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[Kocho]

When charging at say 80F ambient temperature, how warm or hot does your charger get after a couple of hours? Barely warm to the touch, pretty warm, hot, burning hot, no change at all?

The plastic cover on mine seems to get fairly warm, if I had to guess, 110F or so. And because it is under the battery, the area of the battery cover, and I would imagine the battery inside, would vet warm too. And we know that charging a battery that is too hot is not good for it in the long term, and if the battery temp. sensors are on top of it, they would not sense that the boom is hot and the BMS/charger won't protect it if it does get too hot...

When I'm home I setup a room fan next to the bike, so that does not happen - it gets cooled while charging. But when I charge at work during the day, there is no fan there, and the air is warmer there vs. the coolness of my house's garage at night.

[Electric Terry]

Charging a battery when hot is actually better for the battery (splitting hairs here) than when cold.  The battery internal resistance (impedance) goes down the warmer the cells are.  What isn't good for the battery is sustained temps over 50C (120F) as that increases the rate of degradation over a long period of time at high temperature.  So don't worry about the charger heating the battery, if anything its good (helps the electro chemical process work smoother actually).  A warm/hot battery can take in energy and discharge it easier.  (more range slightly the warmer the pack is)

[Kocho]

I'm curious about how hot your built-in charger gets to the touch.

[ctrlburn]

Ambient in my garage is 85F.
The bottom plastic cover 2015 SR is warm to the touch (not hot)
IR thermometer reads 103F on the bottom plastic cover.

[Kocho]

That seems about right. Today I touched the charger itself - a bit of it is showing towards the rear of the battery pack on the right side of the bike. That is quite hot there - can't keep my finger on it hot, but not sizzling hot I don't have an IR thermometer, but that's more than 120F for sure. I'm thinking of installing some sort of fan for the charger. Or something using the Peltier effect,  so there are no moving parts. My old Sony amplifier had a circuit like that in it for the power stage.  Maybe one of these small fridges they sell for cars that work on the same principle could be adapted too...EDIT, looks  like there are various Peltier electronic coolers for sale at electronic parts stores, so I don't have to break q small fridge to get one ...

[mrwilsn]

That seems about right. Today I touched the charger itself - a bit of it is showing towards the rear of the battery pack on the right side of the bike. That is quite hot there - can't keep my finger on it hot, but not sizzling hot I don't have an IR thermometer, but that's more than 120F for sure. I'm thinking of installing some sort of fan for the charger. Or something using the Peltier effect,  so there are no moving parts. My old Sony amplifier had a circuit like that in it for the power stage.  Maybe one of these small fridges they sell for cars that work on the same principle could be adapted too...EDIT, looks  like there are various Peltier electronic coolers for sale at electronic parts stores, so I don't have to break q small fridge to get one ...

I think you're over engineering it.  I don't think extra cooling is required for the stock charger. Of all Zero charger failures I read about I don't recall any of them being thermally related and the temps are not a problem for the batteries. Zero has done a good job on the engineering of the battery pack.

That said...the cooling won't hurt so knock yourself out.

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

[Doug S]

Or something using the Peltier effect,  so there are no moving parts.

Peltiers don't chill anything down, they just move heat from one place to another. They actually ADD to the heat load, so you'll have to dump more heat via heatsink with or without a fan. If you're going to get worked up about it (and I'm with MrWilson, I'd recommend not bothering), just set up a blower.

[MrDude_1]

I walked out to where the SR has been sitting plugged in.
Fully charged for a couple days, its charger was room temp. (73* by IR thermometer)

rode around, plugged it in, and starting temp was 93*F  (it was about 93* out)

about 45mins later, it still read about 93*F even with the garage room temp about 74*F...so it doesnt seem to really heat up. But it didnt cool off either.

since everything in the charger can work at 150*C and its not even 150*F... Id call it a non-issue.

[Farfle]

The Calex charges start de-rating power at 85C! they get freaking hot!

[MrDude_1]

The Calex charges start de-rating power at 85C! they get freaking hot!

I was thinking more about the components themselves and absolute ratings. I just spent half the day reading various MOSFET spec sheets so im brain fried.
Yes, it would work if it hit 150C.  No it wouldnt hit full power or last years at that temp. lol.
I think 85C is the magic number where 85C = 185F.. and if so, yeah it should roll back... my old fan cooled meanwell SP500 stack rolls back at around 180F too.  Although just adding fans made it never hit more than 150F in 103* heat at 125% output...  they really did overbuild them. I like meanwell supplies.