ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
Makes And Models => Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ => Topic started by: stevenh on January 22, 2017, 06:20:34 PM
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I took a quick look at my '16 DSR in storage in the basement this weekend. It has been plugged in for a few weeks now without being used. It is at 100% charge, but the cell balance voltage showed 44mv, this is much higher than I have ever seen before, but the bike has never been idle for this long. Anyone else seeing similar results in storage?
Steve
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As the app is not very reliable at the moment, I would do several reconnects and see if the results differ. Maybe you could also plug it out and back in once or even key it on for a minute and back off.
Otherwise you could also pull the complete logs via the app and send them to your own E-Mail and use the online log decoder.
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The last time I charged my '15 SR was probably in November last year (so over a month ago). I always keep it unplugged when I'm not charging it for my next use. I had charged it to 100% back then, expecting to ride it, but that did not happen due to poor weather for about a month, other than for a couple miles running errands. The dash continued to show 100% until late in December, then we hit 65-70F unexpectedly, and I ran some more errands that brought the charge down to mid 80%. The bike has been parked in the garage since then and not ridden. It is indoors garage, which even in freezing outside temps stays in the 45F-55F inside.
Anyway, I just checked my bike with the app and it shows 3mv unbalance only, and 87% SoC (same as on the dash).
So, just sitting there, unplugged, my bike does not seem to loose charge or get cell imbalance. I will test the range in the Spring as I do not expect to ride it again until then. I won't be plugging it in though, unless I see the charge falling much below 40% SoC, which I suspect will not happen. At the rate it is loosing charge, I don't think it will loose more than a few % if that for the 3-4 winter months than I don't ride it.
For my Vectrix with Nissan Leaf cells conversion and no BMS, I too kept it off the grid for the winter. Similarly, the voltage on the battery stayed within just a couple of volts from when last charged. And the cells were always in balance (they are top-balanced, like on the Zero, but because there is no BMS to mess with their balance, these good quality cells tend to stay in balance and do not need rebalancing for many years).
Li batteries, unless there is a defective or poorly designed or implemented BMS, should be perfectly fine spending a few months off the grid. I see absolutely no reason to keep my SR plugged when not in use. Yup, everyone is free to do what they want, including follow the manual ;), but in this case, for Winter storage, I think it makes a lot more sense to charge it to 100%, make sure equalization has finished (i.e., very small, under 3mv cell imbalance), then ride it not too aggressively until SoC drops to something like 60%, then park it for the cold season off the grid. Do check the SoC and cell balance by turning on the bike every now and then to make sure there is not surprise malfunction of some sort. Mine is charged a bit more at nearly 90%, but that's just because I did not get a chance to discharge it more. Will do next year :)
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As the app is not very reliable at the moment, I would do several reconnects and see if the results differ. Maybe you could also plug it out and back in once or even key it on for a minute and back off.
Otherwise you could also pull the complete logs via the app and send them to your own E-Mail and use the online log decoder.
Lenny - I'm on a I-Mac and I always get an error when trying to decipher my logs - are they optimized for just PC's? Thanks
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So which tool do you use to decode the logs? Don't know why there should be any difference if you are using a browser-based tool.
Anyway you can send your logs to me and I will decode them for you if want.
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As the app is not very reliable at the moment, I would do several reconnects and see if the results differ. Maybe you could also plug it out and back in once or even key it on for a minute and back off.
Otherwise you could also pull the complete logs via the app and send them to your own E-Mail and use the online log decoder.
Lenny - I'm on a I-Mac and I always get an error when trying to decipher my logs - are they optimized for just PC's? Thanks
Doesn't it run a Python script? Should do great on a Linux based system. Of course you need the right version, and dependencies, and permissions, etc. 😵
2015 FX ZF6.5 👹 DoD #2160,6
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Use the online log parser if your computer can't handle it
http://electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=6474.0 (http://electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=6474.0)
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Thanks hate to be a pain for you guys but here's what happens:
I went to the page:
Selected my file (1) Browse (Found my Bin file)
Next I selected 2) Upload & Parse
This is what I got:
Parsing of ./logs/538SDBZ63HCG07126_MbbD_2016-12-08.bin failed.
