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[Stonewolf]

I can't produce any kind of solid data but subjectively I feel like thermal performance on my late '21 Ribelle has gotten worse lately. At 23k miles I've not noticed any change in my range but I do notice that lately it seems like the battery throttles sooner under charge, not sure if heat dissipation between charges is affected too, I hadn't noticed getting to subsequent charges with a still yellow battery any more than before.

I'm wondering if this is something I should be expecting from battery health or if it's perhaps something I could take action on like a bad sensor or dirt somewhere it shouldn't be etc ...

[Specter]

Well it IS July.  It's not 60 degrees out,  by me it's more like 95.    Yes heat does play a factor,  so riding the bike adds more heat, then charging adds more heat.  With the outside temp being warmer, it's going to take longer for the battery to shed it's heat, meaning the core heat, is going to stick around longer.  Yes back to back charge / discharge, will make a difference, it has not had time to get rid of the heat generated from the previous use.  On my race bike I can see this real easy.  When your battery temp / air temp the difference is only like 10 or 15 degrees, not a lot of room there for heat transfer.

Now lets throw in environmentals.   Is your bike outside?  Is it in the sun?  that hot ass sun on that nice black bike, heats the piss out of that battery buried under the fairings / cowling.  Even being parked, which in this case is the worst scenario, the sun baking on that black plastic, it's like a mini oven for the battery, especially on calmer days with no wind to take the heat away.  It's the radiation from the sun, the IR beating down on the plastic, which is then converting it directly to heat basically.  IMO the type of plastic they use for the top, the tank cover is the worst, I've done studies on that but I'll leave that alone.

If you had a small fan, even a USB driven one that you can put under there just to get a little airflow across the battery it could help quite a bit.

But yes, even at yellow, riding, you probably don't notice it unless you are really romping the bike (like racing) but especially charging, where you WILL notice it, it will throttle it down.

Another thing that helps is if you can shield the direct sun on that black cowling / tank cover /fairing.  Hell, even throwing a beach towel on the bike, drape it,so that the sun is NOT directly on that black plastic will deflect and keep a lot of heat out of the battery area.

When I race, I have one of these pop up canopy's I throw up to hide under, keep out of that beating down sun.  YES it DOES make a world of difference,  makes the diff between me being able to put 35 amps into the bike vs 15 when im mid yellow and the sun is baking the bike so hot you can barely touch it.

aaron

[jotjotde]

I agree. The environmental conditions make all the difference. Riding style has some influence as well.
For example:
Saturday I started a tour in the morning at 18 deg C, charged (CCS) at 21 degC. The battery symbol got yellow and stayed there for the rest of the trip while the ambient got to 25 degC. Plus ambitious riding 
Yesterday I started at 14 degC, charged (CCS) two times. First time battery stayed green, second time battery got yellow but turned green again during the trip at ambient 20 deg C. Riding was more seduced BC I had a bit slower company.

So, I don't think you need to worry.

[Stonewolf]

By "lately" I mean "this year" rather than "this summer"

[SBK74]

I get what you mean. Saturday early morning I drove 180 km on one charge to first charge at around 15% SOC. I had been driving so carefully and already the bike started throtteling at 55% SOC. I have the idea that it has become worse. Also this spring I had that problem. In my recollection I could always pull a first charge till high 70's before throttling. It could be that FW 42 is more, or that internal resistance has increased. Battery wasn't even yellow.

[chisquare]

@Stonewolf Could you describe how the mentioned "throttling" looks or feels like? Does it relate to the situation when you open the throttle fully and the bike doesn't pull unconditionaly but has reduced power? How much of a reduction does it feel like?

[FlyMig]

I think he meant that the charging rate has been reduced while DC fast charging. Although I rarely fast charge same thing has happened to me.  Battery starts warming up and it throttles down the charging speed.  Pretty normal

[Stonewolf]

Yeah I'm talking about when rapid charging. If you set it charging at a specific rate thermal throttling is where the temperature of the battery triggers the BMS to reduce the charge rate. I feel like my bike is hitting that point earlier in the charge than it used to.

[Specter]

You can see the amps and can actually SEE that it is doing this correct?  The battery is yellow?
Yah that can happen in summer fairly often and you don't need to be even hitting it hard.  I know there were some 'issues' with charging that 43 fixed, but I am pretty sure they were mostly handshaking issues.

How much is it throttling you down,  from like say 60 amps down to like 15 or 20 or only down to like 40.

Also where was the battery percentage at when this started happening?

Aaron

[chisquare]

Ah, didn't get that. I only fast charge my SS9+ every 10th or so time. With not too ambitious riding and temperatures below 25 degrees Celsius, 75 amps to 75% SOC are realistic. The bike has only run 10000 km, so far I have not noticed any change in charging behavior.

[Dryer667]

Have you checked the battery temp during the throttling to see at what temp it occurs? You can check it on the engineering screen.

[jotjotde]

Did you factor in that not only battery temp but SOC influences the actual CCS charging power as well? Maybe there is a third or even fourth factor?

I attached some charge curves for your information.

[PWM]

As the cells age their internal resistance will increase and more heat is generated when charging / discharging at same rate, so OP is correct in terms of charger-throttling impact...