 and 8.. You're better off watching the total voltage graph on the main page of the LeafDD when you start getting low.. as long as the needle is still moving (not pegged on the right side) then you've over 330V. Chances are when you're under 330V, you're also under 10 Gids which means you better be close to home!

Berlino said:

TonyWilliams said:

I very seriously doubt that there is any difference between any of the LEAFs with regard to cell balancing.

Click to expand...

Do MY11 and MY12 spend two hours balancing before signaling that the charge is complete?

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All the LEAFs are "charge complete" when the charger stops charging. The cells are balanced both DURING and AFTER the charge event. Then, at some point between 30 minutes and 6 hours after the charge, there may be one or more short charge events to top off the battery.

Some additional notes this morning, prior to drive-off at 100%:

At 100% charge, here's what my LEAF DD revealed (on the second screen):

S: 92.289% (SOC)
C: 53.64 (Ah Capacity)
H: 65.43 (health)

Even in this much cooler autumn weather (temps yesterday had a high of 64--parked in a shade all day; garage was at 68 overnight, morning driving start was at 46 degrees), the battery was still at 70 degrees by 10am.

Got 221 GIDs this morning at 100%. Seems like I'm actually drifting toward losing my 2nd capacity bar. I'd hate to be the first person in the SF Bay Area (San Jose) to be a 2 bar loser!

TonyWilliams said:

The BMS balances the cells, and for that it just needs time after a 100% charge, typically up to 4 hours. The charger will merely restore the lost energy during the balancing process.

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I don't want to hijack this thread, but Tony - if you know - can a battery balance take place if one hits the "override charge timer" button to start charging immediately and then leaves the car plugged in for 4 hours or so after the charge finishes? For that matter, if you unplug the car when charging finishes, but don't turn it on, will the battery balance still take place? Is the battery balancing process documented anywhere?

ahagge said:

TonyWilliams said:

The BMS balances the cells, and for that it just needs time after a 100% charge, typically up to 4 hours. The charger will merely restore the lost energy during the balancing process.

Click to expand...

I don't want to hijack this thread, but Tony - if you know - can a battery balance take place if one hits the "override charge timer" button to start charging immediately and then leaves the car plugged in for 4 hours or so after the charge finishes? For that matter, if you unplug the car when charging finishes, but don't turn it on, will the battery balance still take place? Is the battery balancing process documented anywhere?

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When the LBC (BMS) decides that some cells need to be discharged to be balanced, it flags those cells to the shunted whenever the car is on or charging after the decision is made. So for example if the LBC decides cell #5 needs 50mAh taken out and let's suppose the shunt resistors are can soak about 20mA (could be anywhere form 10-50.. not sure). Then whenever the car is on or charging, that shunt will turn on until it has its 2.5 hours (or whatever) of prescribed balancing. It may happen during your drive to work, your drive to lunch, your drive home and part of your subsequent charge cycle (for example). Like I said, no need to leave the car turned off at "full" as you're probably not doing anything other than resting your cells at 4.1V. Some folks early on reported that the charger would come on for little bursts after charge complete implying that balancing WAS going on in the hours after charge complete (This is how we did cell balancing on the plug in Prius project in 2005). But I've never seen my charger turn on after charge complete and I spent a lot of time (in the early days of my first Leaf) looking for such an event.. never saw it. Perhaps the balancing algorithm changed somewhere along the line... GaryGid has old SW in his car I think.. maybe he's seen such an event?
As for a full charge after 80% (timer override).. I don't know but I'd imagine so. If you have a LeafDD or LeafSpy, just check the cells right after power up after a full charge. If you see a similar pattern the 2nd time you power up (perhaps miles later) then those cells are still working on their prescribed discharge. I don't know if LeafSpy captures data quickly enough on power up to see the shunts turning on, but on leafDD if you switch to page 3 right after power up, you can see it.

GregH said:

.... Some folks early on reported that the charger would come on for little bursts after charge complete implying that balancing WAS going on in the hours after charge complete (This is how we did cell balancing on the plug in Prius project in 2005). But I've never seen my charger turn on after charge complete and I spent a lot of time (in the early days of my first Leaf) looking for such an event.. never saw it. Perhaps the balancing algorithm changed somewhere along the line...

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The most prolifical post charge "little bursts" that I had were when the pack was likely significantly unbalanced after repeated low SOC levels, plus numerous serial partial charges, never getting to a very high SOC.

In that particular case, when the car was charged to 100% that night, there were three sequential charge events over about 5 hours. Normally, I would only observe one "little burst" occasionally, and those were always at 100% and always from about 30 minutes to 4 hours later. I think Ingineer observed one at six hours.

On this particular driving event mentioned, I know the cells were pretty out of whack because the car turtles at a fairly high Gid number, about six miles short of Diamond Bar. I got towed with the whole family.

All these were recorded by the Blink, so we could observe the duration. I'm not sure why you wouldn't see them... Better balanced cells, much lower battery cycling (depth of discharge), etc?

My two LEAFs were #2244 and #20782