[5804 entries found]
Try downloading the results anyway: ./logs/538SDBZ63HCG07126_MbbD_2016-12-08.txt
When I try to open the txt file I get:
Zero MBB log
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Thanks hate to be a pain for you guys but here's what happens:
Lenny's advice above to keep retrying until it works is about all we can suggest from afar. Someone else would have to run the file with the script to debug it.
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Your file name has MbbD instead of MBB on the bin files I get from my bike.
Could be irrelevant.
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Hey guys seen this posted on FB site?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Klt3acRW0yRhKeO5vWxJQs6z_cFbRbZrj8JgMf38sYY/edit#gid=368514510
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That's not a public document - I can't access it ...
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I've updated the storage recommendations on the wiki: http://zeromanual.com/index.php/Usage#Storage (http://zeromanual.com/index.php/Usage#Storage)
Someone made a good estimate once of how much the battery discharges over time with only the BMS on but I can't remember what that is or where I saw it. So the estimate there is on the high side to be safe.
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Thanks for posting, Brian!
Yup, conservative estimate is better than finding the bike dead one day.
Still, 10% SoC loss a week is way too much, I think, for a healthy bike. My '15 SR has been sitting unplugged in the garage since mid November if I remember right. Back then it was left at 100% SoC and only about 2.5 miles traveled on that last charge. I don't think I saw any % drop over several weeks - it stayed at 100%. When a warm day came unexpectedly in December, I rode for about 15 miles and the charge went down accordingly to the upper 80% SoC. Sat unused for another few weeks, then another warm day came and I rode it for another 20-30 miles, in order to bring the charge down to 50% or so. Just went down in the garage to check on it - 53% SoC, with 4mV to 5mV cell balance. These numbers are consistent with what I expect to see in normal daily usage at the same mileage on this last charge. There is virtually no loss in SoC reported and the cells stay very well balanced according to the bike and the app. On the last ride (couple of months into inactivity) the bike was using about 1% per mile in suburban traffic, which is about normal and consistent with its energy use in daily charging use (so the SoC is not just fake/surface charge, the battery is actually holding a good charge).
So it has been over 3 months now in storage, unplugged, and by the looks of it, the bike could happily spend many more months unplugged without loosing much charge (if any).
Yes, I plan to charge it fully to get the pack rebalanced before my next use when warm spring weather returns in March or April down here. But 4-5mV imbalance at near 50% SoC and over 3 months unplugged is pretty darn good, if these numbers can be trusted...
This is just another data point, may or may not be valid for everyone's bike due to who knows what factors, including firmware differences, age, model, etc.
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I went to go fix that section and realized I shuffled some notes into the wrong section and fixed that.
I did make a back-of-the-napkin calculation, though: if the BMS continuously drew 5W, a 2016 11.4kWh nominal battery would draw down 100% SoC to 0% in about three months.
So, 10% per week is a reasonable figure if conservative; kind of a worst case way to know when to go check on the bike just in case.
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That logic is sound, and I agree a conservative estimate is safer. You are saying more than 30% SoC loss per month this way. But I think, based on my observations on my bike, the pack is not losing charge that fast. I think the BMS continuous draw is closer to 0.15W rather than to 5W. If that lower figure is close to correct, it would result in about 1% loss of charge per month on an 11kW pack. While I don't know what the exact loss % per month is, on my bike it seems to be closer to 1% per month than to 30% - there is barely any change in SoC reported on the app over several months unplugged...
I've been checking my bike every few weeks and the reported SoC has not budged one bit. If anything it rises a few percent in the hours/days after the bike is shut-off after last use, and then stays constant for the next few weeks. I'll report here again the next time I check my SoC - last night it was 53%, 4-5mV imbalance.
