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[Pard]

^^^ Well said sir!

[PWM]

^^^ Well said sir!

I didn't understand it because balancing is not about selective cell charging...it's about collective discharge of the runt cells (ones w/ lowest capacity) that allows healthy ones (ones w/ highest capacity) to fully charge...  In Energica's case we have the 12V keep alive group that are likely the best cell grades of the bunch given the task to wake up ECU...

[FlyMig]

Thanks Specter or Arron. I love the bike, enjoy it every time I take it out.  It is somewhat complicated for a normal person that's not that familiar with all these specific details. Charging should be easy, plug and play. But I do wish they had active balance where you don't need a full charge to balance just like Tesla does. You set the limit and the bike is balanced at all times.

And I read the whole post, thank you so much for taking your time to write it up. I want my bike to run properly, this stuff is important.

Thanks

[Specter]

You are very welcome fly.
I agree with you, I wish there was a passive system in there.
I have one on my own cells at home, it's really a stupidly simple system, essentially a sort of Wheatstone bridge almost.  It looks across the cells and if they unbalance it slides power from the higher ones to the lower ones to keep them all even.  You can put it on a single arm across EACH battery if you so desire.  You can add an external charger to keep the voltages topped, however with Lith, this is NOT generally a desired way to do it.

I run 48 volts on one of my main inverter setups.  It's 4x 12 volt batteries.  I put one of these between each battery.  It keeps them all balanced.  The same principal can be done inside each battery cell,  lets say it is 4x 3 volt arm cells to give you the 12 volt battery.  ok you balance each 3 volt arm.... or however you want to do it, you can get as complicated or simple as you want.

It's not very expensive either, and best of all, it's PASSIVE.   I would assume though, the reason the bike and car manu's don't do this is because while this type of balancing runs great at lower voltages, when you look at the overall dielectric strength of the components, they may not like seeing 300 or more volts impressed on them during 'events'.  Well this diode has insulation up to 100 volts, is awesome in a 12 volt system, but when you start stringing them together, and now the entire 'group' has a potential of 300 volts, suddenly that 100 volt insulation resistance does not mean very much does it.

As for your bike, you do NOT have to balance it every trip / recharge. But Id say once a week, lets say sunday nights, throw the thing on the wall charger,  115 or 240 volt, depending on where in the world you live, and let it steep overnight, get a nice full charge and you should get plenty of years out of it.

Remember, lith technology, they warranty it for 1200 cycles, that is FULL cycles, not just swings.  So doing the math, you'd have put put well over 100k miles on your bike, realistically, to be reaching these edges of your charge cycle warranty.

Aaron

Aaron

[FlyMig]

Def, that makes sense.  I will charge to full at least once a week from now on to see if things improve.  For now the only thing that bugs me is when charge current keeps fluctuating, most of the time I have it set to 14 amp. So like today it got up to 70% and started dipping to 6 amp and ramping up to 14 before dipping again. Wasn't doing that before.  Bike is Eva '22 my with a little over 10k miles.  Runs like a champ, looks new too, I keep it clean haha.   
Think they said tested for 1200 or 1300 cycles at DC fast charge and that's why they increased the warranty to five years instead of three.  As for me I rarely charge DC, that's only if I extend my ride and can't get home with remaining charge. 

Sounds good Arron

[Specter]

My racing bike will do that too on the first charge after sitting a few days, it'll hunt all over the place once it's in a balancing mode, but as soon as I get the percent down to where it's back into normal charge mode,  uhh, mid 80s percent wise?  then from that point on the charge is like you'd expect it to be.  It'll do this in both AC and DC charge mode once it hits balancing.

 Sometimes I'll put it up right after a run with 70 percent or so on it, im tired it's the last run of the day, it's getting ready to rain, whatever, I say ehh, and put it up for the night . Being monday, up for the night means a week or two .  This is when I see that manifest it seems. 

