What's Better for Battery Longevity: Trickle or 220 Volt?

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sunnyleaf1

New member
Joined
Jul 9, 2013
Messages
4
Location
San Diego, California
So, we've had our Leaf for about 4 months now, and we love most aspects of the car!

However, battery longevity is pretty much the primary concern with EV's, and so we were wondering,
over the life of the car, if it would be more beneficial for battery longevity if we were to charge
with trickle (120 volt) charging or 220 volt charging. I'm not talking about the DC fast charge-
Nissan has gone on the record saying that it decreases battery life by an additional 1% per year for
frequent DC use. But I mean just trickle versus 220.

Logic would suggest that a slower charge would be better, since it seems fast charging would build up excess
heat and all that. But what if trickle charging takes a longer amount of time, and thus the car is charging right
up to the point where I drive out for the day, and then is slightly warmer from being recently charged as opposed to the 220 volt charging which would finish well before I left for the day?

I know, this is some serious battery babying going on, but I'm curious about data showing one way or the other ;)

Also somewhat mysteriously, we seem to be getting better range on average from trickle charging than from 220 volt charging... don't know why.
 
I think, based on following lithium batteries in two wheeled EVs, that the lower rate charging is better for battery life - with one caveat. If you are going to charge to at or near 100%, it's more important that you not let the car sit fully charged than which lower rate charge (120 volt or "normal" 240 volt) gets you there...
 
It doesn't make any difference. The main thing is to set an "end" timer so that your car finishes charging at the time of morning you usually get in and drive. That way, it doesn't sit at a high state of charge for very long.
 
sunnyleaf1 said:
What's Better for Battery Longevity: Trickle or 220 Volt?
So far you have a vote for trickle and a vote for either. I'll add to the confusion and vote for 240V. :)

Here is my reasoning:
- Both charging rates are slow enough to be safe for the battery.
- If you charge with 120V, the average state-of-charge for your LEAF's battery will be higher, which will likely lead to more calendar degradation.
- If you only have 120V available, you will have more instances where you need your LEAF but it is not yet charged enough. If you take it out anyway, you may discharge your battery severely, which will degrade the battery.
- Charging at 240V may allow you to do all of your charging at night when it is coolest, so your battery temperature while charging may actually be LOWER charging at 240V.

On top of that, you will use less electricity charging at 240V, since it is quite a bit more efficient.
 
Another vote for either - it doesn't matter.
Both charge rates are quite low, I can't believe there would be a measurable difference in degradation.
 
Thanks for your responses so far. I should mention that I have a 2013 Leaf SV, so its got the 6.6 kWh onboard charger. Still no difference in relative degradation between the two types of charging?
 
Nope, it is still very low. By the way, it is 6.0Kw, not 6.6... The 2013 is rating it by input power (6.6Kw) and the 2011 and 2012 rated it by output power (3.3Kw).

sunnyleaf1 said:
Thanks for your responses so far. I should mention that I have a 2013 Leaf SV, so its got the 6.6 kWh onboard charger. Still no difference in relative degradation between the two types of charging?
 
I'll vote with Reg, for all of his reasons. 240v should be (at least slightly) better. And, as TomT says, even the 6 kW charger is very slow. 6/24 = 0.25C. Anything under 1C is slow. Anything under 0.5C is very slow.

Ray
 
Ummm, I've never been to Europe, but I understand you can't (easily) charge your LEAF there at 120v. Aren't they using 208v or 240v as their trickle charge? If 120v trickle charging was better on the battery, would we be seeing some of our European friends making this point?

From all I've read, it doesn't matter. I believe my evseupgrade.com 240v loeses less electricy when charging (more effecient), so I'll vote for 240v.
 
sunnyleaf1 said:
I know, this is some serious battery babying going on, but I'm curious about data showing one way or the other ;)

Nah, that isn't babying. Going out and manually stopping a charge so that the car 's battery is kept at 40-50% charge (or whatever the optimum is) and especially air-conditioning your garage to keep the battery cool, now that's babying your battery.
 
Randy3 said:
Ummm, I've never been to Europe, but I understand you can't (easily) charge your LEAF there at 120v. Aren't they using 208v or 240v as their trickle charge? If 120v trickle charging was better on the battery, would we be seeing some of our European friends making this point?

From all I've read, it doesn't matter. I believe my evseupgrade.com 240v loeses less electricy when charging (more effecient), so I'll vote for 240v.

Thats a question for me, since i live in Europe ;).. Thats correct. We do not have 120v here unless its transformed down for some 120v electric shavers but that does not exist anymore but some outlets are still existing in some old bathrooms :) .. In Sweden we have 230v in our outlets (in older days it was 220v but got increased to 230v to fit with the EU standard, maybe 10 years ago). We also have 3 phase connections that are 400v for appliances that uses more current (like your 240v connections), like heatpumps, big compressors, wood splitters and so on..