Is anyone seeing faster decline in SoC when unplugged?
I went to go fix that section and realized I shuffled some notes into the wrong section and fixed that.
I did make a back-of-the-napkin calculation, though: if the BMS continuously drew 5W, a 2016 11.4kWh nominal battery would draw down 100% SoC to 0% in about three months.
So, 10% per week is a reasonable figure if conservative; kind of a worst case way to know when to go check on the bike just in case.
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I've updated it again with the 150mA figure and some back of the napkin maths, but suggesting monthly checkups anyway, because we can't say what rate someone is going to get, especially if there's a slow problem.
http://zeromanual.com/index.php/Usage#Storage (http://zeromanual.com/index.php/Usage#Storage)
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Can the SoC calculations be trusted after the bike has been sitting for a few months? Is it possible that under load the SoC will suddenly drop from 40% to below 0%?
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To All of you,
i dont understand this topic,
to store the bike with 100% soc is just killing the battery !
read the comment from farasis battery engineer here in this forum.
if i store the bike at 30%, after 5 month i have still 30% ?
how about this?
greeting :)
lamac
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In my case the SoC was fairly real. After having sat at high SoC for several weeks, I rode it for 30+ miles to bring it from 80%+ to 50%+ SoC. That's about normal for the kind of riding I do.
It would be good to also monitor the voltage of the pack and the cell balance, not just the % SoC, and to do as much of that as possible while riding.
I don't even know if the BMS is actually consuming anything when the bike is off and unplugged and has been off for some time. Would be good if someone in the know chimes-in about that (i.e., if the BMS remains on or shuts off completely, I know it's on for a few minutes after shut off as I can see the indicator lights on the front of the battery, bit after a few minutes they seem to go dark). The reported losses in SoC are so little, that it might just be normal battery self discharge.
Can the SoC calculations be trusted after the bike has been sitting for a few months? Is it possible that under load the SoC will suddenly drop from 40% to below 0%?
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Let's see how this flies (making this up based on what I've heard):
The most conservative thing you can do is:
- Once a month, take the bike out and ride it down to 20%.
- Charge it back up to 100% to balance cel voltages.
- Ride it some more to get it to 60-80%.
- Put it back in storage unplugged and set a reminder for the next month.
This would seem to me to cover absolutely all the bases I've ever heard. How does that sound?
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Sounds like an absolute nightmare...
Might not even be possible if you live in a cold climate.
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Sounds like an absolute nightmare...
Might not even be possible if you live in a cold climate.
In cold climate you'd just power your 120VAC Christmas holiday lights off the battery pack. No need to ride the bike.
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To All of you,
i dont understand this topic,
to store the bike with 100% soc is just killing the battery !
read the comment from farasis battery engineer here in this forum.
as great as this theory is.... 100% charged is not at the cell max they're rated at.... and even if you do this "abusive" behavior for years you wont have any degradation that you could compare and measure against the expected best case degradation. while keeping the cells at 4.2 does kill them fast, simply limiting it to 4.15 drops that down significantly... and gives you some overhead.
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I proposed something conservative, not some minimum requirement. Clearly the manufacturer's recommendations are working fine for people so far.
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To All of you,
i dont understand this topic,
to store the bike with 100% soc is just killing the battery !
read the comment from farasis battery engineer here in this forum.
if i store the bike at 30%, after 5 month i have still 30% ?
how about this?
greeting :)
lamac
Lamac,
Most Lithium cells have a self-discharge rate of 2% to 3% per month, so if you store the bike with 50% SOC, in 6 months it would only lose an average of 15% and therefore the pack would remain at a safe 35% SOC. While you could store here at 30% you would be getting pretty close to to the critical area.
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Just FYI, 10 days later, the reported SoC and cell balance has not budged one bit. Still exactly the same as seen below. Meanwhile, my Zero app has apparently auto-updated on my phone, so I had to attempt a couple of re-connects to the bike (no need to re-pair though). The new app reports exactly the same values as the old one.
