fishfool said:
When the charging timer is on in the Leaf there is a setting for charging limit either 100% or 80% this setting applies unless the immediate charge button on left side of dash is activated. That is why most owners don't use the timer program on their home Blink chargers, it's hard to know what timer program is stopping the charge (Blink or Leaf). The other factor is that the QC stations will not do a 100% charge, they are programmed to stop at 80% to prevent battery damage. The QC also lowers the amperage as the charge gets closer to 80% for the same reason. That is the final problem with QC charging if all the chargers were working properly. Nissan does not recommend more than 1 quick charge a day to prevent a shortened battery life. So even if we wanted to cruise Interstate 40/75, the 1 quick charge a day limit makes a 300 mile trip time consuming at the least.
Tom
Right, I've never used my home L2 Blink EVSE timer. I only use the LEAF timer both at home and when using other Blink L2 EVSE.
But I don't think the car timer controls anything but L2 LEAF charging.
Both the Blink DCFC and the Eaton appear to have the DCFC controlling the charging.
You're correct that the DCFC default is to only go to 80%, but both the Blink and the Eaton will allow you to select 100% charging with the DCFC. On the Blink the screen gives several options such as 40%, 60%, 80%; but it also has an Other option. When you select Other, it allows you to select 90% or 100%.
And yes, the maximum rate of charging that the LEAF battery can tolerate is markedly reduced above 80%.
When the battery charge is very low, the DCFC will charge at a very rapid rate. The Eaton displays the amps charging, and when I started charging with the car at <20%, it initially was charging at 200 amps. The amps continually dropped as charging occurred, and were down around 140 amps when the car was at 60% charged.
When I used the Cleveland Blink DCFC to charge from 77% to 100%, it took about 30 minutes. I haven't tested to see how long L2 takes to charge from 77% to 100%, but my guess is it is somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour. So final charging to 100% isn't much faster with the DCFC.
You're correct that Nissan in their published literature states use of fast charging should only be once per day.
But the feedback provided by the LEAF engineers in the forum in California in early December indicated that the DCFC monitors the LEAF battery temperature, and that there is very little concern with use of fast charging even for multiple times per day except in extremely high ambient temperatures.
Several people in Europe where they have deployed an extensive DCFC network that is mostly free, have reported they have done multiple use of DCFC and drive the Leaf more than 300 miles in one day.
On the day I did two, the first was 77% to 100%. As the rate of charging is so slow from 77% to 100%, that DCFC likely was no different than had I used L2.
I agree that people won't drive the LEAF 200 to 300 miles per day very much, as it takes 30 minutes of DCFC to go from 20% to 80%. And for Interstate speeds, that will mean 30 minutes of DCFC for <1 hour of driving. Not many people will ever drive the LEAF 300 miles in one day doing four or five DCFC.
I only drove 105 miles the one day, when I did two.