We are using 230v for "trickle charging" yes. 230v 10A is the charger that gets delivered with the Nissan Leaf. You could also buy equipment for 230v 16A charging.

Our houses have 3 phases going in, 16 or 20A is the default fuse setting. It is also possible to get 25A but you have to pay more. Over 25A you probably have to change the incoming cables to your house.

230*10= 2,3kW
230*16= 3,68kW

400*16A charging = 11kW (most electric cars does not support 3 phase charging yet, but it's on it's way..) I heard Tesla would deliver 3-phase charging..

Many companies have fusing up to 63A on incoming cables (over 63A is really expensive)..

400v*63A = 43kW ... :)

Hope that gave you some insight into the EU life! :)
 
I think Temperature management will have more effect on battery life than L2 vs L1 charging.
That actually makes me lean towards L2 in the middle of the night in hot summer days.
I'm thinking that the battery will cool a bit for half a night, charge will increase the temps, then the battery will have a chance to cool a bit more till the morning, so you have cooler battery when you start driving in the morning, giving your battery lower average temperature, which will help with longevity. In cold winter days L2 charging that will end just before you leave will help a little with the range.
 
Nine years down the 'pike ... I'm providing some feedback from Aotearoa NZ, just in case anyone will notice ;-)!

I agree with the person who pointed out that the "C-rate" is so low on *any* AC charge, no matter what the voltage or amperage, that's there'll be no difference on battery longevity. If you have a Leaf manufactured prior to April 2013 then you'll have what some call the "Canary" battery. My Canary-battery Leaf loses about 5% of its SOH each calendar year, and it doesn't seem to matter whether I'm using it or abusing it.

There's one possibly-big advantage for charging at 120-ish VAC, even if you have to pay the (non-trivial) efficiency overhead of a stepdown transformer -- *if* you have a small rooftop PV array, then you can solar-power your Leaf for (in my case) about 24 km/day (except during winter months) if you charge it through a stepdown transformer on sunny days; but if you charge your Leaf at 6A through 230 VAC mains power you'll overrun the capacity of your solar array except during an hour or three near its peak hours of production. By my best estimate the losses in the Leaf's AC/DC converter and battery-charging system are roughly 300W if neither of its water pumps are running, and they don't run in my case for a 1.3 kW slow-charge because I live in a temperate climate. So... if you take the trouble to start an EV-charge whenever your PV array is putting out at least 1.3 kW, its battery will charge (very roughly!) at about 1 kW... and if you can only manage this for 2 hours per day then that's only (very roughly!) about 14 km of solar-powered driving each bright summer day.

By contrast, if you use a 2:1 stepdown in front of an 8A charger... your transformer will draw (very roughly!) 1 kW, of which 900W will get to the J1772 port on the Leaf, and maybe 600W to your Leaf's battery... the heat-losses are terrible but, then again, your local AC power-line may already be saturated with as much (highly-variable!) PV-power as it can handle, and anyway your electricity retailer is probably paying you only a nominal sum for whatever excess PV electricity your household is currently "dumping" onto its local line, so ..,. I reckon that heating up a step-down transformer (and running the Leaf's AC/DC converter rather inefficiently on such a low-wattage charge) isn't really a "waste" of my household's PV power. Oh, by the way, I have a "smart" (really it's almost clueless, but it does respond to current flows into/out-of my household) controller on my hot-water cylinder, so this "water battery system" is able to "take up the slack" on excess PV production in my household unless it's already hot. Anyway, back to the rough-cut calculations... my small PV array reliably generates 1 kW for about 5 hours on every sunny day except during winter... so if I trickle-charge my Leaf at 8A 115 VAC through my step-down transformer its battery will get about 3.0 kWh -- which enough for about 21 km of solar-powered driving each sunny day except during winter. So... the 115 VAC trickle-charge, despite its inefficiency through a 2:1 stepdown transformer, is a "big win" for me -- as an EV/greenie nerd ;-)

But... as they say in my country of origin (the USA) YMMV ("your mileage may vary")! If you don't happen to have a spare 2:1 stepdown transformer that's rated for at least 1.5 kVA, and if you don't happen to know enough (or to not really know enough, but to be foolish enough ;-) to wire up your own stepdown circuit, and if you don't happen to live in a country where the regulatory regime is light-handed enough to make such an activity illegal, and if you're not *really* confident that you won't electrocute someone (including yourself) if you wire it up incorrectly... then... this post is completely irrelevant to you!
 
I’m looking for a study I read a few years ago that basically stated the best charge rate for battery longevity is roughly the rate the battery gets discharged in normal service. If I recall, that was roughly @ 12KW for cars like a leaf at that time. Advance forward a few years, batteries are larger and power consumption is also higher so maybe those assumptions don’t hold any longer.
 
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