Since the weather is warm this week, I'm charging now and will be riding the bike to work a few times, so sorry, I probably won't be providing any more long-term storage SoC measurements off the grid and without charging. But based on the two winters so far that I've had the bike like that, I see no reason to keep it plugged when not in use - mine kept its cell balance and charge with negligible losses.
. I'll report here again the next time I check my SoC - last night it was 53%, 4-5mV imbalance
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Thanks for the reply - you might try running that battery as low as you can to get all the cells down and hopefully a fresh charge and balancing might bring them back to specs. Let us know!
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Low, your reply is probably not meant for me, but I'm curious - why would you recommend to run the battery down low? I thought on a Li battery that's not a good idea and also not necessary, since the BMS in the Zero only does top-balance after full charge. What would bringing the charge low accomplish?
Thanks for the reply - you might try running that battery as low as you can to get all the cells down and hopefully a fresh charge and balancing might bring them back to specs. Let us know!
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I'm picking up my new 2016 FXS in a few days. I assume it will have been manufactured quite a few months ago and been sitting unplugged in a crate all that time. I wonder what state of charge it started with and where it will be now. I'll check the logs from the initial charge that the dealer does.
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I proposed something conservative, not some minimum requirement. Clearly the manufacturer's recommendations are working fine for people so far.
Extremely conservative I think Brian. I'd make it simpler:
Option 1: Leave plugged in and don't worry about it.
Option 2: Drop the SoC to 50%, unplug and set a reminder to check the SoC after a month in storage. Note the drop and set another reminder to check the SoC when it reaches 30% based on your estimate of the drop per month.
After that first check, I reckon you could leave the bike for six months. That is pure speculation though. I'd love to hear some more real world examples.
For some, I bet even my option 2 might be too much hassle. I reckon that my 2014 DSP was probably left plugged in at 100% for the two years or so before I bought it. After all the head scratching I've done on this topic, I've defaulted to leaving it plugged in whenever it's at home. I don't bother unplugging it even when I know I won't use it for a week or two. That's very seldom though. It's pure laziness. I know it would be better to unplug it, but I can't be bothered to run it down before a few days off. I also don't want to forget top it up before I need it again. I forgot to plug my bike in once when I got home from work one night and it really stung the next morning!
I don't know what real world mileage a brand new 2014DS would have achieved. Mine could do about 65 miles of mixed riding when I got it, with me on it etc. I don't think that has changed after a year and 10,000 miles. Time will tell!
I wish the bearings were as good as the battery...
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FWIW, there's a report on FB that their bike lost 45% SoC in two months while unattended.
I know there's a huge bias for anyone to assume that maintenance doesn't need to be done because nothing went wrong the last time you checked. But you check because something might have gone wrong and you want to make sure anything is taken care of.
So, 90% of the bikes 90% of the time discharge at a microscopic rate and have good cel balance. Newer bikes with better battery engineering are on the top of that list. But maybe that pre-2015 bike develops a very minor leak current (or the BMS acts up subtly) that doesn't even produce heat, but does discharge the battery at a rate of 10% per month. You'll never notice if you don't look and have a way to compare.
This was ground into me running military nuclear power plants, where you're meant to really check every dial in the plant for changes, and understand those changes and be able to explain them. Getting bored and acting like everything is fine works most of the time, until it doesn't. I like things that last a long time and are easy to work on, troubleshoot, and keep maintained. Building or having things that wear out is a drag. Not being able to understand what you want to take care of is a drag, which is why I am repulsed by modern cars.
I'm sure the responsible thing to do (plugged or unplugged) is to go check your bike SoC once a month while it's in storage, and do something about it if it's out of the 20-80% range (or 95-100% range plugged in). Think of it as protecting your investment.
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Sage advice there Brian. Do what Brian says folks.