Not entirely sure WHY, but yah it is kind of annoying because it slows down the first charge of the day.  Maybe because I just romped the hell out of the pack, and put it back like that, they are out of balance enough to cause it to go in that mode?  At first I thought, hmm do I have a weak cell, but if that was the case it'd be doing this EVERY time, not just after a long set and only the first one.

Definitely sounds like a balance issue,  give it a FULL charge, even if it's sitting there showing zero, but still says balancing, let it run, over night if it has to.  If you come back the next morning, and it says 98 or 99 percent, even if it says charge complete, start it up again, maybe have to do this a few times until you get a good solid FULL charge where it does hit 100 percent and then says complete.  This way you KNOW it has a full charge, the batteries are nice and packed and absolutely balanced, and have a good clean starting point.

If you do restart the charge at say 98 99 percent and it keeps going for half an hour, an hour etc, then it probably was that time out turn off someone talked about?  Because if it was fully charged and stopped, it should very quickly, like 10 minutes or so, hit full charge again and terminate. 

Make sure you have the bike off, ie no sitting there with the lights on etc, stuff to drain the battery down while it's sitting.  that little bit of draw could goof with a charge Id imagine.

As for FW 43 being the culprit, I am going to have to say NO.  My race bike has it's own custom software on it and does the same thing so it'd be hard to blame it on 43when it happens other places too.

Otherwise, Ditto !!  I have the 23 Ribelle and LOVE IT !!  Only complaint I have is it being capped at 125.  This really sucks on a track... and well...not supposed to say this, but a nice sunday morning, no traffic,... it can suck other times too   Too bad youa re not around Jax, we could go for a run together.

Aaron

[robbar1]

thank you for your explanation. I wonder why Tesla and my BMW ce 04 don't have these issues . never saw my BMW struggle for hours to balance. I mean it's the same technology and same electrical theory .

[Sklith]

I can't speak for the BMW ce 04, but Tesla's cars have enough energy to spare for periodic cell balancing throughout the day, plugged in or not.

[Pard]

Price point drives design.

Low weight drives motorcycle design.

Energica made the choices it made as a compromise, as is always the case in real world engineering choices.

They could make the battery as perfect as a Tesla or BMW, they could improve the charging, cooling and balancing, but then even fewer folks would buy them due to the price point moving out into the realm of unobtanium for most.

As it is, too few people are buying electric motorcycles for the industry to thrive.

[DonTom]

I can't speak for the BMW ce 04, but Tesla's cars have enough energy to spare for periodic cell balancing throughout the day, plugged in or not.

Is that why Tesla can lose 1% SOC per day when not plugged in?


Teslas must be left plugged in when gone for a month. My Chevy Bolt will not lose a single SOC during the same time that my Tesla will drop 30 SOC, when both not plugged in.


“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”
 ? Thomas Sowell


-Don-  Auburn, CA

[Sklith]

Is that why Tesla can lose 1% SOC per day when not plugged in?


Teslas must be left plugged in when gone for a month. My Chevy Bolt will not lose a single SOC during the same time that my Tesla will drop 30 SOC, when both not plugged in.

1% per day is not normal. You may see an initial drop in the first couple days or so but the car will go into a hibernation mode of sorts. It's very important to not open the Tesla app while it's in long term storage as it'll wake the car up.

[DonTom]

I It's very important to not open the Tesla app while it's in long term storage as it'll wake the car up.

I think that was my issue, I was checking it too often when away, when it was not plugged in.  So now I know not to check it when away, as that will wake it up for a couple of days or whatever.


Thanks for the info.  I never even thought about that.


-Don-  Auburn, CA

[Stonewolf]

I've done thousands of miles between balances on occasion (including a significant delve into reserve power on one occasion) and so far my bike is fine. I'd say balancing isn't really something you need to worry about on a weekly basis.

[Specter]

Id balance once a month unless you are frequently going to the outer edges either way on the percentage or run your bike in extreme conditions, ie a racetrack as an example.
a 20 / 80 range is pretty good, and would not need a balance that often.  Every cycle the batteries may imbalance slightly, and over time yes it will add up, but unless you are pushing it to the extremes it should not harm your performance or battery pack.

Aaron