If you're an idle bugger like me, use my method but don't blame me if you check on your bike in spring and find it's bricked! [emoji848]
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Cross posted from FB. I am not Ron Van Hul and not sure if he's on here, but I do appreciate the information. I'll be interested to see how/if Zero puts this information out.
Ron Van Hul
Ron Van Hul Last week I asked inquiries@zeromotorcycles.com:
Should I recharge when capacity is more than 50%
The answer:
No, only if it is below 50%. It is also important NOT to leave the bike plugged in all the time as stated in your owner’s manual. Zero will make a clarifying statement on this matter in the next few weeks. You can be ahead of the curve be doing this.
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Cross posted from FB. I am not Ron Van Hul and not sure if he's on here, but I do appreciate the information. I'll be interested to see how/if Zero puts this information out.
Ron Van Hul
Ron Van Hul Last week I asked inquiries@zeromotorcycles.com:
Should I recharge when capacity is more than 50%
The answer:
No, only if it is below 50%. It is also important NOT to leave the bike plugged in all the time as stated in your owner’s manual. Zero will make a clarifying statement on this matter in the next few weeks. You can be ahead of the curve be doing this.
Clarity on this would be welcome. Presumably they've figured out better battery management somehow.
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Balance plot over the winter (looks like a firmware issue to me...)
Steve
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Really interesting to see how the imbalance steadily increases. I have been keeping my bike off the plug 100% of the time when not in use, even during the off-season (so several months off the grid) and checking the balance periodically, and it has been always less than max of 6mV and within 1 mv from where it started when last charged, so insignificant change. I've been doing it since I got the bike, long before the Zero guidance started, simply because it makes sense on many levels and my empirical observations supported the theory. I'm glad Zero caught-up and changed their guidance.
As to why you see that increase, it could be hardware and/or firmware related, but definitely not what you want or expect from a properly functioning charging system ...
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Back to 3mv tonight!
Steve
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That is a really interesting trend line! I wonder if it's just one layer of cells or something with a nearly-immeasurable difference.
The slope indicates that 45mV are lost over a period of 60 days. 45mV / 3.65V nominal = 0.0123287671 or 1.23% difference in cell voltages.
If I do a little napkin math, (45 millivolts / 3.65 volts) * 28Ah / (60days * 24hr/day) = 0.00023972602A or 0.24mA average differential discharge over those two months to get that result.
I'm not sure what to do with that, but maybe it's food for thought for the right wizard here.
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Cell balance is reported as a delta between cell with highest voltage and cell with lowest voltage....Looks like you may have a bad cell that is dropping voltage until the charger steps in and rebalances....You are still leaving it plugged in as you said in original post?
If the bike wasn't plugged in while stored that one cell might have fallen into no man's land. Have you sent the logs to Zero? Or tried to analyze them yourself? Did you get the data from the logs? The BMS logs should be able to confirm if one cell is indeed a bad actor....Not sure you would see it in the MBB logs.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
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Cell balance is reported as a delta between cell with highest voltage and cell with lowest voltage....Looks like you may have a bad cell that is dropping voltage until the charger steps in and rebalances....You are still leaving it plugged in as you said in original post?
If the bike wasn't plugged in while stored that one cell might have fallen into no man's land. Have you sent the logs to Zero? Or tried to analyze them yourself? Did you get the data from the logs? The BMS logs should be able to confirm if one cell is indeed a bad actor....Not sure you would see it in the MBB logs.
1% per 60 days is not an unreasonable rate, and can easily be checked monthly and fixed when appropriate, though.
But yes, BMS logs might show something interesting.
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I do have both sets of logs. I did have the bike plugged in until late March when I saw the new recommendations. Its interesting that the balance voltage crept to 43mv, then reset to around 20mv, then back up to 63mv in two different ramps.
It took a few days of riding/recharging to get back to 3mv. I am going to keep a close eye on the balance from now on and won't leave the bike plugged in for more than a day when it's at 100%.
Zero also recommended a firmware update (I have the firmware my bike shipped with in April of last year, I have yet to be back to the dealer).
Steve